Scientists discover exoplanets with supersonic winds – the fastest in the known universe

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An illustration of a blurry planet that looks like it has extremely high wind speeds. — This artistic visualization of WASP-127b, a giant gas planet located about 520 light-years from Earth, shows its newly discovered supersonic jet winds moving around the planet’s equator. | Photo credit: ESO/L. Calcada

Astronomers have found winds on a distant planet blowing at a phenomenal speed of 5.6 miles per second (9 kilometers per second), or 20,500 miles per hour (33,000 kilometers per hour) – the fastest winds ever recorded on a planet became.

The distant world, shouted a gas giant WASP-127b The star, discovered in 2016, orbits a star 520 light-years from Earth. It orbits its parent star in just four days, following a slightly oblique orbit. The exoplanet is probably as tidally locked to its star as the Moon is to Earth – but perhaps its greatest eccentric feature is that it is slightly larger than Jupiter but only 16% as massive, which makes it one of the most puffy planets known to astronomers. Its highly inflated nature allows keen astronomers to peer through the upper layers of its atmosphere.

A team led by Lisa Northman from the University of Göttingen used a spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe WASP-127b passing in front of its star and blocking some of its light. By analyzing the filtered light, which contained distinct dips or “fingerprints” of different molecules that absorbed light at different wavelengths, the researchers identified the presence of carbon monoxide and water vapor in the planet’s upper atmosphere.

Upon further examination of these spectra, the researchers said they were puzzled when they noticed two different wavelength peaks for these molecules, suggesting that some of these molecules were moving away from Earth while others were moving toward Earth moved away at the same speed.

“I was a little confused,” Nortmann said New scientist. “But with a little more careful data analysis, it became clearer that there are two signals. I was pretty excited – my first thought was that it must be some kind of super rotating wind.”

Further analysis of the collected spectra revealed that the motion was greatest at the planet’s equator, leading the team to conclude that the observations could be explained by supersonic winds confined to the planet’s equator.

“This signal shows us that there is a very fast supersonic jet wind around the planet’s equator,” Nortmann said in one opinion. “This is something we’ve never seen before.”

Although the reasons for the stunning weather are not fully understood, researchers interpret these winds to be six times faster than the speed at which the planet itself rotates. For comparison, Neptune holds the record for the fastest winds in our solar system; The winds on WASP-127b are a staggering 18 times stronger.