Earth-Sized Lava World is an Enigma

Kepler 78b is a Lava World that's tidally locked to it's parent star which is about 400 light-years away from Earth , temperatures on the planets day are side estimated at around 2,000C-2,800C ....Toasty .

The planet is about 1.2 times the size of Earth and orbits its star around a hundredth of the distance between the Earth and our Sun leading scientists to believe the planets day side is molten , although they are unsure whether that applies to the night side .

The enigma in this story is how did it get there ....

Dimitar Sasselov, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics...
"It couldn't have formed in place because you can't form a planet inside a star. It couldn't have formed further out and migrated inward, because it would have migrated all the way into the star. This planet is an enigma."
www.bbc.co.uk...

Could it have been an orphaned planet that was captured by the star or is that just too much of a long shot ?

reply to post by gortex


Very very cool......well...not so much in this case.

Interesting times we live in. We're learning so much yet still know so very little about the universe around us.

I don't want to grow old and die......there's still so much left to see.

Wouldn't the chances of that happening be....um....astronomically low?

reply to post by LightAssassin

Wouldn't the chances of that happening be....um....astronomically low?

Yes plus add the chance of us finding it and they're some big numbers , I'm no expert so am not sure if such a thing is even possible but maybe it could happen .
Perhaps Phage will happen along to deny my ignorance or confirm my Genius

I don't want to grow old and die......there's still so much left to see.

I think that's the joy of living now , so much cool stuff being discovered and a stream of new equipment being deployed , it's been a long wait but (hopefully) in 2018 The James Webb Space Telescope launches and that could open up a whole new realm of discoveries , as you say Interesting times we live in .

reply to post by gortex

From the link in the OP…

From theory, astronomers expect the planet to be tidally locked to its host star, which means that one side is permanently facing in, and the other side permanently facing away.

If true that is a toasty place. Unrelenting radiation blasts the surface raising the temperature to thousands of degrees. There would be no atmosphere, having been wiped away by the close proximity to the sun.

But the back side, if tidally locked, could be as cold as mercury in our system.

Mercury rotates real slow, it is not "locked" to the sun. On the back side the temperatures are still way below freezing. And on the side facing towards the sun they are boiling. As high as hundreds of degrees during the "daytime".

Link

ETA: What is that movie with Vin Diesel where he's on that planet running from the sunrise???

reply to post by intrptr


Thanks for the link mate I'm not really up on Mercury but yeah that is an extreme place , I remember some news a couple of years ago that they believed water ice was there too , if that's not two steps south of weird I don't know what is

reply to post by intrptr


Diesel does it at least twice, in Pitch Black, and the Chronicles of Riddick. I don't know if he does it in the 3rd movie though... lol

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If the planet couldn't have migrated from an outward formation, how did it not fall into the sun then as it must have come from outside the system, as another poster said above me? Or planets DO come from inside the sun and are spitted out at some point?...

NowanKenubi
reply to post by intrptr

 

Diesel does it at least twice, in Pitch Black, and the Chronicles of Riddick. I don't know if he does it in the 3rd movie though… lol

Thank you for your time. Now we get to see what living (or dying) on such a planet might be like…

If the planet couldn't have migrated from an outward formation, how did it not fall into the sun then as it must have come from outside the system, as another poster said above me? Or planets DO come from inside the sun and are spitted out at some point?…

Why not? Look at Saturn. Moons are forming in the rings. They call them Shepard Moons. Personally I think Jupiter's Great Red Spot might hold a moonetesimal forming in there. There is a satellite heading that way with a radar on it that can probe beneath Jupiter's cloud layers. I hope they point it at the spot.

Perhaps the star was struck by something very large and ejected the planet...

Astronomers have found a lot of "hot Jupiters", gas giants that are in very close orbits around their host stars. Perhaps this planet is the core of one of those 'hot Jupiters', having had it's atmosphere blasted off long ago.

Here's a site which gives some technical information on the planet and its star KIC 8435766 and has an animated Visualization of the planets orbit .
www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com...

reply to post by Charizard


Well, you would think if a Gas planet was orbiting that closely to its star that the gas would burn up instantly. Isn't Jupiter comprised of Helium, and Hydrogen? If so, imagine if Jupiter orbited our Sol that closely; It would most likely be just the core left..... Unless I'm completely off.

ETA: Just my best 2 cents.

Couldn't it be an errant planet from somewhere else that got picked up by a close pass?

Two systems passing by each other?

We have already had reports of starless planets roaming about as well, so maybe this was one of those? One in a million shot of getting grabbed and tidally locked.

reply to post by jeenyus2008

you would think if a Gas planet was orbiting that closely to its star that the gas would burn up instantly.

The planet isn't a Gas planet its believed to be much like Earth in that it's composed mostly of rock and iron

reply to post by gortex


I understand that it isn't, but how would we know if it wasn't in the past. Either way thank you for bringing this article to ATS. I saw it posted on msn.com and was hoping to see it discussed here. S & F.

reply to post by gortex

i don't know much about space and the planets, but could it be possible that the sun was once a planet
and that the smaller one was its moon .

at least it would explain their close relationship .

Anything is possible, but since none of the wiser member have replied to your post I will try to explain it.. Under the current theory, suns form through a process called accretion. during accretion clouds of dust, and hydrogen (and other gases) begin to compress into spheres due to collapsing gravitational force. Once it gathers enough gas, it begins a process called nuclear fusion. During this process the sun converts hydrogen into helium, releasing overstocked energy in the form of photons. If this theory is proven true, then your theory wouldn't work.

This may help you understand.

reply to post by tom.farnhill