This illustration shows what exoplanet WASP-39 b could look like, based on the current understanding of the planet. WASP-39 b is a hot, puffy gas giant with a mass 0.28 times Jupiter (0.94 times Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, orbiting just 0.0486 astronomical units (4,500,000 miles) from its star. The star, WASP-39, is fractionally smaller and less massive than the Sun. Because it is so close to its star, WASP-39 b is very hot and is likely to be tidally locked, with one side facing the star at all times. Data collected by Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) show unambiguous evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, while previous observations from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, as well as other telescopes, indicate the presence of water vapor, sodium, and potassium. The planet probably has clouds and some form of weather, but it may not have atmospheric bands like those of Jupiter and Saturn. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
NASA’s Webb ushers in a new era of exoplanet science with the first unequivocal detection of carbon dioxide in a planetary atmosphere outside our solar system.
After years of preparation and anticipation, <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
exoplanet
An exoplanet (or extrasolar planet) is a planet that is located outside our Solar System, orbiting around a star other than the Sun. The first suspected scientific detection of an exoplanet occurred in 1988, with the first confirmation of detection coming in 1992.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>exoplanet scientists are overjoyed. <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
NASA
Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is "To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity." Its core values are "safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion."
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers longer wavelengths of light, with greatly improved sensitivity, allowing it to see inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today as well as looking further back in time to observe the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>James Webb Space Telescope has captured an astonishingly detailed rainbow of near-infrared starlight filtered through the atmosphere of a hot gas giant exoplanet 700 light-years away. The transmission spectrum of exoplanet WASP-39 b, based on a single set of measurements made using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph and analyzed by dozens of researchers, represents a hat trick of firsts: Webb’s first official scientific observation of an exoplanet; the first detailed exoplanet spectrum covering this range of near-infrared colors; and the first indisputable evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star. The results are indicative of Webb’s ability to spot key molecules like carbon dioxide in a wide variety of exoplanets – including smaller, cooler, rocky planets. This shows it is capable of providing insights into the composition, formation, and evolution of planets across the galaxy.
[embedded content] Watch this Space Sparks episode to learn more about how the James Webb Space Telescope has found definitive evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away.
NASA’s Webb Detects Carbon Dioxide in Exoplanet Atmosphere
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first definitive proof of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet – a planet outside the solar system. This observation of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away from Earth provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet. The finding, which is accepted for publication in the journal Nature, offers evidence that Webb may be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller, rocky planets in the future.
The exoplanet, WASP-39 b, is a hot gas giant with a mass roughly one-quarter that of <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
Jupiter
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the fifth planet from the sun. It is a gas giant with a mass greater then all of the other planets combined. Its name comes from the Roman god Jupiter.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>Jupiter (about the same as <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and has the second-largest mass in the Solar System. It has a much lower density than Earth but has a much greater volume. Saturn's name comes from the Roman god of wealth and agriculture.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter. Its extreme puffiness is related in part to its high temperature (about 1,600 degrees <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
Fahrenheit
The Fahrenheit scale is a temperature scale, named after the German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and based on one he proposed in 1724. In the Fahrenheit temperature scale, the freezing point of water freezes is 32 °F and water boils at 212 °F, a 180 °F separation, as defined at sea level and standard atmospheric pressure.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>Fahrenheit or 900 degrees <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
Celsius
The Celsius scale, also known as the centigrade scale, is a temperature scale named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius. In the Celsius scale, 0 °C is the freezing point of water and 100 °C is the boiling point of water at 1 atm pressure.
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>Celsius). Unlike the cooler, more compact gas giants in our solar system, WASP-39 b orbits very close to its star. In fact, it is only about one-eighth the distance between the Sun and Mercury and completes one circuit in just over four Earth-days. The planet’s discovery, reported in 2011, was made based on ground-based detections of the subtle, periodic dimming of light from its host star as the planet transits, or passes in front of the star.
Previous observations from other telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, revealed the planet’s atmosphere contained water vapor, sodium, and potassium. Webb’s unmatched infrared sensitivity has now confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide on this exoplanet as well.
