The findings could allow NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to determine the fraction of land and sea on alien worlds.
Despite their proximity to their star, these worlds can be in the habitable zone — the right distance where it can host liquid water on its surface — because red dwarfs are cool, with surface temperatures of about 6,300 degrees Fahrenheit , or 3,600 F cooler than theThese planets orbit their star in a matter of days, which makes them prone to becoming gravitationally locked with their star.
Consequently, the habitability of such a planet also depends on the planet's ability to redistribute heat from the dayside to the nightside so that conditions don't become too warm or too cold.With fellow astronomers at the University of Toronto, Macdonald modeled such a hypothetical world in two configurations: one with a circular continent at the substellar point on the dayside surrounded by ocean, and one with a circular ocean at the substellar point surrounded by land.
The models showed that the average global temperature on a tidally locked world depends more on the amount of land than on the location of the land. In the simulation, planets with a similar dayside fraction of land, whether in a central substellar continent or around a substellar ocean, saw average surface temperatures increase by up to 36 F .
Furthermore, the greater the amount of land, the hotter the dayside and the drier the planet's atmosphere. This is because the presence of more land means there is less surface water to evaporate into the atmosphere, which also results in less precipitation."So the land has a desert climate," Macdonald told Space.com.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
The Colors in the James Webb Space Telescope Photos Are FakeObjects in mirror may be more infrared than they appear.
Read more »
The James Webb Space Telescope is capturing the universe on a 68GB SSD | EngadgetWith the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) now powered up and snapping some spectacular images, you may wonder exactly how it's storing them..
Read more »
PolitiFact - The James Webb Space Telescope and the images it has taken are realA Facebook video uses the debunked flat-Earth theory to claim the James Webb Space Telescope and the images it took are fake.
Read more »
The First Images from the James Webb Telescope Are Breathtaking—and Significant“I am beyond cloud nine,” the astrophysicist Marcia Rieke said, of the first images from the James Webb telescope. “Now I feel like the young people who worked on this project—they have a bright future in astronomy.”
Read more »
Op-Ed: The Webb telescope photos are a welcome antidote to the grim facts of todayOp-Ed: The new photos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope allow us to experience wonder, which, like democracy, is in a pretty precarious place right now. (via latimesopinion)
Read more »