The James Webb Space Telescope has examined the temperature of a rocky exoplanet that is slightly larger than Earth and has about the same density as our planet.
That world is called TRAPPIST-1b, it is the closest to its star of the seven known planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, located about 40 light years away.
The star is an Ultracool red dwarf or M dwarf it is smaller and cooler than our sun, what is remarkable about this system is the similarity in size and mass to the inner rocky planets of our own solar system, although all those worlds orbit much more closer to its star than any of our planets.
All of the TRAPPIST-1 planets could fit comfortably within Mercury's orbit, although being a much smaller and cooler star than our sun, the energy received by those worlds is much less.
The planet studied by James Webb is only one million 650,000 kilometers away from its star, so that we have an idea of how close it is, remember that Mercury is almost 58 million kilometers from the Sun.
The year in TRAPPIST-1b lasts only one and a half terrestrial days, this proximity means that the planet always has a face facing the star where it is always day, the same thing that happens to our beloved moon, which always shows us the same face.
The analysis of James Webb shows that the temperature on the daytime side of that planet is more than 226.85 degrees Celsius and it is ruled out that it has an atmosphere. The data was obtained by analyzing the light that reaches us from trapis 1b in the lower case and it is the first arrest of any form of light emitted by an exoplanet, as small and cold as the rocky planets of our own solar system.
This finding is good news and bad news, the bad news is that active small stars, that is, they undergo violent outbursts like solar flares but much more powerful, which is precisely something that happens with this star, this type of star it is possible that they end up destroying the atmospheres of their planets or at least the atmospheres of the planets closest to them.
Atmospheres are necessary to maintain liquid water on the surface of a world and thus to sustain life.
The good news is that the James Webb finding shows that the space telescope has the ability to detect atmospheres and features of small, temperate worlds, worlds similar to Earth.
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