Extreme Exoplanet Volcanism Possibly Detected On 55 Cancri E

astroengine writes with this excerpt from Discovery.com: Using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have revealed wild atmospheric changes on a well studied exoplanet — changes that they suspect are driven by extreme volcanic activity. Over a period of two years, the team, led by University of Cambridge researchers, noted a three-fold change in temperature on the surface of 55 Cancri e. The super-Earth planet orbits a sun-like star 40 light-years away in the constellation of Cancer. It is twice the size of Earth and 8-times our planet's mass. 55 Cancri e is well-known to exoplanet hunters as the "diamond planet" — a world thought to be carbon-rich, possibly covered in hydrocarbons. But this new finding, published in the arXiv pre-print service, has added a new dimension to the planet's weird nature. "This is the first time we've seen such drastic changes in light emitted from an exoplanet, which is particularly remarkable for a super-Earth," said co-author Nikku Madhusudhan, of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, in a press release. "No signature of thermal emissions or surface activity has ever been detected for any other super-Earth to date."

Comments

Fascinating

[SpaceCommander]

-Spock But seriously, this stuff is just amazing.

Re:Fascinating

[gstoddart]

Yeah, it's literally stuff which was theoretical science (if not science fiction) 25 years ago.

Some days I look back at Pong and think "holy shit we've come a long way".

Detecting possible volcanoes on a planet 40 light years away? That boggles my mind.

Yay science!!

Re:Fascinating

[jellomizer]

I am going to nitpick... Because Science coverage has been abused by the word Theory.

These are not Theories, but Hypothesis, once you are able to test these idea, then you get the Theory out of it.

Global Warming is a Theory. There have been mountains of test to show its validity.
Health Problems with GMO is a Hypothesis, it is a guess that needs further investigation.

Re:Fascinating

[gstoddart]

Maybe. Maybe not. I'll be a wet blanket here and say that until we have the opportunity to test some of the conclusions that are coming out of the theories and scant data behind these announcements, we won't really know if we are getting it right. I think its cool that we are generating testable hypotheses, but we don't yet have a way to test them, do we?

Honestly, I'll take that you could have an actual question if we're interpreting the imaging of the exoplanet correctly as proof of my point.

At this point, I don't care if it's volcanoes, or if the planet is hatching to become a space alligator.

We're comparing data from observations spanning several years of an exoplanet which is 40 light years away ... you can wet blanket all you like, it's still freakin' cool.

I'm not qualified to defend the science. I'm here to defend the awesome. :-P

I'm not saying it was aliens, but...

[GameboyRMH]

It was aliens having a global thermonuclear war.