A newly found exoplanet is absolutely making astronomers show their mettle. Planet GJ 367b is smaller than Earth, denser than iron and scorching sufficient to soften, researchers report within the Dec. 3 Science.
“We think the surface of this exoplanet could be molten,” says astronomer Kristine Wei Fun Lam of the Institute of Planetary Research on the German Aerospace Center in Berlin.
Signals of the planet have been first noticed in knowledge from NASA’s TESS telescope in 2019. The small world swung round its host star each 7.7 hours.
Using knowledge from TESS and the ground-based HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory in Chile, Lam and her colleagues measured the planet’s radius and mass. GJ 367b clocked in at about 0.72 occasions Earth’s radius and 0.55 occasions its mass. That makes it the primary ultrashort-period planet — a category of worlds with years shorter than one Earth day and with mysterious origins — identified to be smaller and lighter than Earth.
Using these measurements, the crew then calculated the planet’s density: about 8.1 grams per cubic centimeter, or barely denser than iron. A pc evaluation of the planet’s inside construction means that 86 p.c of it may comprise an iron core, with solely a sliver of rock left on high.
Mercury has a equally massive core, Lam notes (SN: 4/22/19). Scientists suppose that’s a results of a large influence with one other planet that stripped away most of its outer layers. GJ 367b may have shaped after an identical collision. It may even have as soon as been a gaseous planet whose environment was blasted off by radiation from its star (SN: 7/1/20).
Whatever its origins, GJ 367b is so near its star that it’s virtually definitely lined in melted metallic lava now. “At 1400° Celsius, I don’t think it would be very nice to stand on it,” Lam says.