Exoplanets: discovery of 4 mini temperate Neptunes

On the menu of the science journal: 4 new exoplanets detected by the CHEOPS and TESS telescopes, a genetic mutation associated with the high-pitched voice, the human and economic toll on the climate in Europe since 1980, and finally the discovery of the two fastest stars in our galaxy.

The detection of new exoplanets has become almost commonplace, but it mainly concerns hot giant planets, called “hot Jupiters”. Their surface reaches 1000°C.

The temperate mini Neptunes, exoplanets rarely observed and yet very numerous in the Universe

Because they are close to their star, hot Jupiters go around it roughly in less than 10 days. They are detected quite easily: all you have to do is look at a star and wait for the exoplanet to pass in front of it. This is the so-called “transit” method.

But when the planets are far from their stars, when their orbit is larger, they pass less frequently in front of their celestial body. But we cannot place a telescope in front of a star indefinitely. These more temperate exoplanets are in fact rarely detected, although it is estimated that they are in fact much more numerous than the hot Jupiters.

So, to flush out these warm planets, these scientists combined the observations of two telescopes: the TESS telescope and the KEOPS telescope, which enabled them to discover 4 new exoplanets, 4 mini temperate Neptunes.

Interview with Solène Ulmer-Moll, post-doctoral fellow at the Universities of Geneva and Bern. She is the main author of one of the 4 studies on these detections published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A genetic variant responsible for the very high-pitched voice

This study published in Science Advances recorded the voices of more than 13,000 Icelanders to compare their frequencies to their genetic data.

As a result, a particular genetic variant is associated with high-pitched voice. That is, people with a certain mutation in the ABCC9 gene are more likely to have a higher voice frequency, regardless of gender or age.

This gene codes in particular for a tunnel protein linked to the elasticity of certain tissues, and it is certainly not the only gene involved. The voice and its pitch are the result of a set of factors, including environmental ones, but this is the first study to point to this genetic correlation. It remains to study more closely this mutation and more broadly the biological mechanisms at the origin of the pitch of the voice.

Climate disasters have killed nearly 200,000 people in Europe in forty years

This is one of the counts conducted by the European Environment Agency and posted on a new portal. It brings together data from all over Europe and records extreme weather events whether they are one-off, one-day events or last an entire season.

Heat waves, floods, fires, storms and landslides have therefore precisely cost the lives of 195,000 people since the beginning of the 1980s. euros, including 56 billion for the year 2021 alone, a sign of an acceleration of the consequences of climate change.

If floods are the leading cause of material damage, it is heat waves that are responsible for 80% of human losses. To limit them, the EEA therefore calls for an urgent move “from reacting to extreme meteorological phenomena to proactive preparation”.

Discovery of two runaway stars in our galaxy

They are the fastest stars ever identified; we speak of hypervelocity stars. One moves at 2300 kilometers per second, the other at some 1700. The scientists, who posted their pre-publication on the ArXiv site, explain that their propulsion could come from supernovae, that is to say from the explosion of a star. Because stars are often found in pairs, if one of them explodes, the process is so energetic that it would expel the companion star.

For the moment, neither their origin nor their destination is known. They are so fast that they could one day escape the gravitational pull of the Milky Way and thus leave our galaxy.