Astronomers have discovered that a world less than 900 light-years away in space is being violently buffeted by a giant cyclone.
The findings rely on previous Hubble Space Telescope observations showing that brutal storms are repeatedly created and destroyed in huge temperature swings between the side of an exoplanet facing its host star and its dark side.
WASP-121b, sometimes called Tylos, the ancient Greek name for Bahrain, hugs its star so tightly that its upper atmosphere reaches temperatures of 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit—twice the temperature of a typical crematorium. (We checked.)
To help visualize this hellish scene, a team of scientists supported by NASA and the European Space Agency created a video, shown below, showing the exoplanet’s weather changes. If you think these fluctuations look bad, consider this: The entire process has been slowed down so that people can see the weather patterns in greater detail.
Webb telescope discovers unusual world with terrifying clouds
Image credit: NASA / ESA / Quentin Changeat (ESA / STScI) / Mahdi Zamani (ESA / Hubble)
Needless to say, Tyros is not one of the exoplanets scientists consider a possible backup plan for Earth. But as experts learn how to study the weather on exoplanets, this research could help them find worlds with milder climates in the future.
To make this discovery, the international team collected and reprocessed Haber archives from 2016, 2018 and 2019. The researchers used the data to infer the atmosphere’s chemical composition, temperature and cloud cover at different times, said study co-author Quentin Changeat.This paper is accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Supplement. The team then used computer simulations to simulate dramatic weather changes.
Mix and match speed of light
“This gives us a beautiful picture of how the Earth is changing over time,” he said in a statement.
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The number of confirmed exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than the sun) has increased to 5,566, with more than 10,000 candidates under review.
The growing numbers only scratch the surface of the planets thought to exist in the universe. There are billions of galaxies in the universe, probably filled with trillions of stars. If most stars had one or more planets around them, that would be an unfathomable world.
Tylos is a type of exoplanet known as an ultrahot Jupiter, which is more massive than the actual Jupiter and orbits very close to its star. The giant exoplanet orbits its star in less than 1.5 Earth days.
It’s a strange place, getting stranger with every study. In 2022, scientists suspected that the dark side of the world was cold enough to host clouds of metal, producing a rain of liquid gemstones.
According to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, a “flood” of ultraviolet light from the host star is heating the planet’s upper atmosphere, causing magnesium and iron to evaporate and be emitted as gas into space.
The gravitational pull from the star is so strong that they appear to crush the planet into the shape of a football.
