Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Scientists Find New Clues About the Interiors of ‘Super-Earth’ Exoplanets

Scientists Find New Clues About the Interiors of ‘Super-Earth’ Exoplanets:

Artist's conception of "Super-Earth" exoplanet Kepler-22b, which is about 2.4 times larger than Earth. Credit: NASA

As we learned in science class in school, the Earth has a molten interior (the outer core) deep beneath its mantle and crust. The temperatures and pressures are increasingly extreme, the farther down you go. The liquid magmas can “melt” into different types, a process referred to as pressure-induced liquid-liquid phase separation. Graphite can turn into diamond under similar extreme pressures. Now, new research is showing that a similar process could take place inside “Super-Earth” exoplanets, rocky worlds larger than Earth, where a molten magnesium silicate interior would likely be transformed into a denser state as well.

(...)
Read the rest of Scientists Find New Clues About the Interiors of ‘Super-Earth’ Exoplanets (217 words)



No comments:

Post a Comment