(ORDO NEWS) — For the first time, humanity will be able to see the conditions of a “Super-Earth“, located 50 light-years away, in the coming weeks using the James Webb Space Telescope, and NASA is preparing to see something from the realm of nightmares.
The planet, named 55 Cancri e, orbits so close to “its sun-like star” that conditions on the surface can literally resemble a biblical hell: a dimension in a constant state of burning.
The data shows that 55 Cancri e is less than 2,414,000 kilometers from its star – that’s 1/25 the distance superhot Mercury is from our Sun, NASA says.
“Surface temperatures are well above the melting point of typical rock-forming minerals, so the planet’s dayside is thought to be covered in oceans of lava,” NASA said last week.
Imagine if the Earth were much, much closer to the Sun. So close that a whole year lasts only a few hours. So close that gravity has locked one hemisphere in constant scorching daylight and the other in endless darkness. So close that the oceans boil away, the rocks begin to melt, and the clouds pour lava.
Nothing like this exists in our solar system, NASA says.
Scientists hope to find out whether the planet is “a closed tidal planet, always with one side facing the star,” or whether it rotates in such a way that day and night exist on it.
Early observations from NASA’s less powerful Spitzer Space Telescope show that something mysterious is going on at 55 Cancri e because the hottest spot is not the part directly facing the star.
One theory is that the planet has a “dynamic atmosphere that moves heat around,” NASA says.
Another idea is that 55 Cancri e rotates, creating day and night, but also creating a monstrous reality in which the surface heats up, melts and even evaporates during the day, creating a very thin atmosphere that Webb can detect.
In the evening, the steam cools and condenses to form lava drops that rain back to the surface and become solid again at nightfall.
The first observations are expected in the summer, the telescope is able to detect the presence of the atmosphere, scientists say.
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