Joel Kontinen
Scientists think
they have identified a lava world so dramatic that it might boast a thin
regional atmosphere of vaporized rock where it is closest to its star.
It is not the first exoplanet to behave in this way.
That exoplanet is called K2-141b and was originally discovered in 2017. The world is
about half again as big as Earth but orbits so close to its star, which is one
class smaller than our own, that it completes several loops each Earth-day with
the same surface permanently facing the star. Now, scientists predict those
factors mean that two-thirds of the surface of K2-141b is permanently sunlit —
so much so that not only is part of the world covered in a lava ocean, but some of that rock may even evaporate away into the atmosphere.
The research is described
in a paper published Nov. 3 in the journal the Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society.
Some exoplanets are weird. Our planet was designed for us.
Source:
Bartels, Meghan. 2020. This bizarre planet could have supersonic winds in an atmosphere of vaporized rock, Live Science 6 November.
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