Tornados, cyclones and hurricanes wreaked havoc on Earth, but now they have been detected, on a planet outside our solar system, winds on a completely different scale, much higher even than that of the supersonic winds of some planets of our system solar.
Since its discovery in 2016, the astronomical community has been investigating the climate of Wasp-127B, a giant gas planet located more than 500 years-to-land of the Earth. The planet is slightly larger than Jupiter, but has only a fraction of its mass, which makes it a “swollen” planet. An international team has made an unexpected discovery: supersonic winds are wreaking havoc on the planet.
“Part of the atmosphere of this planet moves towards us at great speed, while another part moves away from us at the same speed,” explains Lisa Nortmann, a scientist at the University of Gotinga in Germany and main author of the study. “This signal shows us that there is a very fast supersonic wind current around the planet’s Ecuador.”
Moving about 9 kilometers per second, this stream current moves almost six times the speed at which the planet turns, and a speed comparable to that of spacecraft in orbit to the earth. “This is something we had not seen before,” says Nortmann. It is the fastest wind measured in a stream current moving around a planet. In comparison, the fastest wind measured in the solar system was detected in Neptune, with a speed of “alone” half kilometer per second (1800 kilometers per hour).
The team mapped the climate and composition of WASP-127b using the CRIRES+instrument, installed in the VLT telescope set of the European Observatory Austral (ESO). By measuring how the host star light travels through the upper atmosphere of the planet, they managed to trace its atmospheric composition. The results confirm the presence of water vapor molecules and carbon monoxide in the planet’s atmosphere. But when the team tracked the speed of this material in the atmosphere, they observed, to their surprise, a double beak, which indicates that one side of the atmosphere is moving towards us and the other is moving away from us, at high speed . Researchers have concluded that this unexpected result can only be explained by the presence of a powerful stream current around Ecuador.
In this artistic recreation of Wasp-127b, we see the newly discovered supersonic wind circulating through the planet’s Ecuador. With a speed of 9 kilometers per second, this is the fastest jet current of its type among all measures in the universe. (Image: ESO / L. Calçada. CC by 4.0)
By continuing to build its meteorological map, the team also discovered that the poles are colder than the rest of the planet. There is also a slight temperature difference between the morning and evening sides of Wasp-127b. “This shows that the planet has complex climatic patterns, as well as the land and other planets of our system,” adds Fei Yan, from the University of Science and Technology of China and a member of the research team.
The field of exoplanet research (planets outside our solar system) is progressing rapidly. Until a few years ago, the astronomical community could only measure the mass and radius of exoplanets. At present, telescopes such as the VLT of ESO set already allow the scientific community to map the climate in those distant worlds and analyze its atmospheres. “Understanding the dynamics of these exoplanets helps us to explore mechanisms such as the redistribution of heat and chemical processes, improving our understanding of the formation of planets and, potentially, helping to clarify the origins of our solar system,” says David Cont, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany) and co -author of the new study.
Interestingly, at present, this type of studies can only be carried out from terrestrial observatories, since the instruments found in space telescopes do not have the necessary speed accuracy. The ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) of ESO, which is being built near the VLT, in Chile, and its Andes instrument, will allow the research community to deepen even more in the climate patterns of distant planets. “This means that we can probably solve further details of wind patterns and expand this research to smaller rocky planets,” concludes Nortmann.
The study is entitled “CRREES+ TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY OF WASP-127B; Detection of the Resolved Signatures of A Equatorial Supersonic Jet and Cool Poles in A Hot Planet”. And has been published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics academic magazine. (Source: that. CC by 4.0)
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