Last updated: 16.01.2024, 09:05 a.m.
By: Nico Reiter
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Researchers find a new exoplanet: one side made of lava, the other ice-cold. But there is another feature that makes it the perfect object of research.
Florida – HD 63433d isn't the name of the newest flat-screen TV, it's about a recently discovered exoplanet. The team led by Benjamin Capistrant from the University of Florida was looking for transit signals from young exoplanets. Two exoplanets were already known to exist in the vicinity of the young star HD 63433. Now they are coming across another, as the team reports in their new study in the Astronomical Journal.
Exoplanet HD 63433d – half lava, half ice-cold?
"HD 400d is thus the smallest known exoplanet with a clearly determined age of less than 63433 million years – and it is the closest Earth-sized young planet to us," the team said. In addition, it is located just 500 light-years from Earth.
The planet is very close to its sun, which has a great influence on the celestial body. The planet orbits its associated star in just 4.2 days. This makes HD 63433d only about one-eighth as far from its Sun as Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun in our solar system. In addition, it is in a bound rotation, which means that the same side of the planet is always facing the sun.
Half of the planet is said to be made of lava (symbolic image) © StockTrek Images/Imago
The scientists therefore suspect that the planet is climatically divided into two parts. "Planets of this size are almost always composed predominantly of rock and almost never have a dense atmosphere," the study said. Its position ensures that the sun-facing side of the planet has melted into a sea of lava. The other side, on the other hand, could be ice-cold, the team says.
Planet perfectly suited for further observations
But another characteristic is crucial, the study describes. Due to its young age, the planet could be helpful for research. "One of the important questions in exoplanet research today is when planets lose their dense, primordial gas envelopes of hydrogen and helium and when they retain them," the team said.
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The cause of the loss of the gas envelope is thought to be photoevaporation (the removal of a planet's atmosphere or its components by the action of high-energy photons) or loss of mass. So if the young planet has already lost its entire gas envelope, this indicates photoevaporation, "but if the mass loss lasts longer, the planet would still have to have a gas envelope."
The star offers perfect conditions for further observation with the James Webb Space Telescope. Another near-Earth exoplanet may offer glimpses of the future. Water is presumed to be there.