Aug 16, 2018 05:42 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 16, 2018 05:51 AM by Yazata.)
Global warming? Global Warming?? I'll give you global warming!!!
It's an exoplanet called Kelt-9b, a superhot Jupiter about 3x Jupiter's mass and 2x its diameter, with a toasty surface temperature of about 7,800 degrees F. (Assuming that it even has a solid or liquid surface, which I doubt.) So in some ways it's more similar to a star than a planet, except too little to heat itself. The nearby star that it tightly orbits takes care of that.
(Where's Al Gore when we need him?)
One of the interesting things about it is that iron and titanium have been detected in its atmosphere. It's generally assumed that iron is common in planets pretty much everywhere, but at normal temperatures it's usually metallic or combined with other elements in solid compounds. On Kelt-9b iron is heated to a vapor that forms part of the planet's atmosphere and produces spectral lines that have been detected.
The Nature article says:
"With an equilibrium temperature of about 4,050 kelvin, the exoplanet KELT-9b (also known as HD 195689b) is an archetype of the class of ultrahot Jupiters that straddle the transition between stars and gas-giant exoplanets and are therefore useful for studying atmospheric chemistry. At these high temperatures, iron and several other transition metals are not sequestered in molecules or cloud particles and exist solely in their atomic forms. The high temperatures of KELT-9b imply that its atmosphere is a tightly constrained chemical system that is expected to be nearly in chemical equilibrium and cloud-free..."
Despite being cloud-free, I'd guess that with all that energy being pumped in, it's windy as all hell, with supersonic super-hot winds.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...000-C.html
Hopefully the paper is here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-0...mail.co.uk
Or try this
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0401-y.epdf
It's an exoplanet called Kelt-9b, a superhot Jupiter about 3x Jupiter's mass and 2x its diameter, with a toasty surface temperature of about 7,800 degrees F. (Assuming that it even has a solid or liquid surface, which I doubt.) So in some ways it's more similar to a star than a planet, except too little to heat itself. The nearby star that it tightly orbits takes care of that.
(Where's Al Gore when we need him?)
One of the interesting things about it is that iron and titanium have been detected in its atmosphere. It's generally assumed that iron is common in planets pretty much everywhere, but at normal temperatures it's usually metallic or combined with other elements in solid compounds. On Kelt-9b iron is heated to a vapor that forms part of the planet's atmosphere and produces spectral lines that have been detected.
The Nature article says:
"With an equilibrium temperature of about 4,050 kelvin, the exoplanet KELT-9b (also known as HD 195689b) is an archetype of the class of ultrahot Jupiters that straddle the transition between stars and gas-giant exoplanets and are therefore useful for studying atmospheric chemistry. At these high temperatures, iron and several other transition metals are not sequestered in molecules or cloud particles and exist solely in their atomic forms. The high temperatures of KELT-9b imply that its atmosphere is a tightly constrained chemical system that is expected to be nearly in chemical equilibrium and cloud-free..."
Despite being cloud-free, I'd guess that with all that energy being pumped in, it's windy as all hell, with supersonic super-hot winds.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...000-C.html
Hopefully the paper is here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-0...mail.co.uk
Or try this
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0401-y.epdf
