The star may have attracted a scorching “hell planet” into a nearby orbit
You thought Venus was hot?
Although the planet has an average surface temperature of nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius), there is a exoplanet Just 40 light years from Earth, which has a surface temperature three times hotter: 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius). Now, the new data has led scientists to develop a theory of what this “hell planet” looked like.
With a mass about eight times that of our planet, the rocky exoplanet 55 Cancers e (shortened to 55 Cnc and formally called Janssen) is considered a super-Earth, but its surface conditions could not be more different from those we enjoy. Janssen orbits around it star, called 55 Cancri or Copernicus, at a distance of only 1.4 million miles (2.4 million kilometers), making the planet’s year only 18 hours long. Compared to, Mercury orbits about 36 million miles (58 million km) away ground. This proximity, of course, is what makes 55 Cancri e so hot, hot enough that the planet’s surface is an ocean of lava and its interior could be full of diamonds.
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Because of Janssen’s narrow orbit, astronomers have had difficulty studying the planet. But using data from the new Extreme Precision Spectrometer (EXPRES) al Lowell Observatory Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona, astronomers have been able to determine the planet’s orbital plane for the first time, influencing their theory of how the planet formed.
Unlike the other planets in the system, Janssen orbits around the Copernican equator. Researchers now believe that the planet initially formed in a more distant and therefore cooler location and was then pulled into its current orbit by Copernicus’ gravity.
“We learned how this multiplanetary system, one of the systems with the most planets we’ve found, got to its current state,” said Lily Zhao, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute in New York and lead author of a new study on the observations. say in a statement.
Janssen’s research could reveal new discoveries about the formation and motion of planetary systems, which in turn could help scientists determine whether or not life could exist elsewhere in the universe. And that’s exactly what the team plans to study next.
“We hope to find planetary systems similar to our own and better understand the systems we know,” Zhao said.
A study describing the team’s research was published Thursday (Dec. 8) in the journal Astronomy of nature (opens in a new tab).
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