One of planetary science's strangest mysteries could be shed new light on thanks to a newly found exoplanet.
The object named TOI 1075b is one of the largest examples of a super-Earth exoplanet we've found to date. The small-planet radius gap is a deficit of planets between 1.5 and 2 Earth radii.
Smaller rocky super- Earths have been found. Smaller worlds have been bulked up with mini-Neptunes. It is a desert in between.
It isn't all puffed up. The mass of TOI 1075b is more than that of Earth. The exoplanet is likely to be rocky like Mercury, Earth, Mars, and Venus. It's ideal for probing theories of planetary formation and evolution.
When we had a large enough catalog of exoplanets, we were able to see a pattern. Few worlds have been found that are close to the stars.
The most likely explanation is that a small exoplanet doesn't have the mass to retain an atmosphere against the star's light. The model says that the atmosphere of exoplanets in the gap should be mostly hydrogen and helium.
You must enter TOI 1075b. The data from TESS was used by NASA to find exoplanets. TESS is a survey that looks for faint, regular dips in the light of other stars that suggest the stars are being watched by an exoplanet. The radius of the exoplanet can be determined by how much of the star's light is being turned off.
According to the TESS data, the orange dwarf star TOI 1075 was being circled by an exoplanet around 1.72 times the diameter of Earth. Zahra Essack is an astronomer at MIT who is studying hot super- Earths. The world at that location fit the criteria for agap world.
To understand the nature of this exoplanet, it was necessary to weigh it. The effect an exoplanet has on a star is called gravitational. The planet exerts a small tug on the star, but most of the gravity is supplied by the star. Astronomers can see tiny changes in the star's light due to the fact that it wobbles on the spot.
Changes to the star's mass can be used to determine the mass of the planet. Essack and her colleagues were able to calculate the exoplanet's mass to 9.95 Earth masses, because TOI 1075 has a mass and radius about 60 percent of our own Sun. The size was measured with a precision of 1.791 Earth radius.
You can calculate its average density if you know how heavy it is. Which one is TOI 1075b? It turned out to be a really bad chonk. It has a density of less than 10 grams per square inch. It is a contender for the densest super-Earth because of its density of nearly double Earth's.
A hydrogen-helium atmosphere should be present on an exoplanet. The density of TOI 1075b is not consistent with a large atmosphere. It's very curious. What the exoplanet could have could be even more interesting.
The researchers write in their paper that they don't think the planet has retained a H/He envelope.
Since TOI 1075 b's equilibrium temperature is hot enough to melt a rocky surface, there is either no atmosphere or a metal/silicate Vapor atmosphere.
That is correct, you read that. The surface of TOI 1075b is so hot that it could be an ocean of molten rock.
The bad news is that we don't know. As we've only recently seen, JWST is very good at looking into the atmospheres of exoplanets. If you point it at TOI 1075b, you can see if it has a thin atmosphere, a silicate atmosphere, or no atmosphere at all.
The research can be found on arXiv.
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