Enaiposha, also known as GJ 1214 b, is an exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf Orkaria, located just 48 light-years from the Solar System. It was discovered in 2009 and was one of the first exoplanets to have both its mass and radius measured. It is bigger than Earth but a lot smaller than Neptune, so it has been referred to as either a super-Earth or a mini-Neptune, as their differences are more subtle than just size. New research suggests that maybe a different category altogether is needed, as this world could be defined as a “super-Venus”.
ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE
Enaiposha is one of the few exoplanets with a proper name, given in 2022 by a team in Kenya after the Maa word for large bodies of water because it was considered a likely water world. The exoplanet has been observed by JWST, with the telescope using its keen eye to study Enaiposha’s atmosphere. That data is now out, and paints a very different picture.
The observations did not show a major presence of hydrogen, as would be expected if the planet had an atmosphere more similar to the gas giants. It also did not show the presence of water. The observations suggested the presence of hazes and an atmosphere rich in heavy elements, with a strong signal indicating carbon dioxide.
Venus is Earth’s size, but it has a dramatically different atmosphere: It’s a lot thicker and mostly (96.5 percent) carbon dioxide. So the team suggests that this exoplanet might be like a scaled-up version of Venus.
Two papers showed these intriguing signals, but the team stresses that there are currently many uncertainties to confirming that this is indeed a super-Venus. While being so close to the Sun has helped study this planet, Enaiposha’s atmosphere has been a challenge to fully characterize.
“It’s equivalent to Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. If I gave you two copies and changed one sentence in one of the books, could you find that sentence?” lead author of one study Everett Schlawin, from the University of Arizona and the Steward Observatory, said in a statement.
“The detected CO2 signal from the first study is tiny, and so it required careful statistical analysis to ensure that it is real,” explained the lead author of the other study Kazumasa Ohno, from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. “At the same time, we needed the physical and chemical insights to extract the true nature of GJ 1214 b’s atmosphere from Schlawin’s study.”
ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE
Follow-up observations might confirm if Enaiposha is indeed a super-Venus, a brand-new animal in our celestial exoplanet menagerie.
The papers are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, here and here.
Source Link: Welcome Super-Venus? New Class Of Planets Has Been Proposed
