Astronomers have reported that there is probably no tantalizing atmosphere on the planet TRAPPIST-1 c, just as they reported months ago for its neighbour TRAPPIST-1 b
There is still a chance that some of the five other planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system might have thick atmospheres containing geologically and biologically interesting compounds such as carbon dioxide, methane or oxygen. But the two planets studied so far seem to be without, or almost without, an atmosphere.
Because planets of this type are common around many stars, “that would definitely reduce the amount of planets which might be habitable”, says Sebastian Zieba, an exoplanet researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. He and his colleagues describe the finding inAll of the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets, which orbit a star some 12 parsecs from Earth, have rocky surfaces and are roughly the size of Earth.
The system’s innermost planet, TRAPPIST-1 b, is blasted with four times the amount of radiation that Earth gets from the Sun, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when JWST found that it had no substantial atmosphere. But the next in line, TRAPPIST-1 c, orbits farther from its star, and it seemed possible that the cooler planet might have managed to hang on to more of an atmosphere.
Zieba’s team pointed JWST at the TRAPPIST-1 system four times during October and November, allowing the scientists to calculate that TRAPPIST-1 c’s surface temperature, on the side that faces its star, registers at around 107 °C — too hot to maintain a thick atmosphere that is rich in carbon dioxide.
In other words, what scientists find on planets b and c might not say much about what the atmospheres of the outer planets could look like. “I think it makes sense to remain agnostic on the prospects for the outer planets retaining atmospheres,” Krissansen-Totton says.
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