In Earth’s upper atmosphere, a fast-moving band of air called the jet stream blows with winds of more than 442kph, but they are not the strongest in our solar system.
The comparable high-altitude winds on Neptune reach about 2,000kph.
However, those are a mere breeze compared with the jet stream on a planet called WASP-127b.
Photo: AFP / L. Calcada / European Southern Observatory
Astronomers have detected winds howling at about 33,000kph on the large gaseous planet in our Milky Way galaxy approximately 520 light-years from Earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun.
The supersonic jet-stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind on any known planet.
“There is an extremely fast circumplanetary jet wind found on the planet. The velocity of the winds is surprisingly high,” said astrophysicist Lisa Nortmann of the University of Gottingen in Germany, lead author of the study published on Tuesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
More than 5,800 planets beyond our solar system — called exoplanets — have been discovered. WASP-127b is a type called a “hot Jupiter,” a gas giant that orbits very close to its host star. WASP-127b’s diameter is about 30 percent larger than Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet, but its mass is only about 16 percent that of Jupiter, making it one of the least dense — puffiest — planets ever observed.
“WASP-127b is a gas giant planet, which means that it has no rocky or solid surface beneath its atmospheric layers. Instead, below the observed atmosphere lies gas that becomes denser and more pressurized the deeper one goes into the planet,” said astrophysicist and study coauthor David Cont of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.
It orbits its star every roughly four days at just about 5 percent of the distance between Earth and the sun, leaving it scorched by stellar radiation.
Like our moon is to Earth, one side of WASP-127b perpetually faces its star — the day side. The other side always faces away — the night side. Its atmosphere is about 1,127°C, with its polar regions less hot than the rest.
The fact that a hot Jupiter’s day side is highly irradiated is believed to be a major driver of atmospheric dynamics.
“Answering the question of what drives these intense winds is challenging, as several factors influence wind patterns in exoplanet atmospheres,” Cont said.
“The primary source of energy for these winds is the intense irradiation from the host star,” he added.
The researchers tracked the speed of molecules in the planet’s atmosphere using an instrument called CRIRES+ on the European Southern Observatory’s Chile-based Very Large Telescope. They made the observations using the “transit” method, observing changes in the host star’s brightness when the planet passes in front of it, from the perspective of a viewer on Earth.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees