55 Cancri e: Webb telescope will see boiling, lava-covered ‘super-Earths’ for the first time – Liku

The James Webb Space Telescope is ready to conduct extraordinary studies of hitherto unstudied planetary bodies. Scientists will see for the first time a distant “super-Earth” called 55 Cancri e, whose surface is covered in continuously burning lava.

According to NASA, “super-Earths” are “a class of planets unlike any in our solar system.” 55 Cancri e is about 50 light-years from Earth and orbits a star less than 1.5 million miles from Earth. For comparison, that’s 1/25 the distance between our Sun and Mercury. While Earth takes 365 days to orbit the sun, Cancri e 55 takes just 18 hours to orbit its star. The first observations of the planet are expected once the James Webb Space Telescope becomes operational this summer. The telescope is also designed to help scientists learn more about LHS 3844 b, a distant planet with no atmosphere.

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The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope in the world. Its high-precision spectrometers will be trained on these celestial worlds to learn more about the geological diversity of planets across the galaxy, as well as the evolution of rocky planets like Earth. Webb will go beyond our solar system to explore distant worlds orbiting other stars, as well as the mysterious structure and origin of our universe and our place in it. Webb is a multinational project led by NASA involving ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency as partners.

Super-Hot Super-Earth 55 Cancri e

“Because surface temperatures are well above the melting points of typical rock-forming minerals, Earth’s daytime is thought to be covered by a lava ocean,” NASA said of 55 Cancri e. “Imagine if Earth were much closer to the sun,” the agency added.

Planets orbiting a star this close are considered tidally locked, with one side always facing the star. Therefore, the hottest place on Earth should be the one most directly facing the star, and the amount of heat radiated over the day should remain relatively constant. However, this does not appear to be the case. According to observations by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the hottest part of 55 Cancer e deviates from the part most directly facing the star, while the total heat recorded during the day varies.

“So close that it only lasts a few hours a year. So close that gravity locks one hemisphere in perpetually scorching sunlight and the other in endless darkness,” the agency said. “It was so close that the ocean boiled, the rocks started to melt, and the clouds fell with lava.”

However, it is also possible that 55 Cancri e is not tidally locked. Instead, it may, like Mercury, rotate three times every two orbits (3:2 resonance). As a result, there is a day-night cycle on Earth. “This could explain why the hottest parts of the planet change,” explains Alexis Brandeker, a researcher at Stockholm University. “Just like on Earth, it takes time for the surface to heat up. The hottest time of day is the afternoon, not noon.” “At night, the steam cools and condenses into lava droplets, which then rain back to the surface, as night falls. , becomes solid again.”

“[They] Larger than Earth, but lighter than ice giants like Neptune and Uranus, it can be made of gas, rock, or a combination of the two. They are twice the size and 10 times the mass of Earth,” NASA’s website says.

Another theory is that the planet’s rotation creates day and night, so its “surface heats up, melts and even evaporates during the day, creating a very thin atmosphere that Webb can detect,” the agency said.