Hubble observes super hurricanes, rain of vapourised rocks on Jupiter-sized planets

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is studying a class of ultra-hot bloated Jupiter-sized exoplanets that are so close to their parent star that they are at temperatures above 1600 degrees Celsius. According to NASA, that is hot enough to vapourise most metals, including Titanium.
In two new papers, teams of Hubble astronomers are reporting on bizarre weather conditions on these scorching planets. On one planet, it is raining vapourised rock while another has its upper atmosphere getting hotter and hotter as you go upwards rather than cooler because it is being ‘sunburned’ intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from its star.
While it may seem like little more than quirky and interesting facts about planets in faraway galaxies, studying extreme weather gives scients insights into the diversity, complexity and exotic chemry of far-away worlds.
“We still don’t have a good understanding of weather in different planetary environments,” said David Sing of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, co-author on the two studies being reported, in a press statement.

“When you look at Earth, all our weather predictions are still finely tuned to what we can measure. But when you go to a dant exoplanet, you have limited predictive powers because you haven’t built a general theory about how everything in an atmosphere goes together and responds to extreme conditions. Even though you know the basic chemry and physics, you don’t know how it’s going to manifest in complex ways,” explained Sing.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, astronomers documented Hubble observations of WASP-178b, a gas giant located 1,300 light years away from earth. On the side having daytime, the atmosphere is cloudless and enriched with silicon monoxide gas.
Since one side of the planet permanently faces the star, its atmosphere whips around to the dark side at speeds exceeding 3200 kilometres per hour. On the nighttime side, the silicon monoxide gas cools enough to condense into rocks that rain out of the sky.

In another paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Guangwei Fu of the University of Maryland reported a super-hot gas giant KELT-20b, which is located 400 light years away from our planet. On this planet, ultraviolet light from its parent star is creating a thermal layer in the atmosphere, similar to that in Earth’s stratosphere
According to Fu, scients didn’t know how the host star affected a planet’s atmosphere directly. Even though there have been lots of theories, Fu claims that this is the first time that researchers have observational data.
Even though these Jupiter-like planets are inhabitable, this research helps pave the way to understanding the atmosphere of potentially inhabitable terrestrial planets, according to Josh Lothringer, assant professor teaching astronomy at researching exoplanets at the Utah Valley University.
“If we can’t figure out what’s happening on super-hot Jupiters where we have reliable solid observational data, we’re not going to have a chance to figure out what’s happening in weaker spectra from observing terrestrial exoplanets. This is a test of our techniques that allows us to build a general understanding of physical properties such as cloud formation and atmospheric structure,” explained Lothringer, in a press statement.