The Webb Space Telescope found no evidence of a atmosphere on one of seven rocky, Earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby star.
Scientists said Monday that this does not bode well for the rest of the planets in this solar system, some of which are in the sweet spot to harbor water and potentially life.
The NASA-led team reported little, if any, atmosphere on the innermost planet of the Trappist system, 40 light years away. The researchers used a special technique aimed at a hot planet like this one. The results were published Monday in the journal Nature.
The lack of an atmosphere would mean that nThere is no water or protection from cosmic raysreported NASA’s Thomas Greene, the lead researcher.
As for the other planets orbiting the small, faint Trappist star, “I would have been more optimistic about the others” having atmospheres if this one did, Green said in an email.
Since this innermost planet is bombarded by solar radiation, four times more than what Earth receives from our sun, the extra energy may be the reason there is no atmosphereGreene noted.
Many observations are planned not only for this planet, but for the others in the Trappist system.
Last week, the James Webb Space Telescope captured the elusive prelude to a star dying as supernova.
the star is WR124, is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, has thirty times the mass of the Sun, and has so far spewed material equivalent to ten suns. To the eyes of the Webb it appears as an explosion of colors golden, roses and lilacs gas and cosmic dust.
The infrared light in which the telescope observes allows us to see the characteristic halo of gas and dust that frames the star, showing a knobby structure and a history of episodic ejections, NASA said in a statement.
Despite being the scene of imminent stellar “death,” astronomers also look to Wolf-Rayet stars for new beginnings as cosmic dust forms in the swirling nebulae that surround them. which is composed of the heavy elements that make up the modern Universe.
during the phase Wolf–Rayetwhich will give way to a supernova, the star will shed its outer layers, giving rise to its characteristic halos of gas and dust.
But this is a very short period and not all stars pass through it, so the new observations are very valuable to astronomers.
As the ejected gas moves away from the star and cools, cosmic dust is formed, which can survive a supernova explosion.
That dust is an integral part of how the Universe works, harboring stars in the making, coming together to help form planets, and serving as a platform for molecules, including the building blocks of life on Earth, to form and assemble.
Despite the many essential functions that dust performs, there is more to the universe than current theories of its formation can explain.
(With information from AP and EFE)
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