“The discovery of the planets is the discovery of life,” said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler mission scientist at NASA’s AIIMS Research Center. In search of habitable planets like Earth, sometimes something strange pops up, which is the opposite of anything in our solar system.
The “Exoplanet Era” officially launched in October 1995, when Nobel Prize-winning Michelle Meyer and DDR Close The first discovery of a planet outside our solar system, an exoplanet, orbiting a solar-type star in our home galaxy, the Milky Way. His discovery ushered in a revolution in astronomy and has since led to the discovery of more than 4,100 exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. And almost every day a strange new world is being discovered.
Milky Way’s “Extremely Extreme Life”
One of these bizarre “somethings” was announced by a team of researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of Chicago with a new study published in The Planetary Science Journal. The team has determined that in some circumstances carbon-rich exoplanets, given the right circumstances, may be made of diamond and silica. “This exoplanet is the opposite of anything in our solar system,” says Harrison Allen-Sutter, lead author of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.
Diamond Worlds
When stars and planets form, they do so with the same cloud of gas, so their bulk formations are similar. A low-carbon star with an oxygen ratio will have Earth-like planets, including silicates and oxides with very small diamond content (Earth’s diamond content is about 0.001%).
But carbon is more likely to be enriched around stars with an oxygen ratio than carbon from our sun. Len Lan-Sutter and co-authors envisioned that this could enable carbon-rich exoplanets to be converted into diamond and silicate, creating a diamond-rich composition if water (which is abundant in the universe) was present.
“Island Worlds” – A whole new frontier of Explanet
Testing the hypothesis
To test this hypothesis, the research team needed to simulate the interior of a carbide exoplanet using high temperatures and high pressures. To do this, they used co-author Shimmy’s Lab for Earth and High Pressure Diamond-Anvil Cell on Planetary Materials. First, they immersed the silicon carbide in water and pressed the sample between the diamonds at a very high pressure. Then, to monitor the reaction between silicon carbide and water, they conducted laser heating at the Argo National Laboratory in Illinois, X-ray measuring laser laser heated the sample at high pressure.
As they predicted, with more heat and pressure, the silicon carbide reacted with water and turned into diamond and silica.
“Proof of Existence”
Some astronomers have said that it is unclear whether other forms of life have been found in galaxies or other galaxies. The fact that we are here provides an ‘existence proof’ as it is called in mathematics. But so far, the search continues. Planetary scientists and astronomers are using space-equipped instruments in space and on Earth to find planets with the right properties and the right locations around their stars where life may exist.
“Neighboring alien planets may have ‘early-meaning’ life stages” – Carl Sagan Institute
The carbon-rich planets that are the focus of this study, however, do not have the necessary properties for life. While the Earth is geographically active (indicative habitat), the results of this study show that carbon-rich planets are very difficult to activate geographically and that atmospheric composition cannot be depleted due to lack of geological activity. The atmosphere is crucial for life because it also gives us pressure to breathe air, protect us from the harsh atmosphere of space, and allow liquid water.
Says Habit Lawn-Sutter, “This is an additional step to help us understand and characterize exoplanet observations, regardless of occupants. “The more we learn, the more we will be able to interpret new data from future missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to understand the world beyond our own solar system.”
Daily Galaxy, by Sam Cabot, Arizona State University
Image credit: Shutterstock license
