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Scientist has discovered new details about a hellish lava planet Light-years from Earth, which is terribly hot, rains rocks and has seas of lava more than 60 miles deep.
I know, get the jokes out, but K2-141b, the planet in question, is nowhere near us.
The exoplanet, which means that it lies outside our solar system, is home to one of the most “extreme” environments discovered according to a study first published in the Royal Astronomical Society’s monthly publications by scientists from McGill University in Montreal. York University in Toronto and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in India.
Artist’s impression of the lava planet K2-141b. In the center of the great illuminated region is an ocean of molten rock, upon which there is an atmosphere of rock vapor. Supersonic winds blow on the cold, airless night side and condense into rain of rock and snow, lazily returning to the warmer region of the Magma Ocean.
(Julie Roussy, McGill Graphic Design and Getty Images)
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“Among the most extreme planets discovered beyond the fringes of our solar system are the lava planets,” McGill said in a news release. “Fiery worlds orbiting so close to their host star that some regions are likely oceans of molten lava.”
K2-141b also has supersonic wind speeds in excess of 3,000 miles per hour.
Neptune has the fastest wind speeds of any other planet in our solar system, which can exceed 1,100 miles per hour, 1.5 times NASA’s speed of sound.
The planet’s surface, atmosphere and ocean all appear to be made of stone and “the extreme weather predicted by their analysis could permanently alter the surface and atmosphere of K2-141b over time,” the publication reads. by McGill.
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“The study is the first to predict weather conditions on K2-141b that can be captured hundreds of light-years away with next-generation telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope,” said senior author Giang Nguyen, a student. A graduate of York University, who worked on the study under the supervision of Professor Nicolas Cowan of McGill University, said.
Furthermore, more than half of the planet has constant daylight because it is so close to its host star that it is “gravitationally fixed” and always faces the same side towards the star.
Alternatively, the dark side of the planet has temperatures that can be below -300 degrees Fahrenheit.
The lowest temperature ever measured by a weather station on earth was in 1983 in Antarctica near the South Pole -128 degrees American Geophysical Union.
Similarly, water on Earth evaporates into the atmosphere and returns in the form of rain. The planet’s rocky vapor atmosphere evaporates and rains like rocks.
“On K2-141b the mineral vapor, which is formed from evaporated rocks, is rinsed into an ocean of magma on the cold side of the night by supersonic winds and the ‘rain’ of the rocks.” publication said. “The resulting currents ebb towards the warm side of the exoplanet, where the rock evaporates again.”
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“All the rocky planets, including Earth, were born as fused worlds, but then quickly cooled and solidified. The lava planets give us a rare insight into this phase of planetary evolution, “says Professor Cowan of the Department of Earth and Planet Sciences.
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