Extreme exoplanet climate surprises Swiss researchers

Extreme climate conditions on exoplanet surprise researchers Keystone-SDA

Wind speeds of up to 70,000 kilometres per hour and clouds of vaporised metal: extreme climate conditions on the exoplanet Wasp-121b have called existing models into question.

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Astronomers pointed the four telescopes of the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Wasp-121b to find out more about the gas planet, which is around 900 light years away from Earth. The results were published in Nature on Tuesday.

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Scientists determined the wind speeds on the exoplanet by tracking the movement of vapours of iron, sodium and hydrogen at different heights in the atmosphere.

Like in a science fiction movie

The result, a three-dimensional map of atmospheric currents, turns theoretical predictions on their head, wrote the University of Geneva in a press release on the study. “It feels like we’re in a science fiction movie,” said study leader Julia Victoria Seidel, a former doctoral student at the university.

It was not only the wind speeds of up to 70,000kmph that surprised the researchers. The distribution of the currents also deviated considerably from previous theoretical predictions. Heavy iron vapors rise with strong updrafts from the extremely hot day side of the planet and are transported towards the cooler night side.

This updraft is overlaid by a jet stream that circulates the air from the middle layers around the planet’s equator. “Theoretical models had predicted exactly the opposite, namely the reversal of the position of these two layers,” explained Seidel.

According to the University of Geneva, extreme climatic conditions on the exoplanet push the models used to simulate the climate on planets to their limits.

Translated from French by DeepL/mga

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