New discover on the exoplanet front
The most unbridled exoticism is definitely the rule in the kingdom of exoplanets. A final proof of this is provided by the study of the atmospheres of WASP-76b and WASP-121b, two worlds belonging to the category of “ultra-hot Jupiters”. They are therefore – like the Jovian planet – gas giants, but orbiting so close to their star that they go around it in just two days and their surface temperature exceeds 1,000°C. Heat such that, for example, on WASP-76b, it literally rains liquid iron!
Atomic number 56
These characteristics are already, in themselves, quite “extreme”, but the composition of their atmosphere, studied by the Espresso spectrograph installed on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory, revealed a major surprise, detailed in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics”.
Astronomers have indeed discovered, in the upper layers of the atmospheres of these two exoplanets, barium. Never had such a heavy element (in the periodic table of elements, barium has atomic number 56) been detected in an exo-atmosphere. But above all, scientists have no idea of the mechanism allowing such a heavy element to remain at altitude: how is it that it does not fall back to the ground, for example in the form of rain like iron (yet much lighter than him)? One more mystery to add to exoplanetology…
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