A transmission spectrum of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-39 b captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on July 10, 2022, reveals the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide in a planet outside the solar system. This is also the first detailed exoplanet transmission spectrum ever captured that covers wavelengths between 3 and 5.5 microns. A transmission spectrum is made by comparing starlight filtered through a planet’s atmosphere as it moves in front of the star, to the unfiltered starlight detected when the planet is beside the star. Each of the 95 data points (white circles) on this graph represents the amount of a specific wavelength of light that is blocked by the planet and absorbed by its atmosphere. Wavelengths that are preferentially absorbed by the atmosphere appear as peaks in the transmission spectrum. The peak centered around 4.3 microns represents the light absorbed by carbon dioxide. The gray lines extending above and below each data point are error bars that show the uncertainty of each measurement, or the reasonable range of actual possible values. For a single observation, the error on these measurements is extremely small. The blue line is a best-fit model that takes into account the data, the known properties of WASP-39 b and its star (e.g., size, mass, temperature), and assumed characteristics of the atmosphere. Researchers can vary the parameters in the model – changing unknown characteristics like cloud height in the atmosphere and abundances of various gases – to get a better fit and further understand what the atmosphere is really like. The model shown here assumes that the planet is made primarily of hydrogen and helium, with small amounts of water and carbon dioxide, and a thin veil of clouds. The observation was made using the NIRSpec PRISM bright object time-series mode, which involves using a prism to spread out light from a single bright object (like the star WASP-39) and measuring the brightness of each wavelength at set intervals of time. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
Filtered Starlight
Transiting planets like WASP-39 b, whose orbits we observe edge-on rather than from above, can provide scientists with ideal opportunities to investigate planetary atmospheres. During a transit, some of the starlight is eclipsed by the planet completely (causing the overall dimming) and some is transmitted through the planet’s atmosphere.
Because different gases absorb different combinations of colors, investigators can analyze small differences in brightness of the transmitted light across a spectrum of wavelengths to determine exactly what an atmosphere is made of. With its combination of an inflated atmosphere and frequent transits, WASP-39 b is an ideal target for transmission spectroscopy.
A series of light curves from Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) shows the change in brightness of three different wavelengths (colors) of light from the WASP-39 star system over time as the planet transited the star on July 10, 2022. A transit occurs when an orbiting planet moves between the star and the telescope, blocking some of the light from the star. This observation was made using the NIRSpec PRISM bright object time-series mode, which involves using a prism to spread out light from a single bright object (like the star WASP-39) and measure the brightness of each wavelength at set intervals of time. To capture these data, Webb stared at the WASP-39 star system for more than eight hours, beginning about three hours before the transit and ending about two hours after the transit was complete. The transit itself lasted about three hours. Each curve shown here includes a total of 500 individual brightness measurements – about one per minute. Although all colors are blocked to some extent by the planet, some colors are blocked more than others. This occurs because each gas in the atmosphere absorbs different amounts of specific wavelengths. As a result, each color has a slightly different light curve. During the transit of WASP-39 b, light with a wavelength of 4.3 microns is not as bright as 3.0-micron or 4.7-micron light because it is absorbed by carbon dioxide. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
First Clear Detection of Carbon Dioxide
The team of researchers used Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) for its observations of WASP-39 b. In the resulting spectrum of the exoplanet’s atmosphere, a small hill between 4.1 and 4.6 microns presents the first clear, detailed evidence of carbon dioxide ever detected in a planet outside the solar system.
“As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me,” said Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and member of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science team, which undertook this investigation. “It was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet sciences.”
No observatory before has ever measured such subtle differences in brightness of so many individual colors across the 3 to 5.5-micron range in an exoplanet transmission spectrum. Access to this part of the spectrum is crucial for measuring the abundances of gases like water and methane, as well as carbon dioxide. These are gases that are thought to exist in many different types of exoplanets.
“Detecting such a clear signal of carbon dioxide on WASP-39 b bodes well for the detection of atmospheres on smaller, terrestrial-sized planets,” said Natalie Batalha of the University of California at Santa Cruz, who leads the team.
Understanding the composition of a planet’s atmosphere is essential because it tells us something about the origin of the planet and how it evolved. “Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of the story of planet formation,” said Mike Line of Arizona State University, another member of this research team. “By measuring this carbon dioxide feature, we can determine how much solid versus how much gaseous material was used to form this gas giant planet. In the coming decade, JWST will make this measurement for a variety of planets, providing insight into the details of how planets form and the uniqueness of our own solar system.”
Early Release Science
This NIRSpec prism observation of WASP-39 b is just one part of a larger investigation that includes observations of the planet using multiple Webb instruments, as well as observations of two other transiting planets. The investigation, which is part of the Early Release Science program, was designed to provide the exoplanet research community with robust Webb data as soon as possible.
