A "missing link" in planetary evolution appears to have been resolved by the discovery of multiple exoplanets.
Four mini-Neptunes in close proximity to their stars were leaking their atmospheres at a rate that was consistent with total loss. It's the fault of their stars that they will eventually shrink into Earth-sized planets, according to this suggestion.
The pathway by which the mini-Neptunes lost their atmospheres wasn't known.
The newly identified shrinking worlds suggest that stripping by way of stellar irradiation is a leading mechanism.
There are many different kinds of exoplanets that have been identified to date that are very different from what we find in our own solar system. The mini-Neptune is the most common type of world detected by the mission, but it is not found in our own area.
These worlds are shrouded in a Neptune-like thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium and are more massive than Earth. These exoplanets seem to be larger than the Earth.
There are planets that are between 1 and 1.5 times the diameter of Earth. There is a gap between the number of exoplanets and the number of Earths. There is a gap between the planets.
The gap is believed to be caused by the fact that exoplanets have enough mass to retain a primordial atmosphere that inflates their size.
How did these exoplanets get lost?
The internal heat resulting from planetary formation is called core-powered mass loss, and the other is called photoevaporation.
To transform mini-Neptunes into super-Earths requires observing leaking exoplanets and figuring out the rate at which they are losing mass.
A new paper was written by a team of researchers led by astronomer Michael Zhang of the California Institute of Technology. They studied the atmospheres of four young, nearby mini-Neptunes to determine the rate at which these exoplanets are leaking helium into space.
The analysis of the TOI 560b mini-Neptunes was published earlier this year byZhang and his colleagues.
At 2.1 times the size of Earth, TOI 1420.01, at 2.3 times the size of Earth, and TOI 2076b, at 2.52 times the size of Earth are the new ones.
The team found that the four planets had significant helium outflows. The team found that the atmospheres of these exoplanets could be stripped out in a few hundred million years.
The team believes that most mini-Neptunes are likely to turn into super-Earths through photoevaporation.
According to the paper, many of the planets will lose their hydrogen-rich envelopes and become super-Earths.
The results show that most mini-Neptunes have primordial atmospheres and that photoevaporation is an efficient mechanism for stripping these atmospheres and transforming these planets into super- Earths.
The research can be found on arXiv.
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