Life, as we know, may require lightning, because it is one of the few energy sources that a planet is available to create complex chemical compounds. Now, new research has found that lightning, although it is very uncommon, can happen on closed external planets like our closest neighbor, Proxima B. But the strange nature of lightning on the closed closed planets constitutes some challenges to its ability to host life.
The typical lightning nail can reach temperatures of up to 30,000 Kilvin (more than 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit). This is more powerful enough to destroy common air gases and reassemble them in new vehicles. On modern Earth, lightning breaks nitrogen and oxygen and creates nitrogen oxides.
On the early Earth, however – before the oxygen in the atmosphere rises due to optical representation – lightning may play a decisive role in creating many Periphi compounds, which are molecules that form protein blocks.
We do not know if any planet outside the planets hosts life. We still have to find a earthly twin with the right orbit around a sun -like star, but we approached. Take Proxima B, which is an outdoor planet that revolves around the closest star to the solar system. Proxima B is almost the size of the Earth and its star rotates, Proxima Centauri, only right to support possible liquid water.
But Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star, with a small part of the sun’s brightness and size. Proxima B has an incredibly narrow orbit, with a full year for only 11 days. Because of his proximity to the mother star, it is certain that Proxima B is a lock -up, which means that it always shows one face towards the star, just as the moon always shows only one face towards Earth.
Because of its session, our planet hosts a rich ritual system. The weather system makes this lightning storms very common, as nearly 100 thunderbolt blows occur somewhere on the world every second. But can the pasted planet create lightning storms?
To answer this question, a team of researchers led by Dennis Sergev from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom invented simulations in the atmosphere of a fake laboratory planet, using the same types of simulations used by climate scientists to study Earth weather. In April, they are They presented their paper to publish In the magazine the monthly notifications of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The researchers found that the closed planet is the tide and the islands can result in large thunderbolt storms, but these storms were completely different from the storms on Earth.
The simulation showed that these planets around the small stars hosted the lightning strikes much less – only a few strikes per second. This was for the planets with a lot of insomnia from the Earth’s atmosphere – about a quarter of our planet’s pressure in the atmosphere. The atmosphere of high pressure is the composition of the thermal pregnancy cells that can push the formation of the cloud and generate the friction needed to produce lightning. The atmosphere with pressure that exceeds 10 times from the ground can produce only one thunderbolt kick every few minutes.
Unlike the Earth, all the heat of the star flows on one side on a closed planet. Then this heat flows through strong jet currents that race from the permanent side to the night.
The researchers found that this strong weather that works mostly on the side of days, with thunderbolt strikes that gather in a circular area. However, in some cases, lightning strikes occurred mostly on the night side, only after the Terminator Line at night. There was only an activity in the atmosphere to generate the conditions needed for lightning.
But this does not mean that this lightning can necessarily be guaranteed to help produce life. On the one hand, lightning strikes are much less common than Earth, and therefore it may not be sufficient to generate adequate pre -blood vehicles. Another challenge is that strikes are not evenly distributed all over the world. It tends to focus on Daiside, which may be very hot to support life.
However, the story of life on the outer planets, even that closed tide and the islands. Nature has repeatedly showed that life … finds a way.
