Breaking Records, Scientists Find Exoplanets With The Most Extreme Wind Currents

Illustration of Tylos adjacent to the star (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA Scientists know that Tylos, an exoplanet 880 light-years away from Earth, is different from the rest of the planet. Tylos is very close to his sun and his atmosphere looks like a storm from outside.

This situation made scientists interested in the planet's weather as well as the weather. Therefore, astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) observed Tylos using four telescopes named the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Julia Victoria Seidel, ESO Astrophysicist, and colleagues reconstructed Tylos' atmosphere in three dimensions. After the reconstruction was carried out, the planet under the other name WASP-121b managed to break the record as the fastest wind planet.

This very fast airflow is referred to as a streaming jet. In a paper that Seidel published, it was explained that jet currents in Tylos blew iron clouds and titanium very quickly, even much faster than the exoplanet's rotation speed.

This happens because of the vertical circulation pattern that transports energy far below. This interesting phenomenon that exists in WASP-121b shows that there are still many things in outer space that humans do not yet know. According to Seidel, this phenomenon also feels like fiction.

"The planet's Atmosphere behaves in a way that challenges our understanding of how the weather works not only on Earth, but on all planets," Seidel said, quoted from Sciencealert on Tuesday, March 11. "It feels like something taken from science fiction."

Another interesting finding is the unusual Tylos climate. The planet is very close to its sun so that its rotation period is the same as its orbital period. That way, Tylos always receives hot heat on the side that always faces the star.

"The jet current rotates the material around the planet's equator, while the flow is separated in the lower atmospheric layers moving the gas from the hot side to the cooler side. The climate like this has never been seen before on any planet," explained Seidel.

The temperature gradient between the day and the night side is also very extreme, even able to reach supersonic speeds. Based on Seidel's observations and colleagues, the jet stream covered half the planet and made the atmosphere congested at high altitudes.

In the morning, the wind speed is 13.7 kilometers per second. Meanwhile, at night the speed is 26.8 kilometers per second. Therefore, the jet current in Tylos is the fastest in the universe so far. In the future, scientists will probably find a planet with another fastest jet current.