Scientists have discovered a hellish planet with oceans of lava
Miscellaneous / / December 09, 2021
A year on it lasts only 8 hours.
Scientists have discoveredGJ 367b: A dense, ultrashort-period sub-Earth planet transiting a nearby red dwarf star a new exoplanet called GJ 367b. It orbits the red dwarf star GJ 367, lies 30 light-years from Earth, and is a more extreme version of Mercury.
Its size is about 72% of the size of our planet, and its weight is about 55%. But if the iron core of the Earth separates a large layer of the mantle from the crust, then this planet is so dense that it consists almost entirely of iron. Moreover, it is very close to its star, making a revolution around it in about 8 hours. Because of this, the temperature of the illuminated side should reach 1400 ℃ Celsius, which suggests that its surface is covered with oceans of molten lava.
The planet was discovered thanks to TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) - NASA's space telescope, who searches for exoplanets within 200 light years of Earth and has noticed signs of the existence of a planet around the star GJ 367. Then it took more than a hundred observations with the HARPS spectrograph to get the details about the "hellish planet."
The history of this planet can only be speculated. Perhaps GJ 367b was previously a gas giant like Neptune that gradually heated up and lost its gaseous atmosphere, retaining only the iron core, which we can observe. There is also a theory that during its formation this planet (or rather, then still a protoplanet) collided with another object, having lost its mantle.
Of course, the GJ 367b is too hot to be inhabited. But this is one of the few exoplanets comparable in size to Earth that scientists have been able to detect and study. The next task is to find such planets in the habitable zone on which water and life can exist.
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Cover: still from the film "Star Wars. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith "/ Lucasfilm