By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have discovered a planet orbiting a star in comparison to our solar system, which could provide a major opportunity to study the Earth’s alien atmosphere – a type of research that could help discover extraterrestrial life.
The planet, called Gliz648 called B and classified as ‘super-earth’, is not a promising candidate as a shelter for life, researchers said Thursday. It is considered offensive – hot and dry like Venus, with possible rivers of lava flowing over its surface.
But its proximity to the Earth and its physical features are conducive to the study of its atmosphere, starting with the next-generation and land-based telescopes, the James Web Space Telescope, which NASA is preparing to launch in October. This could give scientists data to be able to understand the atmospheres of other planets beyond our solar system – including life-sustaining spouses.
“We say that Glease 6 486B will instantly become the Rosetta Stone of exoplanet ology – at least for Earth-like planets,” said Jose Caballero, an astrophysicist and study at Spain’s Centro de Astrobiologia. Hieroglyphs of Decifer Egypt.
Scientists have discovered more than 4,300 exoplanets. Some have been large gas planets similar to Jupiter. Others are small, rocky Earth-like worlds, considered a candidate for shelter from life, but currently available scientific tools tell us little about their environment.
“Expolanet must have the appropriate physical and orbital configuration for atmospheric investigations,” said Typhon Trifonov, a planetary scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, the lead author of the research, published in the journal Science.
The ‘super-Earth’ is an exoplanet with a mass larger than our planet’s ice giant Uranus and Neptune. The mass of Gliese 486b is 2.8 times that of Earth.
It is located in our celestial neighborhood at about 26.3 light years – light travels a distance in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers) from Earth – making it into a nearby exoplanet. It orbits a ‘red dwarf’ star that is smaller, colder and less bright than our Sun, with about three-thirds cluster.
The planet orbits very close to its home star, giving it heavy irradiation. Like Earth, it is also a rocky planet and is believed to have a metal core. Its surface temperature is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius) and its surface gravity can be 70% stronger than Earth.
“Gliese 48 486B may not be habitable, at least not the way we know it on Earth,” Trifonov said. “This planet probably has only one sustainable atmosphere, if any. Our model Dells are compatible with both scenarios because stellar irradiation evaporates the atmosphere, while at the same time, the gravity of the planets is strong enough to sustain it.”
Nevertheless, working on the Glaze 6 48 Te B James Web Space Telescope and in the future the Extremely Large Telescope may prove ideal for studying the Earth’s atmosphere, which is now under construction in Chile.
The chemical composition of the atmosphere can tell a lot about a planet and its habitat. Scientists are interested in seeing the combination of gases in the atmosphere of an exoplanet like Earth with a mixture of oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane like our own planet.
“Everything we learn with the atmospheres of Gliese 6 486b and other planets like Earth will be applied in a few decades, to examine biomarkers or biosignatures: spectral features on the atmosphere of the exoplanet that can only be considered extraterrestrial life,” Caballero added.
(Reporting by Will Dunham, editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