“The goal is to analyze the Early Release Science observations quickly and develop open-source tools for the science community to use,” explained Vivien Parmentier, a co-investigator from Oxford University. “This enables contributions from all over the world and ensures that the best possible science will come out of the coming decades of observations.”
Natasha Batalha, co-author on the paper from NASA’s Ames Research Center, adds that “NASA’s open science guiding principles are centered in our Early Release Science work, supporting an inclusive, transparent, and collaborative scientific process.”
Reference: “Identification of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere” by The JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team: Eva-Maria Ahrer, Lili Alderson, Natalie M. Batalha, Natasha E. Batalha, Jacob L. Bean, Thomas G. Beatty, Taylor J. Bell, Björn Benneke, Zachory K. Berta-Thompson, Aarynn L. Carter, Ian J. M. Crossfield, Néstor Espinoza, Adina D. Feinstein, Jonathan J. Fortney, Neale P. Gibson, Jayesh M. Goyal, Eliza M. -R. Kempton, James Kirk, Laura Kreidberg, Mercedes López-Morales, Michael R. Line, Joshua D. Lothringer, Sarah E. Moran, Sagnick Mukherjee, Kazumasa Ohno, Vivien Parmentier, Caroline Piaulet, Zafar Rustamkulov, Everett Schlawin, David K. Sing, Kevin B. Stevenson, Hannah R. Wakeford, Natalie H. Allen, Stephan M. Birkmann, Jonathan Brande, Nicolas Crouzet, Patricio E. Cubillos, Mario Damiano, Jean-Michel Désert, Peter Gao, Joseph Harrington, Renyu Hu, Sarah Kendrew, Heather A. Knutson, Pierre-Olivier Lagage, Jérémy Leconte, Monika Lendl, Ryan J. MacDonald, E. M. May, Yamila Miguel, Karan Molaverdikhani, Julianne I. Moses, Catriona Anne Murray, Molly Nehring, Nikolay K. Nikolov, D. J. M. Petit dit de la Roche, Michael Radica, Pierre-Alexis Roy, Keivan G. Stassun, Jake Taylor, William C. Waalkes, Patcharapol Wachiraphan, Luis Welbanks, Peter J. Wheatley, Keshav Aggarwal, Munazza K. Alam, Agnibha Banerjee, Joanna K. Barstow, Jasmina Blecic, S. L. Casewell, Quentin Changeat, K. L. Chubb, Knicole D. Colón, Louis-Philippe Coulombe, Tansu Daylan, Miguel de Val-Borro, Leen Decin, Leonardo A. Dos Santos, Laura Flagg, Kevin France, Guangwei Fu, A. García Muñoz, John E. Gizis, Ana Glidden, David Grant, Kevin Heng, Thomas Henning, Yu-Cian Hong, Julie Inglis, Nicolas Iro, Tiffany Kataria, Thaddeus D. Komacek, Jessica E. Krick, Elspeth K.H. Lee, Nikole K. Lewis, Jorge Lillo-Box, Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, Luigi Mancini, Avi M. Mandell, Megan Mansfield, Mark S. Marley, Thomas Mikal-Evans, Giuseppe Morello, Matthew C. Nixon, Kevin Ortiz Ceballos, Anjali A. A. Piette, Diana Powell, Benjamin V. Rackham, Lakeisha Ramos-Rosado, Emily Rauscher, Seth Redfield, Laura K. Rogers, Michael T. Roman, Gael M. Roudier, Nicholas Scarsdale, Evgenya L. Shkolnik, John Southworth, Jessica J. Spake, Maria E Steinrueck, Xianyu Tan, Johanna K. Teske, Pascal Tremblin, Shang-Min Tsai, Gregory S. Tucker, Jake D. Turner, Jeff A. Valenti, Olivia Venot, Ingo P. Waldmann, Nicole L. Wallack, Xi Zhang and Sebastian Zieba, Accepted, Nature. arXiv:2208.11692
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.
That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”
The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.
Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.
Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.
Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.
“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”
The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.
North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.
Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”
Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.
Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.
For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.
“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”
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It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.
On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.
They call it “Big Sam.”
The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
It didn’t die alone.
“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.
She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”
“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.
The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.
The discovery was a long time coming.
The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.
“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.
When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”
“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.
Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.
About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.
Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.
“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.
“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”
The genders of the two adults are unknown.
Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.
The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.
She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.
“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.
“It’s pretty exciting.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
