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.
