Categories: Extrasolar Planets

NASA Dreams Up Exotic Earth-Sized Planets

Science fiction writers have been imagining other worlds for years, and now they’re going to get a little scientific help, thanks to NASA. The agency recently modeled a range of roughly Earth-sized planets, from the familiar to the exotic. Instead of thinking just about planets with Earthlike characteristics, they imagined every possible kind of planet that might exist around other worlds. This should keep the writers busy.

We’re not talking about familiar looking planets, with strange surface features and aliens with pointed ears here, we’re talking about the very extremes of planetary formation: pure water ice, carbon, iron, silicate, carbon monoxide, and silicon carbide, and others which could be mixtures of these various compounds.

The team eventually came up with 14 different types of solid planets that might exist. “We have learned that extrasolar giant planets often differ tremendously from the worlds in our solar system, so we let our imaginations run wild and tried to cover all the bases with our models of smaller planets,” said NASA’s Marc Kuchner. “We can make educated guesses about where these different kinds of planets might be found. For example, carbon planets and carbon-monoxide planets might favor evolved stars such as white dwarfs and pulsars, or they might form in carbon-rich disks like the one around the star Beta Pictoris. But ultimately, we need observations to give us the answers.”

They calculated how gravity should compress planets of varying composition. For example, a pure water planet would be about the same size as the Earth, while an iron planet would be a third our size.

The researchers are hoping their calculations will help future planet hunters identify new discoveries. When powerful planet finders, such as ESA’s Corot mission start making discoveries, astronomers will be working hard to categorize what they’re looking at, based only on the mass and size. Even more powerful observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope will let astronomers actually measure the chemical constituents of a planet, and help reveal if we’re looking at a sphere of carbon or water ice.

Their paper will appear in the October 20th issue of the Astrophysical journal.

Original Source: NASA News Release

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay. Here's a link to my Mastodon account.

Recent Posts

Quantum Correlations Could Solve the Black Hole Information Paradox

The black hole information paradox has puzzled physicists for decades. New research shows how quantum…

5 hours ago

M87 Releases a Rare and Powerful Outburts of Gamma-ray Radiation

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration made history when it released the first-ever…

8 hours ago

Astronomers Find a Black Hole Tipped Over on its Side

Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole churning away at its core. In…

12 hours ago

NASA is Developing Solutions for Lunar Housekeeping’s Biggest Problem: Dust!

Through the Artemis Program, NASA will send the first astronauts to the Moon since the…

1 day ago

Where’s the Most Promising Place to Find Martian Life?

New research suggests that our best hopes for finding existing life on Mars isn’t on…

1 day ago

Can Entangled Particles Communicate Faster than Light?

Entanglement is perhaps one of the most confusing aspects of quantum mechanics. On its surface,…

2 days ago