Astronomers have discovered a planet outside the solar system that orbits its star in just eight hours, is almost the size of Mars and half the mass of Earth, and the interior may be similar to Mercury. The information was released on Thursday.
The planet in question, called GJ 367b, orbits a red dwarf that is 31 light years from the Sun and is considered one of the lightest planets, according to a statement from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, which was involved in the investigation based on observations from with the help of the space telescope “hunter” for extrasolar planets TESS, operated by the American agency NASA.
According to a group of astronomers, it is a rocky planet that “likely contains a solid core of iron and nickel, similar to the interior of Mercury,” the closest to the Sun and the smallest planet in the Solar System.
Because of its “extreme proximity” to its star, the planet will receive 500 times more radiation from it than the Earth receives from the Sun.
Surface temperatures in GJ 367b can reach 1500 ° C, resulting in the evaporation of any significant atmosphere and the disappearance of possible signs of life, as is known.
However, according to astronomers, although ‘GJ 367b’ is not in the so-called “habitable zone” of the star, in the presence of liquid water on its surface, it orbits a red dwarf star, which usually contains “several planets.”
In this context, for the investigating team, “GJ 367b” may end up having “habitable partners” planets, that is, with conditions for the presence of liquid water on the surface (liquid water is essential for life, as if you knew) …
“For stars of this class, the habitable zone will be somewhere between two to three weeks of orbit,” said George Riker, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology responsible for the scientific leadership of the study, in a statement. Telescope TESS.
Thanks to the HARPS spectrograph installed in one of the telescopes of the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile, astronomers were able to determine that exoplanet GJ 367b is one of the lightest planets.
The results of the work, coordinated by scientists from the Institute for Planetary Research of the German Aerospace Center, are published in the scientific journal Science.
