While the quest for exoplanets aims to find Earth-like worlds, it increasingly uncovers the extraordinary diversity of planets beyond the Solar System. A recent study reveals that lava worlds significantly impact the characteristics of hot rocky Super-Earths, including their size and developmental trajectory.
Hot Rocky Super-Earths Are Inhospitable to Life
These lava worlds are found to be nearly 50% of known rocky exoplanets, completing orbits around their stars in under 10 Earth-days due to their proximity, resulting in scorching temperatures conducive to liquid magma.
Despite their intriguing nature, these hot rocky super-Earths have been relatively overlooked by planetary scientists, primarily because they are inhospitable to life.
The recent study, titled "Fizzy Super-Earths: Impacts of Magma Composition on the Bulk Density and Structure of Lava Worlds"
published in The Astrophysical Journal, seeks to change this by delving into the impact of molten oceans on these planets' size and evolutionary paths.
Kiersten Boley, the study's lead author and a graduate student at The Ohio State University, noted the uniqueness and interest surrounding lava worlds is the reason they are often favored in exoplanet research. Telescopes primarily identify these exoplanets through their transits across their host stars, a phenomenon more common among planets in close orbits.
Notably, the Solar System lacks a lava world, with the closest analog being Io, one of Jupiter's largest moons. Io, slightly larger than Earth's moon, experiences constant gravitational tugging from Jupiter, leading to the eruption of lava from its ever-changing surface, a phenomenon revealed in new images from NASA's Juno spacecraft.
Lava Worlds Turning Into Earth-Like Exoplanets
The study examining Super-Earths, specifically ultra-short period (USP) planets orbiting closely to their stars and maintain scorching surface temperatures, simulated three classes of magma oceans each with distinct mantle structures, revealing that the planet's composition is more critical in understanding their potential habitability even though mantle magma ocean planets are less common.
Lava worlds with ample carbon and oxygen in their magma could release these vital components into their atmospheres, which is crucial for life as we know it.
Water is essential for life, and some simulated planets possessed substantial water reserves. A basal magma planet four times more massive than Earth could trap over 130 times Earth's oceans' worth of water and 1,000 times more carbon than Earth's crust and mantle combined.
The study also explored the relationship between magma oceans and planet density, concluding that density measurements might not be the most informative way to understand lava worlds when compared to solid exoplanets.
The research expands current understanding of lava worlds, shedding light on their potential habitability and the complexity of their evolution. While most known magma ocean planets are USPs close to their stars, future advancements in planet-finding techniques might lead to the discovery of more diverse magma planets, possibly even within habitable zones.
The vast number of these planets in the Milky Way raises the possibility of finding an Earth analogue among the lava worlds, albeit at a different stage of development.
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