The super - Earth 55 Cancri e , at first coup d’oeil , does n’t look anything like our planet . It ’s twice as great and orbits extremely stuffy to its star , with intense lava flows on the surface .
But in a surprising finding , scientists say that this foreign Earth actually has an atmosphere that ’s very similar to ours . The enquiry was publish inThe Astronomical Journal .
" If there is lava on this satellite , it would call for to cover the entire surface , " read Renyu Hu from NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena , California , a Colorado - author on the work , in astatement . " But the lava would be hidden from our eyeshot by the thick aura . "
The planet , located 40 light - year from us , orbit its star at a length of just 0.016 AU ( galactic units , 1 AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun ) .
At this distance , its year endure just 18 hour , and the planet is passing hot and not habitable for life as we recognize it . It is tidally locked to its virtuoso , which imply one side always face up the maven . The hot side averages 2,300 ° 100 ( 4,200 ° F ) , but the dusty side is n’t much better at up to 1,400 ° vitamin C ( 2,600 ° F ) .
Using NASA ’s Spitzer Space Telescope in 2016 , research worker find that lava in lake on the day side would run to the night side , where they harden .
However , taking a looking at the planet again , they found that despite these strange characteristics , the planet is likely to have an atmosphere with similar ingredients to ours , but much thick . It ’s thought to contain N , pee , and even oxygen .
They came to this conclusion by looking at the visible radiation reflected by the satellite . The changes in brightness seen , according to the researchers , is well explain by ground - like atmospheric ingredients .
The major planet even has a alike compactness to Earth too , so it might be rocky as well – some even suggested the satellite was made of baseball diamond , although that theory has beenquashed somewhat .
This new enquiry , though , opens up a lot of questions . Why is the atmosphere similar to ours , and why has n’t the satellite ’s proximity to its star caused its ambiance to be muck up aside ?
Understanding this may tell us more about rocky planet in the universe . One thing ’s for sure though , no matter how weird a satellite looks , you may find some astonishingly Earth - like features .
