Astronomers find a planet with metallic rain

Space exploration has expanded what we understand to be fantastic about existing celestial bodies.

Orbiting a star in a distant solar system, astronomers have discovered a planet that is not only reflective but also showered with liquid metal.

LTT9779b, the planet with metallic rain

It revised reality and confirmed a lot of what we could have expected or thought was just science fiction. Imagine an entire planet covered in liquid metal. a LTT9779b It is practically an anomaly, according to the scientists themselves, but it exists.

This exoplanet is considered the most reflective outside our solar system, according to astronomers from European Space Agency ESA, who were responsible for the discovery. It is 270 light-years from the planet and has already been observed before thanks to the Cheios telescope, which is operated by ESA researchers.

LTT9779b is a mirrored exoplanet, capable of reflecting about 80% of the light that falls on it, thanks to its system’s parent star. It can be compared to Venus in this respect. Due to its proximity to the star, its journey around it takes only 18 hours, and it is an environment in which life cannot coexist with high temperatures, which can exceed 200 degrees Celsius.

This exoplanet, which was seen for the first time in 2020, has raised many questions for researchers and some of these questions have only recently been answered. Due to the high temperatures, there should be no clouds on the planet, but they do exist and are responsible for liquid metal rain. These clouds are composed of silicates and titanium, which prompted scientists to “They realized they must think of cloud formation in the same way as the condensation that forms in a bathroom after a hot showersaid the researcher Cote d’Azur Observatory From France, Vivian Parmentier, who is also a co-author of the study. “Like steam from hot water in a bath, a scalding stream supersaturates LTT9779b’s atmosphere until metallic clouds form.“.

And as I said above, the researchers themselves find the existence of an exoplanet under these conditions unique. Its location is known as the “Neptune Desert,” a place that should not support an exoplanet with a mass five times that of Earth. In general, with such a short orbit, we see only gaseous or rocky planets, 10 times more massive than our planet or half of our planet, respectively.

“It’s a planet that shouldn’t exist. We expect planets like this to have their atmospheres ripped away by their star, leaving behind bare rock.Parmentier said. But because of its reflective nature, caused by mineral rains, its atmosphere ends up preventing the planet from suffering from these conditions.

Further studies will be conducted to investigate the unique conditions that support the existence of LTT9979b.

via: digital look source: ESA