Exotic planets also have stratosphere like Earth

By the Hubble space telescope, scientists at NASA discovered the stratosphere - one of the main layers of the Earth's atmosphere, appearing on a giant, super-hot planetary planet called the WASP. -33b is located in the constellation Andromeda 378 light years away from us.

NASA found evidence that extraterrestrial also has stratosphere like Earth

Through this discovery, NASA hopes to have more clues about the structure of a planet and how it is formed.

The stratosphere on the outer planet WASP-33b contains molecules that can absorb ultraviolet (UV) and visible light, acting as a "sunscreen" layer for the planet. Until now, scientists are still unclear whether these molecules can be found in the atmosphere of large, super-hot planets in other star systems.

Avi Mandell - a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard space research center, the co-author of the study, said: "Some of the planets like WASP-33b have very high temperatures in gas layers. At the top and in essence, this temperature will be released into space At high temperatures, we do not expect to be able to find an atmosphere containing molecules that can create a multilayer structure. "

In the Earth's atmosphere, the stratosphere lies above the troposphere - an area with many turbulence, weather and clouds. In the troposphere, temperatures are warmer below and colder above . The stratosphere, in contrast, will rise with height - a phenomenon called heat island.

On Earth, the heat inversion caused by ozone in the stratosphere absorbs too much ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, short of these dangerous radiation reaching the surface, protecting the biosphere, thereby causing the stratosphere. warm up.

The same heat island also occurs in the stratosphere of many other planets in the solar system, such as Jupiter and Saturn. In these cases, the agent causing the heat island is a group of molecules called hydrocarbons instead of ozone. Even so, ozone or hydrocarbons cannot survive at extremely high temperatures on most known extrasolar planets, which are outside our solar system. This led to a debate as to whether the stratosphere existed on these exoplanets.

To end this long debate, scientists used Hubble glasses to determine the heat island in the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-33b . They found that the atmospheric molecule of WASP-33b triggers the heat island of titanium oxide.

According to Korey Haynes - the research leader, they found two very convincing signs for the hypothetical alien planet also having stratosphere . The team analyzed the probe image from Hubble's third wide-angle camera (WFC3). This camera can capture the spectrum of a near-infrared area where there are often signs of water. From this spectrum, the team was able to detect water and other gases in the atmosphere of a distant planet and determine the atmospheric temperature.

Haynes and his colleagues used spectroscopic images along with data from previous studies to measure water evaporation and compare with the evaporation of deeper gases in the atmosphere. The results showed on WASP-33b, the steam emitted in the stratosphere at the temperature of 6000 degrees F (3315.5 degrees C). The remaining evaporation originates from atmospheric gases at temperatures around 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (1648.8 degrees C).

The team also gave the first observational evidence to show that titanium oxide 's WASP-33b atmosphere - one of the compounds that can strongly absorb visible and ultraviolet light and can survive in the form of gaseous form in an extremely hot atmosphere .

According to research co-author Nikku Madhusudhan: "Understanding the link between stratosphere and chemical compounds is important for the study of extraterrestrial atmospheres. This discovery will mark a breakthrough in the direction of our research. "