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KOMPAS.com- GJ 1132 b is one exoplanet or planet extrasolar at galaksi bima sakti the most attractive to astronomers.
Exoplanet this was first discovered five years ago and was once predicted as one of the most important planets outside Solar system.
Reporting from Science Alert, Friday (12/3/2021), it seems that this exoplanet has lost its atmosphere, and has since grown atmosphere new.
Planetary scientists say this is the first time they have identified an exoplanet that has significantly altered its atmosphere with volcanic activity.
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This phenomenon in the exoplanet GJ 1132 b in the Milky Way galaxy not only allows scientists to study the magmatic composition of an exoplanet by studying its atmosphere.
But it also raises the possibility that more exoplanets of this kind could store an atmosphere that could possibly be investigated further.
“It’s exciting because we believe the atmosphere we see now has regenerated, so that it could become a secondary atmosphere,” said astronomer Raissa Estrela of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). NASA in Pasadena, California, United States of America.
“We first thought that these high radiation planets could be very boring because we believed they were losing their atmosphere. But we looked at the observations that were on this planet with Hubble and (it turned out), ‘Oh no, there is an atmosphere there’,” added Estrela. .
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This study paper has been accepted The Astronomical Journal, with preprinted publications available in online journals arXiv.
So far, exoplanet GJ 1132 b has been a puzzle for scientists.
Its findings, announced in 2015, describe this exoplanet as a rocky world, weighing 1.66 times the mass of Earth and measuring 1.16 times the size of Earth.
Astronomers think that studying the exoplanet atmospheres of the Milky Way galaxy, which is 41 light years away, will be able to help us better understand the rocky planets in our Solar System, such as Earth, Venus and Mars.
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GJ 1132 b is thought to have originated as a very different type of exoplanet from Earth, Mars, and Venus.
Astronomers then used the MPG / ESO telescope in Chile to observe the exoplanet as it passed between Earth and its star.
From the telescope’s observations, GJ 1132 b does have an atmosphere, and appears to be rich in hydrogen, which is consistent with the mini-Neptune scenario.
Now, a closer look at the exoplanet with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has reversed that idea.
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The Hubble telescope data actually shows that GJ 1132 b is not the simple hydrogen atmosphere.
Instead, it is a complex mixture of hydrogen, hydrogen cyanide, methane, and ammonia, with a thick hydrocarbon mist similar to Earth’s smog.
The team’s analysis data reveals that the atmospheric pressure on the exoplanet’s surface is similar to that of the Earth’s atmosphere. Since this atmosphere is still leaking out into space, it feels quite astonishing.
The team next turned to computer modeling to find out what was going on. It seems the most likely explanation is that GJ 1132 b’s original atmosphere of hydrogen was absorbed into a sea of liquid magma that covered the exoplanet when it was very young.
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Astronomers believe that the exoplanet started out as a mini Neptune, smaller than the planet Neptune but bigger than Earth.
This discovery could explain why there are so many mini-Neptune out there, like this exoplanet GJ 1132 b.
“Some may have started out as sub-Neptune, and they became terrestrial via a mechanism that vaporized photographs of the ancient atmosphere. This process worked early in planetary life, when stars were warmer,” said JPL astronomer Mark Swain, lead author of the study.
However, scientists emphasize that further studies are still needed to better understand the second atmosphere of this unique exoplanet discovery in the Milky Way galaxy.
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