The weather has been predicted by astronomers to find the most turbulent eruption ever with rain rocks and 60 miles deep lava seas.
The world, called K2-141b, was observed about 200 light-years from Earth and has more than 3,000 miles of wind and surface temperatures over 5,000F.
Researchers at McGill and York University predicted the weather on the first rocky planet, first discovered in 2018 by the Kepler Space Telescope.
The world is locked in tides, i.e. one side is always facing its host star, the result of incessant daylight is a temperature that is hot enough to evaporate the rock.
Facing away from the star, on the other hand, is a cooling -328F, cold enough to stabilize nitrogen – a huge difference creating a strong 3,000 miles wind.
In the center of the vast illuminated region of these artists’ impressions of K2-141B, there is an overlain sea of stone melted by the atmosphere of steam vapor.
Graphic rendering of Exoplanet K2-141B. Researchers have predicted that it will be covered by a huge magma ocean that is locked in tides.
K2-141b is the ‘super earth’, a series of planets that are not in the solar system. It is five times the size of our world but takes only 0.3 days to orbit its star.
It orbits 665,000 miles from its orange dwarf host star, compared to Mercury orbiting the Sun on average 36 million miles.
Liang author Giang Nguyen, a PhD student, said the hot world full of fire has a surface, an ocean and an atmosphere made up of all rocks – from molten lava to rocks.
Nguyen and colleagues created a series of computer simulations to predict what the weather would be like on this extreme example of an ‘Earth-like’ planet.
Exoplanets are a subset of rocky planets that orbit very close to their star, the researchers explained, as extreme conditions can change the surface.
This proximity of the star always keeps the planet gravitationally facing the same side, creating a thin atmosphere in some areas at the end.
Professor Nicholas Coane, co-author of the McGill University in Montreal, said: “The probability of our discovery is that the atmosphere extends slightly along the shores of the Magma Ocean, making it easier to find a place with space telescopes.”
The evaporating atmosphere mimics the earth – with rocks instead of just water – from the extreme heat they know to be water particles because of the rain gutters.
Just as the water cycle on Earth where it evaporates, rises into the atmosphere, condenses, and falls back like rain, so does sodium, silicon monoxide, and silicon dioxide at 2-141b – it effectively rains down rocks. Is.
On Earth, the rain flows back into the oceans, where it will evaporate once more and repeat the water cycle in a stationary cycle.
At K2-141b, the mineral vapor formed by the evaporated rock is turned back into the magma ocean by supersonic winds and the rocks ‘rain’.
The resulting currents return to the hot day side of the exoplanet, where once the rock evaporates.
The planet orbits its host star every 0.3 days – about every seven hours – one side always facing an orange dwarf star
With the launch next year, future telescopes, such as the James Webb Web Space Telescope, will be able to confirm whether predictions are accurate.
Although the cycle at K2-141b is not as stable as that on Earth, scientists say that the return flow of magma oceans is much slower during the day.
As a result, they predict that mineral composition will change over time – eventually the very surface and atmosphere of 2-141b change.
Cowan said: ‘All the rocky planets, including Earth, started as a molten world, but then quickly cooled and became stronger. Lava planets give us a rare glimpse at this stage of planetary evolution. ‘
Scientists say the next step is to test whether these predictions are true.
The team now has data from the Spitzer Space Telescope that should give them a first glimpse into the day-side and night-side temperatures of the exoplanet.
With the launch of the James Webb Web Space Telescope in 2021, they will also be able to test whether they are behaving in accordance with the weather forecast.
Mr Nguyen added: “Next-pay generation space telescopes like James Webb will be able to detect it for hundreds of light years.”
These findings are published in the Journal Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Scientists study the atmosphere of distant exoplanets using massive space satellites such as Hubble
Distant stars and their orbiting planets often have conditions that are the opposite of what we would see in our atmosphere.
To understand this new world, and what it is made of, scientists need to be able to discover what is contained in their atmosphere.
They often do so using a telescope similar to NASA’s Hubble Telescope.
These massive satellites scan the sky and lock on exoplanets that NASA thinks might be of interest.
Here, the sensors on board perform a variety of analyzes.
A very important and useful is called Aborban spectroscopy.
This form of analysis measures the light emitted from the Earth’s atmosphere.
Each gas absorbs a slightly different wavelength of light, and when this happens a black line appears over the entire spectrum.
These lines correspond to a very specific molecule, indicating that it is present on the planet.
After the German astronomer and physicist, they are often referred to as the Frenhofer lines, which he first discovered in 1814.
By combining all the different wavelengths of light, scientists can determine all the chemicals that make up the planet’s atmosphere.
The key is to provide clues to find what is missing.
It is very important that this is done by a space telescope, because then the Earth’s atmosphere will interfere.
Absorption from chemicals in our atmosphere will tank the sample, which is why it is important to study light before it has a chance to reach Earth.
This is always used to find helium, sodium and oxygen in a foreign atmosphere.
This figure shows how light passing through a star and the atmosphere of an exoplanet forms Freunhofer lines indicating the presence of major compounds such as sodium or helium.
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