It sounds rather hellish: a planet where clouds of pebbles rain down into lakes of molten lava. That’s what scientists think the atmosphere is like on a newly discovered exoplanet called COROT-7b, and it definitely makes even our worst storms here on Earth seem like a piece of cake.
COROT-7b was spotted last February by the COROT space telescope launched by French and European space agencies.
From Washington University News:
The peculiar atmosphere has its own singular weather. “As you go higher the atmosphere gets cooler and eventually you get saturated with different types of ‘rock’ the way you get saturated with water in the atmosphere of Earth,” explains Fegley. “But instead of a water cloud forming and then raining water droplets, you get a ‘rock cloud’ forming and it starts raining out little pebbles of different types of rock.”
Even more strangely, the kind of rock condensing out of the cloud depends on the altitude. The atmosphere works the same way as fractionating columns, the tall knobby columns that make petrochemical plants recognizable from afar. In a fractionating column, crude oil is boiled and its components condense out on a series of trays, with the heaviest one (with the highest boiling point) sulking at the bottom, and the lightest (and most volatile) rising to the top.
COROT-7b has an average density about the same as Earth’s, but it’s certainly nowhere near as hospitable. It’s 23 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our Sun and its star-facing side is hot enough to vaporize rocks.
You don’t even have to be a stoner to have have a “Whoooaaaa, duuuuude!” reaction to stuff like this. It’s sort of mind-blowing to ponder such things from the comfort of our own beautiful planet.
Link [Washington University News]
Photo credit: ESO/L Calcada
