In a future issue of the magazine Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of scientists from Cornell University was able to create and cool artificial lava from other distant places in our universe inside the laboratorywithout the need for a volcanic eruption.
The researchers took existing data on the atmospheric and surface composition to understand the mantles or interior of 16 different exoplanets by modeling and synthesizing themas cited in the report published on the website of pop sci.
Since exoplanets are difficult to reach even for our farthest traveling space probes, experimental studies have rarely been conducted on these distant worldsaccording to what Esteban Gazel, lead author of the study and professor of engineering at Cornell University who studies geochemistry and volcanology, explains.
His team’s new research is the first to provide a compositional library for possible exotic exoplanet surfaces that other scientists can refer to in their search for distant planets and fiery space environments.
How did they create lava?
In his lab, Gazel and his colleagues meticulously combined stellar metallicity data, thermodynamic modeling algorithms, and physical experiments to prepare their batches of synthetic lava Using different measures of starting chemicals such as magnesium oxide, iron oxide, and silicon dioxide.
The end result was various porous igneous rocks, glass-crystallized magma, and minerals that you can touch without burning your limbs.
Astronomers could use the team’s data from the lava experiments to interpret the internal processes of different exoplanets, eventually.
In the future, this study could be used to shed light on the beginnings of the Earth, assures Esteban Gazel: “There are so many exoplanets out there in different evolutionary stages. If we can find out its composition, it will give us a lot of information about how our planet evolved.”.