Although Venus is considered the hottest planet in the solar system, with a surface temperature of around 500°C, it is nothing compared to Janssen, an exoplanet whose heat is four times higher.
With a mass regarding eight times that of our planet, this rocky alien world called 55 Cancri-e (aka Janssen) has characteristics that are very different from those we know. This “infernal planet” located 40 light years from earth, orbits its star Copernicus 70 times closer than Earth orbits the Sun, meaning a year is only 18 hours long. Astronomers believe its surface might be an ocean of lava, and its interior possibly filled with diamonds. His study might expand scientists’ knowledge of the formation of these exoplanets. “We learned how this multiplanetary system – one of the systems with the most planets we have found – came to its current state.“, says astrophysicist Lily Zhao of the Flatiron Institute in New York and lead author of the new sightings study, published in the magazine Natural astronomy.
How the “hellish planet” got so hot
If Janssen is bubbling, it hasn’t always been the case. Using data from the new Extreme Precision Spectrometer (EXPRESS) of the Lowell Discovery Telescope at the Lowell Observatory in the US state of Arizona, astronomers have been able to determine Janssen’s orbital plane for the first time. The researchers believe Janssen originally formed in a more distant, cooler location, only to be pulled into its current orbit by the star’s gravity. Janssen would therefore have been the victim of a gravitational catastrophe. Even in its original orbit, the planet “was probably so hot that nothing we know of might survive on the surface,” Zhao comments in the statement. Its average surface temperature is estimated at 2,300 degrees Celsius, higher than molten magma.
New data on the formation of planetary systems
Apart from Janssen, five exoplanets orbit the star: Galileo, Brahe, Harriot and Lipperhey, and all are further away from Copernicus. The researchers wanted to study the distant system to assess how its planets evolved and how it differs from our solar system, where all planets occupy mostly identical orbital planes. For the astrophysicist, the research on Janssen might reveal new data on the formation and the movement of planetary systems, which might help scientists to determine if life might exist elsewhere in the universe. “We hope to find planetary systems similar to ours and better understand the systems we know“, a conclu Zhao.
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