The JWST has found an exoplanet unlike any other. This unique world has an atmosphere almost entirely composed of water vapour. Astronomers have theorized about these types of planets, but this is the first observational confirmation. The unique planet is GJ 9827 d. It’s about twice as large as Earth and three times as massive, and it orbits a K-type star about 100 light years away. The Kepler Space Telescope first discovered it during its K2 extension. In 2023, astronomers studied it with the Hubble Space Telescope. They detected hints of water vapour and described it as an ocean world. “This is the first time we’re ever seeing something like this.”Eshan Raul, University of Wisconsin – Madison However, the JWST results show that the atmosphere is almost completely comprised of water vapour. The results are in new research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters titled “JWST/NIRISS Reveals the Water-rich “Steam World” Atmosphere of GJ 9827 d.” The lead author is Caroline Piaulet-Ghorayeb from the University of Montréal’s Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets. Astronomers have wondered if steam planets can exist. Some thought that life could exist on them in the cooler, higher layers of their atmospheres. Others think it’s extremely unlikely. But there was no evidence to go on until now. “This is the first time we’re ever seeing something like this,” said Eshan Raul, who analyzed the JWST data of GJ 9827 d as an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan. “To be clear, this planet isn’t hospitable to at least the types of life that we’re familiar with on Earth. The planet appears to be made mostly of hot water vapor, making it something we’re calling a ‘steam world.'” However, every exoplanet teaches us something. GJ 9827 d and its unique atmosphere will help scientists understand exoplanets better in general. “If these are real, it really makes you wonder what else could be out there.”Eshan Raul, University of Wisconsin – Madison The researchers used transmission spectroscopy to detect the exoplanet’s atmosphere. As the planet passes in front of its star, the atmosphere absorbs certain wavelengths of light in the starlight’s spectrum. Different chemicals absorb different wavelengths and reveal their presence. The observations show that GJ 9827 d’s atmosphere is more than 31% water vapour by volume and has very high metal enrichment. The observations also show that no hydrogen or helium is escaping. The exoplanet’s atmosphere may be strange, but in other ways, the planet itself is common. It’s a sub-Neptune, a planet larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. Sub-Neptunes are the most common type of exoplanet we’ve found in the Milky Way. This discovery is about more than sub-Neptunes and steam worlds. It’s about one of the key challenges in exoplanet atmospheres: the clouds-metallicity degeneracy. When astronomers use transmission spectroscopy to examine and characterize an exoplanet’s atmosphere, high metallicity and clouds can produce the same signal. High metallicity can produce smaller spectral features, and clouds can also mute and flatten spectral features. Clouds can also mask the presence of molecular absorbers below the cloud deck. As a result, when scientists see a relatively flat spectrum or muted features, they struggle to determine if they’re seeing a metal-rich atmosphere with intrinsically small features or a low-metallicity atmosphere that’s partially obscured by clouds. This research has broken the stalemate between clouds and metallicity. Piaulet-Ghorayeb and her co-authors combined previous Hubble Space Telescope observations of GJ 9827 d with JWST observations. The JWST used its NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) and SOSS (Single Object Slitless Spectroscopy) to analyze the exoplanet’s atmosphere during two transits. This provided enough wavelength coverage and precision to break the clouds-metallicity degeneracy. This is the first conclusive observation of a high-metallicity and water-rich atmosphere. “This is a crucial proving step towards detecting atmospheres on habitable exoplanets in the years to come.”Ryan MacDonald, Astrophysicist, University of Wisconsin This figure from the research shows GJ 9827 d’s two transits observed by the JWST. The broad wavelength coverage and the precision broke the clouds-metallicity degeneracy. Image Credit: Piaulet-Ghorayeb et al. 2024. Almost all the exoplanet atmospheres that have been characterized are mostly made of the lighter elements hydrogen and helium. These atmospheres are similar to Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System. They’re nothing like Earth and its life-friendly atmosphere. “GJ 9827 d is the first planet where we detect an atmosphere rich in heavy molecules like the terrestrial planets of the solar system,” Piaulet-Ghorayeb said. “This is a huge step.” Though GJ 9827 d isn’t habitable as far as our understanding of life goes, other exoplanets with similar metallicity are desirable targets in the search for life. Now that astronomers have broken the clouds-metallicity degeneracy, it changes our understanding of those planets and scientists’ ability to discern them. It’s all thanks to the JWST and its observing prowess. Ryan MacDonald is a co-author of the new research and is a U-M astrophysicist and NASA Sagan Fellow. “Even with JWST’s early observations in 2022, researchers were discovering new insights into the atmospheres of distant gas giants,” MacDonald said, referring to the JWST’s spectroscopic characterizations of exoplanet atmospheres. But those atmospheres were primarily composed of light gases, not heavier metals. These observations take us deeper into the atmospheres of sub-Neptunes. And though they’re the most common type of exoplanet in our galaxy, our Solar System is without one. “Now we’re finally pushing down into what these mysterious worlds with sizes between Earth and Neptune, for which we don’t have an example in our own solar system, are actually made of,” MacDonald said. “This is a crucial proving step towards detecting atmospheres on habitable exoplanets in the years to come.” The atmospheric steam didn’t jump out of the JWST observations. JWST produces an enormous amount of data, and to make sense of it, astronomers use modelling tools based on sampling algorithms and machine learning techniques. They typically employ several different models and work with all of the results to arrive at the most likely interpretation of the data. The process of determining an atmosphere from data is called atmospheric retrieval. A 2023 paper presented a catalogue of 50 different atmospheric retrieval codes used by exoplanet scientists. The lead author of that paper is none other than Ryan MacDonald, a co-author of this new research. MacDonald wrote the software that analyzed and retrieved GJ 9827 d’s atmosphere, and co-author Raul used that software. Raul generated millions of model atmospheres that matched the JWST observations before settling on the steam world model. In a sense, Raul was the first person to see proof that steam worlds exist. “It was a very surreal moment,” said Raul, who is now working toward his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We were searching specifically for water worlds because it was hypothesized that they could exist.” “If these are real, it really makes you wonder what else could be out there.” The post Webb Reveals a Steam World Planet Orbiting a Red Dwarf appeared first on Universe Today.

