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Scientists have discovered three super-lands outside our solar system. One of them could be rich in rubies and sapphires.
The exoplanet HD219134B is so close to its parent star that on the celestial body, only one year lasts three days. The planet has a mass nearly five times larger than our planet and so is called a super-earth. The object is 21 light-years away from us and is in the constellation Cassiopeia.
Unlike our Earth, the exot does not have a solid iron core, but it is probably made up of calcium and aluminum. This composition makes the planet consists mainly of rubies and sapphires. "Maybe the planet is flickering with red and blue," says astrophysicist and principal investigator Caroline Dorn
According to her, the discovery is "special" because the planets "are completely different from most planets that look like our Earth ". She therefore speaks in her search for a "new exotic class of superardts", which form at very high temperatures and close to the parent star.
Too hot for the deep oceans
The other two exoplanets, 55 Cancri e and WASP-47 e, revolve around their star, making it approximately 3000 degrees Celsius on the surface. A possible atmosphere has evaporated for a long time. If the calculations are correct and the planets barely contain iron, the objects can not have a magnetic field, such as the Earth.
On HD219134b, it is less hot and the situation is "more complicated," says Dorn. The density of the planet is 10 to 20% less than that of our planet.
Initially, a lower density, according to the researcher, could indicate the presence of deep oceans on the planet, but it's too hot for that. We still do not know if the oceans of magma are at the origin of the lower density
The exoplanet is not mainly composed of diamonds
Exoplanet 55 Cancri ea does the big ones titles in 2012 because according to scientists, it would largely act of diamonds. Dorn's research now invalidates this theory because the planet contains too little carbon for it. "We are transforming the supposed diamond planet into a sapphire planet," said the researcher.
Dorn led a team of scientists from the Universities of Zurich and Cambridge. They compared their observations with existing scientific models on planet formation. The results are published in the British scientific document MNRAS .
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