Alien ‘super-Earth’ planet found ‘locked’ with half in scorching heat and the other side in eternal darkness
SCIENTISTS have confirmed the existence of a Super-Earth exoplanet where one side is bathed in eternal sunlight.
This means the exoplanet, dubbed LHS 3844b (or Kua’kua), also has one side that lives in perpetual darkness.
Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope has been investigating the planet for at least a year.
Now JWST has confirmed that tidally locked exoplanets exist within our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Tidal locking is a phenomenon we observe every day here on Earth when we look at the moon.
It’s when a celestial body has the same rotational period as its orbital period around a larger mass.
The new findings were presented in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal.
“This thing that has been theoretical now feels real,” astronomer Nicolas Cowan of McGill University in Canada told Nature.
“This is actually what these planets look like,” Cowan added.
LHS 3844b
LHS 3844 b is located about 49 light-years away and orbits extremely close to its star, completing one revolution in just 11 hours.
Initial observations from Nasa’s Spitzer Telescope show that the planet is very unlikely to have a substantial, or thick atmosphere.
While Webb hasn’t been able to photograph the exoplanet’s surface directly, researchers can use spectroscopy to identify its composition.
Over the last three decades, researchers have uncovered several super-Earth exoplanets, however, most of them remain shrouded in mystery.
WHAT IS A SUPER EARTH?
Super-Earths are a class of outer-solar system planets that are made up of gas, rock, or a combination of both.
They have a mass higher than Earth’s but lower than Uranus’ and Neptune’s.
These types of planets are of interest to researchers because they don’t exist in our solar system and can provide new insights.
Specifically, they can help us learn what early Earth might have been like when it was extremely hot.
What is an exoplanet?
Here's what you need to know...
- An exoplanet is a planet that is located outside of our Solar System and one that is orbitting its own star, like how Earth orbits the Sun
- They are very hard to see with telescopes because they are often hidden by the brightness of their star
- Nasa sent the Kepler space telescope into orbit with the purpose of finding Earth sized exoplanets that might support life
- Over 5,500 exoplanets have been discovered so far and more missions to find even more exoplanets are planned
- A good way to spot an exoplanet is to look for “wobbly” stars because a disruption to star light can indicate that a planet is orbitting it and therefore blocking out light on occasion
- Exoplanets are very common in the Universe and the more we find that look like Earth the closer we get to knowing if we’re not alone out there
However, Nasa noted that the term is a reference only to an exoplanet’s size and does not suggest these planets are necessarily similar to Earth.
“The true nature of these planets remains shrouded in uncertainty because we have nothing like them in our own solar system,” Nasa notes on its website.
“And yet, they are common among planets found so far in our galaxy,” the US space agency continued.
To date, Nasa has discovered dozens of super-Earths, some of which it calls “strange planets…that have no analog in our solar system.”