A planet similar to Earth in size has been discovered, but it has a problem
Astronomers have discovered a new member of a family of exoplanets that is about 400 million years old. Enter HD 63433 d , an Earth-sized exoplanet that is breaking all the rules in its orbital race around a solar-sized star, HD 63433.
Imagine this: a small object, almost a sunlit dot, gracefully passing over the broad face of its star. This attracted the attention of astronomers who, after a more thorough investigation, found themselves faced with a celestial surprise: a very hot, Earth-sized planet, HD 63433 d.
This new exoplanet is a cosmic oddity with a unique feature known as tidal locking: the effect of the star's attraction causes one face to always face the sun, thus producing an eternal day as opposed to an eternal night.
Celestial investigators, armed with NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) , were already familiar with this stellar neighborhood, knowing of two planets in the system. But curiosity got the better of them, pushing them into a more in-depth investigation to reveal any hidden surprises. Carefully sifting through TESS data and cleverly subtracting signals from known planets, they came across a small transit that repeated every 4.2 days. Voila! A third, smaller planet, HD 63433 d, has been revealed.
TESS
One hemisphere is lava-hot
HD 63433 d, despite the size of Earth, is a young planet in the cosmic sense, with an age of about 400 million years. To put that into perspective, our home planet is 4.5 billion years old. Furthermore, this celestial tot is eight times closer to its star than Mercury is to our Sun, meaning its sunlit side is at 1,257°C.
And here's where it gets interesting: Scientists suspect that the sunlit side of the planet may be a "lava hemisphere," similar to the scorching conditions found on other lava worlds like CoRoT-7 b and Kepler-10 b.
Despite its young age, HD 63433 d is not entirely out of reach of scientific exploration. In fact, it could provide crucial information on the formation and evolution of planets. Researchers are eager to delve into not only the scorching temperatures of the day, but also the mysterious “dark side” of this fiery world.
The discovery, which will soon be discussed at the 2024 American Astronomical Society Meeting, comes thanks to the TESS Hunt for Young and Maturing Exoplanets (THYME) project. Led by co-authors Benjamin Capistrant and Melinda Soares-Furtado, the study delves into the peculiarities of HD 63433 and its stellar neighborhood.
In a universe full of surprises, HD 63433 d stands out as an extraordinary celestial oddity, beckoning scientists to unlock its secrets and rewrite the cosmic narrative. This news was reported by
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The article A planet similar to Earth in size discovered, but it has a problem comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/scoperto-un-pianeta-simile-alla-terra-per-dimensioni-ma-ha-un-problema/ on Sun, 14 Jan 2024 07:00:14 +0000.