TASS , reported on October 13. For the first time, European and Chilean astronomers have detected barium vapor in the atmospheres of two exoplanets, WASP-76b and WASP-121b. The discovery makes barium the heaviest element in the air crust of all studied worlds outside the solar system.
"This discovery was largely accidental. We didn't expect to see barium in the exoplanet's upper atmosphere, so we had to double-check the results to make sure the signal was indeed coming from WASP-76b and WASP-121b Now we need to figure out where these heavy elements in the atmosphere of these worlds come from," said Thomas Silva, a researcher at the University of Porto (Portugal). Most of the exoplanets discovered so far by
belong to the so-called hot Jupiter . Therefore, scientists call them gas giants, and their distances from the sun are very short, several times smaller than the distance between the sun and Mercury. For this reason, the atmospheres of these planets are often heated to 1000-1300 Kelvin (727-1027 degrees Celsius) or higher.
Due to high temperatures and other unusual conditions, the atmospheres of these planets are often composed of very exotic materials. In the past five years, for example, astronomers have discovered worlds whose skies are decorated with clouds of lead and glass and whose air is made of evaporated metal and rock. In the upper atmospheres of these planets, there are sometimes rains of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, , and other gems. An unexpected discovery by
astronomers.
Silva and his colleagues found that the atmospheres of some "hot Jupiters" contain not only iron, carbon, and a few other light elements, but also heavy enough matter, including barium atoms. Scientists made the discovery while studying the spectra of exoplanets WASP-76b and WASP-121b, whose atmospheres are heated to 2,500 degrees Celsius on the side illuminated by the star.
Such extreme weather conditions resulted in frequent iron rains on WASP-76b and WASP-121b, as well as other extreme weather events. European and Chilean astronomers have attempted to study these phenomena with the ESPRESSO spectrometer installed on the VLT telescope at the Cerro-Paranal Observatory in Chile.
In these observations, scientists found that the upper atmosphere of the "hot Jupiter" contains not only the iron, lithium, magnesium, chromium and vanadium that have been found, but also barium vapor as well as cobalt and strontium. All of these elements are heavier than iron, and they melt and vaporize at high enough temperatures, 1600-3200. The presence of heavy barium atoms in the atmospheres of
WASP-76b and WASP-121b was a huge surprise to scientists because planetary scientists have not yet been able to explain how the vapors of this metal could appear in the upper atmosphere of "hot Jupiters". Silva and his colleagues believe this suggests that the exoplanets they are studying are more exotic than planetologists used to think. This makes them more interesting to study.
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