A planet close to us with a day that lasts forever and an eternal night illuminated by the eruption of volcanoes

We know very little about exoplanets. Despite the thousands of people confirmed by astronomers, little is known about whether they have atmospheres, water or anything else that can make them habitable.

Sometimes we only know how big they are and how far they orbit from their host star.

Therefore, the claim that a planet has been found around a star that has volcanoes that illuminate the night sky is very large. So far, researchers have found no evidence of global tectonic activity on planets outside our solar system.

Innovative work, published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, refers to an exoplanet called LHS 3844b, which orbits a red dwarf star — the most common type of star in the Milky Way — about 49 light-years away in the constellation Indus.

What we know about this volcanic planet

Here’s everything you need to know about LHS 3844b:

• It is a “super-Earth”, but only: the radius is 1.3 times larger than our planet and has 2.25 times the mass.
• A year at LHS 3844b lasts only 11 hours; it is the speed it takes to orbit its star.
• Day and night at LHS 3844b last forever. This is because LHS 3844b is closed to its star, showing it one side, just as the Moon does on Earth.
• It is a bare, rocky basalt planet that makes it dark, roughly the same as Mercury and darkness. mares to the moon.
• It is unlikely to have an atmosphere, so it is uninhabitable and in any case has 770 ºC to 1,410 ºF during the day and -250 ° C at night.
• Its host star is a red dwarf star that makes up about one-fifth of our Sun.
• Its discovery was announced in September 2018 using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

What is so strange about LHS 3844b

Its surface may be covered mostly with dark lava rock, according to observations made in 2019 by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. He also discovered that very little heat travels from the stellar zone of the planet to its nocturnal night. This indicates a lack of wind and time and therefore no atmosphere.

Scientists at the University of Bern and the National Research Competence Center NCCR PlanetS in Switzerland have now discovered that LHS 3844b material flows from one hemisphere to another. It could be responsible for numerous volcanic eruptions on one side of the planet.

How tectonic activity works in LHS 3844b

“Observing signs of tectonic activity is very difficult, as they are usually hidden under an atmosphere,” Tobias Meier told the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern. “We thought its strong temperature contrast could affect the flow of material inside the planet.”

To test this theory, the team performed computer simulations with different material strengths and internal heating sources, such as heat from the planet’s core and the decay of radioactive elements.

“Based on what we are used to from Earth, the material for the hot day was expected to be lighter and therefore flow upwards, and vice versa,” co-author Dan Bower told the University of Bern and the NCCR PlanetS. However, some simulations showed the opposite flow direction. “This initially counterintuitive result is due to the change in viscosity with temperature: the cold material is stiffer and therefore does not want to bend, break or subduct inside,” Bower said. “The warm material is less viscous, so even solid rock becomes more mobile when heated and can easily flow into the interior of the planet.”

It seems clear that LHS 3844b works very differently on Earth, where plate tectonics carries material from the planet’s interior to the surface and atmosphere, and then transports it back under the Earth’s crust. , in doing so, makes the Earth habitable.

Volcanoes illuminate the night at LHS 3844b

The strange flow of material inside the LHS 3844b has strange consequences. “On either side of the planet the material is flowing upwards, a lot of volcanism would be expected on that particular side,” Bower said. “Similar Deep Earth Outcrop Flows Boost Volcanic Activity in Hawaii and Iceland”

The conclusion is that LHS 3844b is likely to have a saline-salted hemisphere and one with almost no head.

What comes after LHS 3844b

These conclusions are drawn from computer simulations, so more detailed observations of LHS 3844b are needed, such as a surface temperature resolution map that may reveal the degassing of volcanoes.

How long would it take to get to LHS 3844b

Not good news here / Although 49 light-years firmly place it in our cosmic garden, LHS 3844b is too far to get there.

If you were traveling at the speed of light, it would take 49 years. Go down a notch to humanity’s fastest-moving spacecraft, New Horizons, which travels at about 33,000 mph / 53,100, and it would take 987,026 years to reach LHS 3844b.

I wish you clear skies and wide eyes.