Supersonic winds are blowing through this exoplanet at record speeds

The farthest planet from the Sun, Neptune, is the windiest place in the solar system, with winds blowing at speeds of more than 0.3 miles per second (0.5 kilometers per second). This is a relatively gentle wind speed compared to a giant, bloated planet located about 500 light-years from Earth.

Supersonic winds on this exoplanet, called WASP-127b, travel at an astonishing 5.5 miles per second (9 kilometers per second). The speed of sound on Earth is about 0.21 miles per second (0.34 km/s), making these winds supersonic by our terrestrial standards. A recently discovered extraterrestrial jet stream is the fastest ever measured on a planet, providing new insight into extreme weather hitting other worlds.

Using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, a team of astronomers measured the extremely strong winds blowing over the equator of planet WASP-127b. At speeds of up to 20,500 mph (33,000 km/h), jet winds move at nearly six times the speed at which the planet rotates, according to a recent report. He studies Published today in the magazine Astronomy and astrophysics.

An animated image of the exoplanet reveals a strange scene as winds whip WASP-127b’s equator with extreme ferocity. “Part of the atmosphere of this planet is moving towards us at high speed, while another part is moving away from us at the same speed,” said Lisa Nortmann, a scientist at the University of Göttingen in Germany and lead author of the study. He said in a statement. “This signal shows us that there are very fast, supersonic jet winds around the planet’s equator.”

Astronomers discovered the exoplanet in 2016, a gas giant slightly larger than Jupiter with a fraction of its mass, making it somewhat bloated. WASP-127B It takes just over four days to orbit its star, a yellow dwarf, or G-type star, which is typically less massive and cooler than our Sun.

Since its discovery, scientists have been exploring the planet to learn more about its weather patterns. The team behind the new study used VLT to track the planet’s formation by measuring how the light of its host star travels through its upper atmosphere. The results revealed the presence of water vapor and carbon monoxide particles in the planet’s atmosphere. But the speed at which this material moved through the atmosphere revealed a rather strange “double peak,” according to the study, meaning one side of the atmosphere is moving toward us and the other away from us at high speeds.

Based on their measurements, the researchers concluded that extremely strong winds dominated the planet’s equator, appearing to compress the gas giant while parts of its atmosphere moved in opposite directions. “This is something we’ve never seen before,” Northman said.

As the study also revealed, the planet’s poles are cooler than the rest of its poles, and experience slightly different temperatures on its sides in the morning and evening. “This shows that the planet has complex climate patterns just like Earth and other planets in our system,” Fei Yan, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Scientists are learning more about planets orbiting stars other than our own, and are carefully analyzing the atmospheres of other worlds as a way to piece together our origin story. “Understanding the dynamics of these exoplanets helps us explore mechanisms such as heat redistribution and chemical processes, improving our understanding of planetary formation and perhaps shedding light on the origins of our solar system,” David Kuhnt of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, one of the paper’s authors, said in a statement.

With more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered so far, we still have a lot to learn.