This Exoplanet Is So Hot That Rock Evaporates And Rains Into Magma Ocean

There is a planet 200 lightyears away from Earth, which has a surface, an atmosphere, an ocean, and even rain. But all of those are made out of the rock.

The planet we’re talking about is named K2-141 b, a Super-Earth exoplanet that orbits a star we cannot see from Earth. The planet is so close to the star that it is locked gravitationally, which means one of its sides always faces its star while the other side always faces the opposite.

The side facing the star has a temperature of up to 2760 degrees C, enough to melt and vaporize rock. As rock evaporates, supersonic winds blow at 4828 kilometers per hour and push it to the dark side of the planet, where the temperature goes down to -184 degrees C.

There, the rock condenses and turns into rock rains that fall into a molten magma ocean, which then flows back to the hot side of the planet, and the cycle repeats.

The planet was discovered from a computer simulation, so the fiery nature of this planet remains to be confirmed.

When the James Webb Space Telescope gets launched in 2021, it will help astronomers investigate further. The new paper’s coauthor Nicolas Cowan explained that all rocky planets started off as a molten world but they cooled rapidly and solidified, our Earth is no exception.

Thanks to such lava planets, scientists and researchers can learn this stage in planetary evolution thoroughly.

>>> Scientists Find 24 Exoplanets Even Better To Host Life Than Earth