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Detroit anchor Kimberly Gill asked Kamala Harris this week for her message on the economy. “Let’s start with this,” the vice president explained, “I come from the middle class, and I’ll never forget where I come from.” Leave aside whether the daughter of two PhDs told a truth here. The greater lie came in the canned dodge of an answer. The observant electorate has seen this movie before. Interviewer asks a question about inflation. Harris delivers a non sequitur answer that invokes her childhood, her mother buying a house, the grass on her lawn, and other lines presumably aimed to distract. Harris answered the very first question in her very first interview as the Democratic nominee about what she would do on her very first day in office by saying, “There are a number of things.” Like what? “Strengthen the middle class” blah, blah, blah, “aspirations,” blah, blah, blah, “ambitions,” blah, blah, blah, “goals,” blah, blah, blah, “a new way forward” blah, blah, blah, “generations of Americans have been fueled by hope and by optimism” blah, blah, blah, “people are ready to turn the page.” When CNN’s Dana Bash followed up for specifics, Harris talked about “implementing my plan,” which she, like Bill Belichick with a game plan, dared not reveal in detail to the viewers. It’s not just what she does not say. It’s how she says it. Her rich cacophony of accents must spark a little envy even in Rich Little. “Hello to all of my Divine Nine brothas and sistas,” Harris said at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner last month, “and my soror. And to all my HBCU brothas and sistas.” Wha? The fraud extends to the written word. Harris and her coauthor of the book Smart on Crime passed off long, verbatim passages from as diverse of sources as an NBC News report, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release, and an inaccurate Wikipedia passage as their own. When her teleprompter famously Bidened, Kamala Harris pulled back the curtain on Kamala Harris. America saw the emptiness. Her use of the phrase “32 days” 32 times, or what seemed like it, indicated an inability to think on her feet. She talks in talking point, a language unknown to Donald Trump. When the scriptwriters cannot save her, the ostensibly independent press does. 60 Minutes still refuses to release the unedited video or transcript of its interview with Harris after replacing her actual, befuddling answer to a question about Israel with an answer to another question that nevertheless made more sense in this context. “We have some predetermined questions and hopefully I might be able to ask some of the questions that might be in your head,” Maria Shriver informed an audience member hoping to pose a query to Harris at a fake town hall forum in Michigan. After skipping the political process for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris skipped, for 39 days, the media process. Once slipping polls compelled the campaign to place her in unscripted situations, she stumbled, badly. The juxtaposition with Donald Trump, a man with no internal governor who often talks as though suffering from an undiagnosed case of Tourette’s, exemplifies her phoniness. The Republican nominee’s critics incessantly highlight, in some cases quite accurately, Trump’s penchant for rodomontade (e.g., claiming his inauguration attracted a larger audience than Barack Obama’s). In fixating on this flaw, they overlook the Parson Weems, I-cannot-tell-a-lie part of his character. He shows no capacity to say what he thinks is on your mind and a compulsion to say what is on his mind. That’s the Donald Trump to which his detractors put on the earmuffs and his supporters turn to 11. When you regard half of the electorate as “garbage,” or “deplorables,” or supporters of “fascists,” then one must put on an act while campaigning. If you know the public rejects the positions you hold, then you must pull a con to win elections. For all his faults, Trump cannot be anyone but Trump. Harris, as her imposter-syndrome giggling expresses, does not really know herself — or she knows herself enough to hide herself from the electorate. People, even on Halloween, prefer the person incapable of wearing a mask over the one afraid to take it off. Presidential elections come down not to political positions but personal popularity. People like Donald Trump better than Kamala Harris. The former’s authenticity and the latter’s inauthenticity explains this. Maybe the electorate likes Donald Trump’s policies better. That does not stand as the reason he heads into Tuesday as the favorite. READ MORE: Netflix Films to Skip and Stream This Halloween Trump’s ‘Garbage’ Supporters The post Voters Prefer Warts-and-All Trump to Photoshopped Harris appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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