NASA has confirmed the tidally locked exoplanets have eternal mornings and evenings, with half of the unknown worlds shrouded in everlasting darkness and winds blowing at 1000 mph.
Exoplanets are distant planets outside of our solar system that orbit other stars in the Milky Way galaxy or lead a rogue life traveling alone across space.
Research on distant worlds has been ongoing since the 1990s, and research results have skyrocketed since the launch of the James Webb Telescope, the largest telescope in space, allowing deeper space exploration. One of the telescope’s main uses is to study the atmospheres of exoplanets and search for the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe.
The latest data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope confirmed astronomers' previous predictions that exoplanets have constant daytime and nighttime. This process happens due to a phenomenon called tidal locking.
A tidally locked planet always shows the same face as the star it is orbiting. This happens because the time it takes to rotate once on a planet’s axis is equal to the time it takes to complete one orbit around its star. As a result, one hemisphere of the planet is perpetually facing the star, while the other hemisphere is always facing away.
Researchers have investigated an exoplanet named WASP-39 b, which is 700 light-years away from Earth and has a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter's. They used Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph to determine the temperature differences in different planet hemispheres.
"WASP-39 b has become a sort of benchmark planet in studying the atmosphere of exoplanets with Webb," said Néstor Espinoza, an exoplanet researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute. "It has an inflated, puffy atmosphere, so the signal coming from starlight filtered through the planet's atmosphere is quite strong."
According to data, the eternal evening is burning hot, with estimated temperatures reaching 1450°F (about 800°C). Meanwhile, the eternal morning world shows evidence of a cloudy atmosphere and slightly lower temperatures of 1150°F (600°C).
Using the same models applied in predicting weather on Earth, scientists have determined that the exoplanet is experiencing extreme winds, moving from the dark side to the bright side of the planet, reaching up to 1000 miles per hour.
The team's future work will involve studying how cloud cover may affect temperature and vice versa, but astronomers already confirmed that gas circulation around the planet is the main culprit of the temperature difference on WASP-39 b.
As part of Webb Cycle 2 General Observers Program 3969, the researchers will use the same method of analysis to study the atmospheric differences of other tidally locked hot Jupiters.
In search of extraterrestrial life
Earlier this year, Webb’s telescope examined another exoplanet, LHS 1140 b. The data collected showed that the planet could be the closest habitable world to Earth. The planet is either completely covered in ice – similar to Jupiter’s moon Europa – or maybe an ice world with a “bull’s eye” of a liquid ocean and a stable, cloudy atmosphere.
The ocean is believed to measure about 4,000 kilometers in diameter, equivalent to half of the surface area of the Atlantic Ocean. The surface temperature in the middle of this alien ocean could even be a pleasant 20°C, all of which suggests that the planet is a promising “super-Earth,” according to researchers.
The advancement of the search for life on other planets is highly bound to the development of technology. NASA head administrator Bill Nelson points out that AI can accelerate the pace of discovery.
Franck Marchis, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute and a chief scientific officer at Unistellar, told Cybernews that investing in telescopes capable of imaging exoplanets might be the answer.
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