The mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope are already aligned and their instruments ready to operate at full capacity. What better way to test them than to study hell itself? The name of this hell is 55 Cancri, and soon we will be able to observe it like never before.
The James Webb agenda for this summer includes the study of two super-earths LHS 3844 by 55 Cancri e. The second of these planets we already knew of a compilation of planets-monster that NASA did in 2019. Here’s how the agency’s astronomers describe this extreme world located 55 light years away:
You’re welcome what Earth was much, much closer to the Sun. So close that an entire year lasts only a few hours. So close that gravity has blocked a lower hemisphere the scorching daylight permanent and the other submerged in a endless darkness. So close that the oceans evaporate, the rocks begin to melt and the clouds shed wash. There is nothing like it in our Solar system.
The distance that separates 55 Copernicus Cancri, a yellow dwarf very similar to our Sun, es only a fraction of the distance that separates Mercury from our star. As a result, it is not only that its orbit is only 18 hours. It is that the radiation it receives has turned it into a pressure cooker in which the water of the evaporated oceans is trapped in the form of supercritical fluid. The entire surface of the planet is an immense ocean of lava.
However, there are not a few mysteries related to 55 Cancri e. Thes observations made of this exoplanet with the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the hottest region of this devastated world is not the one directly facing the Sun. Why? One possible explanation is that the planet has a dense atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen at high pressures. which distributes the heat as it happens on Venus. If so, the James Webb Telescope has the sensitivity to capture the frequencies of light bouncing off the planet and deduce whether it actually has an atmosphere and what its composition is.
Another possible hypothesis is that 55 Cancri e is not completely anchored to its star, but instead spins three times for every two spins around its star (something called a 3:2 resonance). If this proves true, James Webb’s instruments will be able to measure the heat differences of this day-night cycle and find out if, as suspected, lava is raining on the planet. The day and night cycle would make the liquid rock surface It will vaporize during the day and condense to fall as lava at sunset.
LHS 3844 b is not as radical as 55 Cancri e, but its complete lack of atmosphere will allow the spectroscopes of the James Webb to be calibrated by directly studying the composition of its surface. In both cases, what we discover will be of vital importance for the study of exoplanets, their formation, and for the search for life. It’s going to be a fascinating summer for astronomy fans.[[NASA]