First JWST TRAPPIST-1 results! Not what we expected for TRAPPIST-1c

00:00 - Introduction
00:31 - What's TRAPPIST-1?
01:50 - Why are we studying planets orbiting red dwarf stars?
05:24 - What has JWST found for these rocky planets?
12:20 - What are the implications for the planets in TRAPPIST-1's habitable zone?
16:01 - When is the rest of the TRAPPIST-1 JWST data coming?
17:32 - Brilliant
18:49 - Bloopers

Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV

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👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

[Neloish]

Everyday when I look at the Sun I say "Thank you for being the calmest star in the galaxy and not striping our atmosphere to nothing."

[AdmiralJamesTKirk]

Get back to me when they finally look at Trappist-1E. That’s the jewel of this system.

[mikotagayuna]

As someone who once worked as a spectroscopist, one of our greatest struggles is ascertaining how each stretch or peak corresponds to a particular molecule and nothing else. Many of these signals tend to overlap or translate downfield or upfield and it's actually unlikely that we can just "zero-in" on specific molecules that we want to observe. An atmosphere is basically a soup of molecules with each component possibly interfering with each other's signals. Sifting through this data is a daunting challenge especially since we cannot perform actual chemical analysis on the planet to confirm their identities.

[Jaabaa_Prime]

I love how you analyse, interpret and communicate the data that you see. Thank you for your realistic, non sensational take on the world of cosmology and astronomy. You are awesome ❤
P.S. YouTube captions for JWST are things like "Jellyfish Tea" 🤣

[BronzeDragon]

Just because of the flaring issue, I never much liked M-class stars and never held out too much hope. Even if the very vast majority are incompatible, that still leaves a fair number just due to the fact that they're incredibly common. And there are always the more-comfortable and still very common K-class stars out there that tend to be a bit less temperamental. And our own G-class, of course, even if not so common.

[gdutfulkbhh]

What a time to be alive! Thanks for this, Dr Becky.

[steveegbert]

The absolutely best astrophysicist on the internet, and possibly in her chosen field of study. Thank you Dr. Becky for what you bring to us. I do pray you are granted some research time on JWST, that would be awesome to see!

[LuccaCatani]

So good to be briefly well informed on astronomy because your videos! Thanks!

[perigee]

Agreed. Red dwarves are notoriously unstable. Our sun, it turns out, is relatively quiescent. It rotates slowly, and the planet are much farther apart from each other than most of the solar systems we know of. And still earth is the only planet that has complex life forms on it.
I expect that life exists on other planets but they could be far more scarce than we imagine.

[dichebach]

I've waited ~70 years for some real empirical estimates of habitability of a promising candidate interstellar planet. As long as I don't kick the bucket, waiting another year or two is fine . . .

[christopherwalburn]

The more we learn about these other solar systems, the more amazing and unique our own becomes.

[kaous]

Wow i finally found a person who doesnt try to hype up the context or dont give useless information! Happy to find this channel

[ariochiv]

Wouldn't catastrophic atmosphere loss be exactly what you expect to see close-in to a an active flare star?

[gordonwallin]

Another fun video, thanks, Dr. Becky. Cheers from the Paific West Coast of Canada.

[AndrewWard-hf]

Patrick Moore would be proud of you keeping us well informed of astronomical news 😊

[ARWest-bpyb]

1c sits well outside the habitable zone so the initial data shouldn't be too surprising. Hopefully follow up observations will be able to give us a more complete picture. Now on to planets d, e & f!👍👍

[Talguy]

My main worry is that even if TRAPPIST-1 or other Red Dwarves are stable enough nowadays, how much volatile material is stripped during its earlier, more violent years? It could potentially render the system sterile by removing the majority of the water before things settle down. Hopefully that's not the case farther out. I suppose we'll see. c:

[orchidquest]

Dr. Becky, I'm a total civilian when it comes to astronomy, but I love the subject and how you explain it. I have a question from your video: You mentioned that we would expect Trappist-c to have a similar atmosphere to Venus because it receives similar amounts of light from its star as Venus. Since we really only have our own solar system as reference for other systems (at least through direct observation), this makes sense, but since Trappist is a red dwarf, doesn't that already make the composition of its system somewhat different? It has fewer atoms and molecules to build a system from, I would guess, but it's also blowing out a lot of its chemistry through radiation and solar flares and winds. Aren't red dwarfs composed of different atoms and molecules as well, or are they similar in composition to our sun, just less massive? They still "burn" the same elements?

[ross]

Thanks for this content Becky which answered pretty much every question I had on this subject. I don't think we should necessarily be disappointed by these results from Trappist 1b and 1c. It's some of the best data we've ever collected on exoplanets so far and will help us make our searches for habitability in a more targeted way in the future.

[timflatus]

Thank you for the lack of dumbing down or sensationalising.