System Trappist-1formed by seven Earth-sized planets, the first of which were discovered in 2016, was one of NASA’s main bets. in potentially habitable planetary ensembles. However, the James Webb Space Telescope has just discovered that there is at least one sign of no significant atmosphere and that the temperature on its day is about 230 degrees, which lowers the chances that the system has the ability to host life.
This study, published Tuesday by Nature, analyzes data from a new space telescope, and the authors conclude that the most likely interpretation is that an exoplanet has been investigated. There are no signs of air.
Trappist-1 is about 40 years old in the constellation Aquarius, and is somewhat smaller and cooler than the Sun, whose planets are named alphabetically from B to H in order of their distance. Of the seven planets which orbit their star in perfect harmony; There are three rocks and they are in the habitable zone of their star.
All of these have been observed using spectroscopic techniques using the Hubble or Spitzer space telescopes, but they are still far away. no atmospheric features were detected.
Through the new James Webb space telescope, Trappis-1b has already been investigated, which is the the nearest planet to the star and receives four times more radiation than the Earth receives from the Sun.
This relatively large amount of heating of the star suggests that the thermal emissions of the planet are measurable and thus illuminate the planet’s atmosphere.
Green team through Thomas Greene NASA AMES Research Center (USA) used the James Webb Medium Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which can observe long-range radiation, to estimate the planet’s thermal emission.
The most plausible interpretation of the findings, the authors write, is that the planet’s atmosphere reflects little or no radiation from the host star, and there is virtually no atmospheric absorption of carbon dioxide or other species. This is “likely because Trappist-1b absorbs almost all the radiation from the dwarf star and does not have a high-pressure atmosphere.”
The fact that the exoplanet does not have a substantial atmosphere is consistent with the model’s predicted results. But as has been said new observations to better understand the heat crisis in Trappist-1b, as well as the properties of these planets and their differences from those of our solar system.
The team used the telescope to measure the temperature of Trappist-1b, which in its thermal emission of the planet and the result indicates that the sun side of the planet has a temperature of about 500 kelvins (about 230 degrees).
This is the first detection of any form of light emitted by such a small and cold exoplanet, resulting in an important step in determining whether planets orbiting small active stars like Trappist-1 can host the atmospheres necessary for life, the researchers say.
It also applies to the ability of the James Webb telescope which temperate exoplanets about the size of the Earth using his MIRI instrument.
