Super Earth 55 Cancri e defied its parent star’s ferocity and emerged with something scientists almost couldn’t believe.
Super Earth 55 Cancri e is a “hell” located in the star system 55 Cancri, 41 light years away from us.
55 Cancri e has been known to mankind for many years, is a rocky planet with a diameter nearly twice as large and a mass 9 times that of Earth.
But now, with the outstanding observation capabilities of the James Webb super telescope, American scientists realize that it could be an extremely unusual world.
Planet 55 Cancri e orbits very closely around its hot parent star – Graphic image: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScl
55 Cancri e is so dense that scientists deduced that it is mostly carbon compressed into diamonds.
But it was a bare block of diamond.
Although it is a rocky planet like Earth, 55 Cancri e is almost incapable of nurturing life due to its surface temperature of up to 2,400 degrees Celsius.
It is located only 0.01544 times the Earth-Sun distance from its parent star, and a year there is only 17 hours on Earth.
This also resulted in the planet being stripped of its atmosphere by its parent star.
However, analyzing James Webb’s latest observations of 55 Cancri e, a group of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech – USA) found that this super-Earth now… has an atmosphere.
“We have measured heat emissions from this rocky planet and the measurements show that the planet has a significant atmosphere. This atmosphere is probably created by the release of gas from the rocky interior of 55 Cancri e” – Dr. Renyu Hu, co-author, told Space.com.
Thus, this is the first time planetary scientists have found signs of a “secondary atmosphere”.
That’s how scientists call the second atmosphere created when a bare planet is “peeled” and shows its ability to “regenerate” spectacularly, returning to a planet covered with an atmosphere like Earth. Earth and most other planets.
According to the authors, it is the lava-covered surface of this super-Earth that provides the ability to “regenerate”.
Dissolved gases in the global lava ocean of 55 Cancri e, continuously “bubble” to form a secondary atmosphere. The composition of the secondary atmosphere depends on the rock material under which it is composed.
“If the rock is very reducing, it can also create a hydrogen-helium atmosphere like the primary atmosphere. But if the rock is more like Earth’s mantle, then water, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide will dominate secondary atmosphere” – Dr. Hu said.
This discovery still needs some confirmation, but it is enough to show that this super-Earth is an interesting world, promising to help humanity understand more about an extreme type of planet, rarely seen in the universe.