Astronomers may have discovered the presence of water in the atmosphere of a blisteringly hot planet that is also one of the most "metal" worlds ever spotted. The planet's formation remains a mystery, one that could be solved by the discovery.
”The composition of the planet seems not to be compatible with current formation scenarios that we have for hot gas giants, and it is still a mystery to this day," said Ali Rafi. "This signifies the importance of observing the planet’s atmosphere as it could help reveal the planet's formation history through its atmospheric properties such as its metallicity and carbon to oxygen ratio."
Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new exoplanet. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-3261b, is nearly the size of Neptune and its equilibrium temperature exceeds 1,700 K. The finding was reported in a research paper published July 5 on the pre-print server arXiv.
TOI-3261 b has a radius of approximately 3.82 Earth radii, therefore it is only about 2% smaller than Neptune. However, the newfound exoplanet has an unusually high mass for its size—around 30.3 Earth masses. These results yield a high bulk density of 3.0 g/cm3.
TOI-3261 b orbits its host every 0.88 days at a distance of 0.017 AU from it. Due to this, it was classified as an ultra-short period planet (USP), and so far, it is only the fourth known Neptune-sized USP. Moreover, the planet's proximity to its parent star, which has an effective temperature of about 5,070 K, suggests that this extrasolar world is ultra-hot—with an estimated equilibrium temperature at a level of 1,722 K.
So no confirmation of life yet, but the work done by Greaves, Clements, and their team is extremely exciting and tells us just how complex Venus is as a planet. It is not just “Earth’s evil twin” but a changing world with volcanoes, bone-crushing atmospheres, hellish temperatures, and something truly bizarre going on in its clouds. There's much more to find out about this fascinating world, and luckily both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning to go back there soon.
But we will not have to wait that long for more Venus insights. The team is continuing observation campaigns across multiple telescopes, and not just in the range to see phosphine. Currently, there is a real push to understand Venus and its atmosphere better.
In terms of close encounters, the Rocket Lab Probe, part of the Morning Star Missions, is expected to launch in January 2025 and be the first private mission to another planet. It will enter Venus's atmosphere and hopefully detect some of these intriguing molecules. On top of that, the team hopes to convince ESA's JUICE mission to turn the spacecraft instruments on as it flies by Venus next year on its way to Jupiter.
Using the Keck II telescope, astronomers have detected an object that may be a brown dwarf or a low-mass star, exhibiting a very high radial velocity. The object, designated CWISE J124909.08+362116.0 is located some 400 light years away. The finding was reported July 11 on the pre-print server arXiv.
According to the study, CWISE J1249+3621 has a large radial velocity—at a level of -103 km/s. This gives the galactic rest frame speed of 456 km/s, which corresponds to 1,530 light years per one million years. Given that this result is just below the galactic escape velocity at the solar radius, which is currently estimated to be 521–580 km/s, the astronomers conclude that this object has a significant probability of being unbound to the Milky Way.
Based on the collected data, the authors of the paper assume that CWISE J1249+3621 is likely a hypervelocity metal-poor, early-type L subdwarf star rather than a brown dwarf. They underline that it may therefore be the first known low-mass hypervelocity star and the nearest such object to Earth.
For the first time, a team of scientists from HFML-FELIX at Radboud University has unveiled the cosmic fingerprints of sulfur rings. These results, published in Nature Communications, may shed new light on the way sulfur was transported from dark interstellar clouds (where stars are formed) to young planetary systems and planets like Earth and Venus, and offer ways to search for cosmic sulfur using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Using the free-electron laser at HFML-FELIX, the team has for the first time recorded the infrared spectral signature of the most stable all-sulfur molecule, octasulfur or S8, and of several smaller sulfur molecules. This opens up the possibility of searching for these molecules in interstellar dark clouds using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope.
Ferrari says, "However, preliminary estimates indicate that detecting S8 with JWST will still be challenging."
A new study by Rice University's David Alexander and Anthony Atkinson extends the definition of a habitable zone for planets to include their star's magnetic field. This factor, well studied in our solar system, can have significant implications for life on other planets, according to the research published in The Astrophysical Journal on July 9.
The study found that only two planets, K2-3 d and Kepler-186 f, of the 1,546 examined met all the conditions for potential habitability. These planets are Earth-sized, orbit at a distance conducive to the formation of liquid water, lie outside their star's Alfvén radius and have strong enough magnetic fields to protect them from stellar activity.
Nearly two decades later, little is still known about the sources of FRBs —- except that they appear by the thousands all over the sky, mostly at vast extragalactic distances. And they are likely produced by several different astrophysical phenomena. One of the more interesting ideas is that a significant fraction of these FRBs are the result of blitzars, the process by which a neutron star collapses into a black hole.
In a review paper just published in The Astrophysics and Space Science Journal, the authors suggest that a fast millisecond radio burst represents the final signal of a supra-massive rotating, neutron star that collapses into a black hole.
In a new study published July 24 in Nature, a 19-member team of scientists from around the world report the discovery of a new supergiant exoplanet orbiting the star Eps Ind A. The planet—named Eps Ind Ab—was observed with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and is at least six times the mass of Jupiter. With a temperature of around -280 degrees Kelvin, Eps Ind Ab is the coldest exoplanet ever to be imaged directly.
A new analysis of rocks thought to be at least 2.5 billion years old by researchers at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History helps clarify the chemical history of Earth's mantle—the geologic layer beneath the planet's crust.
The findings hone scientists' understanding of Earth's earliest geologic processes, and they provide new evidence in a decades-long scientific debate about the geologic history of Earth. Specifically, the results provide evidence that the oxidation state of the vast majority of Earth's mantle has remained stable through geologic time and has not undergone major transitions, contrary to what has been suggested previously by other researchers.
So, some astronomers want to widen the net. A working group advising NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which operates JWST, is calling for a broad 500-hour study of 15 to 20 small rocky planets around various red dwarfs, to settle once and for all whether such planets can host atmospheres. “If we find nothing, it will be a disappointment, but it would feel good to have a definitive answer,” says working group chair Seth Redfield of Wesleyan University.
Others are beginning to think the search for habitability needs to expand to include other kinds of planets. Must they be rocky and Earth-size? Perhaps larger super-Earths, which could be wrapped in global oceans, should also be considered. Or maybe an even larger body, a mini-Neptune, could hold a water ocean under a thick hydrogen atmosphere that lets in just enough life-giving light. “These are more speculative, and very different from the planetary body we do know has life,” says Charles Cockell, director of the Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh. “But any planet with the right conditions should be investigated.”