When things start heating up in our solar system, we get all in
a tizzy over the possibility that cell phone reception might be
interrupted, but we can now call these minor inconveniences
“third planet problems” in light of new information from Hubble.
Astronomers have found a gas giant, 60 light years away from
Earth, that’s been hit with a violent flare from its star,
blasting it with an intense wave of X-ray radiation. Because the
exoplanet is so close to its sun, the radiation causes its
atmosphere to evaporate into space at a rate of 1,000 tons per
second. Although this planet has a climate where the temperature
reaches around 1000 degrees Celsius, that steamy goodness isn’t
enough to evaporate the atmosphere, and scientists were thrilled
to be able to observe the dramatic differences between this
observation and previous ones where they were unable to observe
the planet’s atmosphere at all. Though “…X-ray emissions are a
small part of the star’s total output…” they appear to be
driving the atmospheric d