According to Space, that unique feature is volcanoes. On Earth, volcanoes, a part of geological activity, and the entirety of what is called geologic activity are crucial for maintaining a stable atmosphere on a planet.
The same applies to LP 791-18. It is an extreme planet tidally locked to its parent star. However, with distinctive signs indicating the existence of volcanoes, miracles can happen. The aforementioned planet orbits a red dwarf star approximately 90 light-years away from Earth, in the southern constellation Pavo.
Tidal locking means that it always faces its parent star with only one side, much like how the Moon is tidally locked to Earth. As a result, it has two faces, one in daylight and one in darkness. Both faces are covered by countless volcanoes.
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Mysterious exoplanet LP 791-18 – (Image: NASA).
Led by astronomer Professor Bjorn Benneke from the Institute for Research on Exoplanets in Montreal, Canada, and Dr. Jessie Christiansen from NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute, the research team that discovered the volcanoes on LP 791-18 is focusing on the nighttime side.
“The daytime side is likely too hot to sustain liquid water on the surface. But with the amount of volcanic activity that we think is going on all over the planet, it could allow water to condense on the nighttime side as well as maintain an atmosphere,” said Dr. Benneke.
LP 791-18 is the third planet identified in this unique star system. The other two planets are larger than Earth by about 20% and 2.5 times, respectively. All three were discovered by NASA’s “planet hunter” TESS.
Certainly, it will be studied further, as the correlation between volcanoes and life remains a significant and intriguing question in astrobiology.
“In addition to the potential for providing an atmosphere, these processes can churn up materials that would otherwise sink and get trapped in the mantle, including things we think are important for life like carbon,” said Dr. Christiansen. The research was recently published in the scientific journal Nature.