Wednesday, November 6

TOI-1075b: how is the planet where the years last half a day

TOI-1075b was discovered thanks to NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
TOI-1075b was discovered thanks to NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

Photo: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

Julian Castillo

The search for planets that are capable of harboring life in their interior is one of NASA’s main research branches.. To do this, they are in charge of mapping all the planets that are within the reach of their space satellites, regardless of whether or not they have ideal conditions for life to exist on their surface.

it was like that NASA discovered TOI-1075b an exoplanet that has somewhat peculiar qualities, even by space agency standards. One of these peculiarities is the fact that each year on that planet lasts only half a day.

This is due to its proximity to the star it orbits, since It only takes 14.5 hours for this planet to go around once..

TOI-1075b is located approximately 200 light years from our planet, so NASA has a lot of information about this exoplanet that was discovered with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). This includes the fact that its surface is completely covered by magma, the temperature of which can reach 1,050 degrees Celsius.

As if this were not enough its size is almost 10 times greater than that of Earth, this implies that if it were to be visited by a human being, its weight would automatically triple. This is due to the difference in the mass of the planet, which generates a greater force of attraction, that is, gravity.

How was TOI-1075b detected?

One of the methods used by NASA to scan the sky in search of new planets is TESS, which is a mechanism that works from detections of changes in the brightness of light coming from space.

In practice, this means that if a telescope is focused on a star and its light dims periodically, this may be a sign that it is orbited by a planet, prompting NASA to carry out more of probes to detect if it is indeed a planet, or an exoplanet as it is in this case.

From the space agency they explain that the discovery of TOI-1075b, which was made in November 2022, is of the utmost importance. in order to improve the analysis models in which they have been working. With them they hope in the near future to be able to explain how these types of planets are formed.

Once this is done they can predict more accurately what kind of atmospheres these planets haveconsidered as super-Earths.

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