An international team of researchers has analyzed in great detail the atmosphere of one of the known planets with the most extreme climates and have detected the first evidence of an “alien world” with an atmosphere with layers like of the Earth, although with very different characteristics, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The results of this non-inhabitable planet, named WASP-189b, similar to Jupiter, which was characterized for the first time with the help of the CHEOPS space telescope, they can help astronomers understand the complexities of many other exoplanets, including Earth-like planets.
And this is the first time that scientists have been able to probe different atmospheric layers on an exoplanet, each with its own chemical compositions and characteristics.
“In the past, astronomers Most of us used to assume that the atmospheres of exoplanets existed as a uniform layer and tried to understand it as such,” said astronomer Jens Hoeijmakers of Lund University, Sweden, and co-author of the new research, in a statement published by the University of Bern (Switzerland), where some of the scientists reside.
“But our results show that even the atmospheres of intensely irradiated gas giant planets have complex three-dimensional structures,” he added. .
The complex atmosphere of the earth
The Earth’s atmosphere is not a uniform envelope, but is made up of different layers with characteristic properties, according to the same scientists in the statement. For example, the troposphere contains most of the water vapor and is therefore the layer in which most weather events occur. The layer that is above, the stratosphere, is the one that contains the famous ozone layer that protects us from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.
To find the different layers of the exoplanet extreme, the research based its analysis on the light from the planet’s star, WASP-189, when the world passes in front of her. “We measured the light coming from the planet’s host star and passing through the planet’s atmosphere,” explained astronomer Bibiana Prinoth of Lund University, who led the research.
“The gases of its atmosphere absorb part of the light of the star, in a similar way how ozone absorbs part of the sunlight in the earth’s atmosphere, thus leaving its characteristic ‘fingerprint’. With the help of HARPS we were able to identify the corresponding substances”, he added.
As usually happens in hot Jupiters like WASP-189b, those gases included heavy metal vapors. In the atmosphere of the exoplanet there are gaseous clouds of iron, titanium, chromium, magnesium, vanadium and manganese.
Although humans do not usually think of metals as something gaseous, given the temperatures of WASP-189b, is not surprising. The planet’s star is especially hot, and the planet is so close that it only takes 2.7 Earth days to orbit it, according to previous research.
“Ozone layer” on a tremendously hot planet?
Apart from the found gases, the researchers, interestingly, also found traces of titanium oxide, which had never before been conclusively detected in an exoplanetary atmosphere. According to the researchers, titanium oxide, although very scarce on Earth, could play an important role in the atmosphere of WASP-189b, similar to that of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“Titanium oxide absorbs short-wave radiation, such as ultraviolet,” he explained. astrophysicist Kevin Heng, co-author of the study, professor of astrophysics at the University of Bern and NCCR PlanetS member. “Its detection could therefore indicate a layer in the atmosphere of WASP-189b that it interacts with stellar irradiation in a similar way as the ozone layer does on Earth”, he added.
Evidence of different layers in the atmosphere
Indeed, in their analysis, the researchers found slightly different effects between the different chemical substances, which suggests that they moved differently through the atmosphere and that, therefore, it has a complex structure.
“In our analysis, we saw that the ‘fingerprints’ of the different gases were slightly altered compared to our expectation. We believe that strong winds and other processes could generate these disturbances. And since the fingerprints of the different gases were altered differently, we think this indicates that they exist in different layers; similar to how water vapor and ozone fingerprints on Earth would appear altered differently from a distance, because they occur mainly in different atmospheric layers,” explained Prinoth.
These results may change the way astronomers investigate exoplanets.
“We are convinced that in order to fully understand this and other types of planets – including those most similar to Earth – we need to appreciate the three-dimensional nature of their atmospheres,” Heng continued.
As researchers deepen their understanding with the available data, many are already looking forward to what they will be able to understand with data from the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, which, by the way, is equipped to also carry out this type of atmospheric research work.
With information from DW.
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