Scientists have discovered a ‘Pi Earth’ – and no, it doesn’t come in different fruity flavours.
The name comes from the fact this new Earth-sized planet orbits a star every 3.14 days, in correlation with the mathematical constant pi, whose value is 3.14159265359 and so on.
To successfully orbit the star in such a quick time, the planet, labelled K2-315b, travels around 181,000 miles per hour (81 kilometres per second).
K2-315b isn’t perfectly Earth sized though; according to researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the newly discovered planet has a radius 0.95 that of Earth’s, so it’s very nearly the same size.
MIT researchers found signals of the planet using data from the 2017 NASA Kepler Space Telescope’s K2 mission. They then ‘zeroed in’ on the signals earlier this year using SPECULOOS, a network of ground-based telescopes.
By using SPECULOOS, the researchers were able to confirm the signals were that of a planet orbiting its star and was doing so in just 3.14 days. SPECULOOS is an acronym for The Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars.
It orbits a cool, low-mass star that is about one-fifth the size of the sun and has been described as moving ‘like clockwork’.
But, before you start thinking Richard Branson will be organising trips to the super speedy planet any time soon, researchers believe that K2-315b wouldn’t be able to be inhabited by humans. This is because, due to the pi planet orbiting the star so quickly, it will be in very close proximity to the star, making the planet itself extremely hot.
According to Phys.org, researchers predict the planet could be around 350°F – funnily enough, the same temperature actual pies are cooked at.
Lead authour Prajwal Niraula, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), said: ‘This would be too hot to be habitable in the common understanding of the phrase.’
Following the discovery of the planet, MIT researchers now hope to use the pi planet as a way of studying the characteristics of its atmosphere.
Co-author of the study Julien de Wit said, ‘We now know we can mine and extract planets from archival data, and hopefully there will be no planets left behind, especially these really important ones that have a high impact.’
Niraula added:
There will be more interesting planets in the future, just in time for JWST [James Webb Space Telescope], a telescope designed to probe the atmosphere of these alien worlds. With better algorithms, hopefully one day, we can look for smaller planets, even as small as Mars.
Watch this space (pun intended).
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Source link : https://www.unilad.co.uk/science/scientists-discover-pi-earth-planet-orbiting-star-every-3-14-days
