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JWST Strips Trappist 1c Bare

If there's one system that has caught the imagination of Earthly exo-planet hunters, it's the Trappist 1 system, offering a wide array of rocky planets, and more than one that lie within the so-called goldilocks zone.

Recent observations by JWST of Trappist 1c has begun to give us some answers.

It was already known that many of these planets were likely tidally locked to the star, making life an interesting but not impossible proposition, but we knew nothing about the potential atmospheres they may have.

Trappist-1c is similar to Venus in terms of solar input, and it was suggested that maybe the planet could be similar, with a thick CO2 atmosphere. The planet isn't in the Goldilocks zone, so it wasn't expected to be Earth like, but observations from JWST cast doubt on if there is any atmosphere at all.

Readings show the planet (sun side) to be just over 100'c, while Venus is 475'c because of the CO2 atmosphere, leading scientists to believe Trappist 1c is without atmosphere, or at best, a very thin one, less dense than even the Martian atmosphere.

This isn't entirely surprising, red dwarf stars are known for their violent storms and atmosphere stripping winds, and it could be the closer planets were never able to hold onto it, but equally, it could be that that there wasn't enough CO2 or O2 or N gas around when the system first formed, and that would have implications for the other rocky planets, regardless of what zone they fall.

What's amazing about this study is we finally have the ability to detect atmosphere's which are more familiar to us in our own system, something impossible before JWST.

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The White Dwarf Pulsar

Until recently, all pulsars were neutron stars, city sized objects as dense as the Sun (and sometimes more) spinning rapidly and blasting out radiation from it's poles. Here on Earth we see it as regular beats as the beam sweeps past us, rather like watching a distant lighthouse at night.

When first discovered they were given the abbreviation of LGM (Little Green Men) because the assumption was, nothing in nature could be so regular, but that later proved to be incorrect.

Pulsars/Neutron stars are the stellar remnants of super large stars that collapsed and went supernova, but for most smaller stars like our own Sun, when they collapse they form a white dwarf.

These stellar remnants are the crushed up remains of the star, the hydrogen/helium and fusable gasses are ejected into planetary nebula, while the carbon and oxygen is crushed down into a dense Earth sized star, still holding the mass of near our Sun.

These white dwarf's start of life incredibly hot, but over time cool, in theory eventually they will become black dwarf's and end their lives as blocks of carbon/oxygen with a monster sized gravitational field, but not enough time has existed within the Universe for any to yet be there (at least, theoretically).

Talking of theory, it was thought possible that white dwarf's could also exhibit pulsar like behaviour, and that is now proven to be correct.

J1912-4410  is a white dwarf that is a binary pair with a red dwarf star, and exhibits a pulse every 5 minutes, as the white dwarf spins 300 times faster than our Earth. It is only the second such white dwarf pulsar every found, and astronomers suspect that it's partnership with the red dwarf is responsible for keeping it span up so fast.

As I mentioned previously, White Dwarf's haven't had enough time in the universe to have cooled totally down, meaning some can be incredibly old and cool. Red Dwarf's are also incredibly long lived, and it turns out this pulsar is also old, at just 12,000'c it's likely been in a binary pair with this red dwarf for billions of years, and the close relationship has kept the white dwarf with material that has kept it span up.

But why don't we see more white dwarf pulsars ? put simply, it's the exchange of matter and the magnetic fields of the system that are causing it, meaning only a close long lived pair such as this may potentially cause this phenomena to occur.

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