Perhaps there are many such planets in our galaxy. Astronomers from an international research group studied data from the Spitzer space telescope, which recorded an exoplanet, the super-Earth LHS 3844b, the analysis of which showed interesting features of the cosmic body. Discuss< p class="jsx-4260339384">© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Super-Earths are a class of planets whose mass is greater than the mass of Earth, but less than the mass of Neptune. Scientists analyzed observational data for LHS 3844b and measured the amount of starlight that the exoplanet reflects.
It turned out that this super-Earth is tidally locked – one of the hemispheres is always illuminated by the parent star, because it is always facing it. Scientists found this out when they calculated the temperature of the hemispheres and came to the conclusion that they have a significant temperature difference – one is colder than the other.
For the first time, a tidally locked super-Earth has been discovered orbiting a red dwarf, astronomers believe that their find suggests about the presence of more than one such planet in our galaxy.
According to theories about tidally locked super-Earths, such planets are unsuitable for life, but between the “night” and “day” hemispheres there may be acceptable conditions for life.