In a recent breakthrough, astronomers have identified a planet that is the first of its kind and features a unique sloping landscape and atmosphere.
The planet appears to be orbiting a star near our Milky Way galaxy, which shows a striking hellish landscape, covered in an ocean of magma and surrounded by a fiercely hot, sulfur-rich atmosphere.
Scientists have discovered a planet called L98-59d. It is much larger than Earth and orbits a small red star about 35 light-years away.
The molten planet’s diameter is 60 percent larger than Earth’s, and its density is only about 40 percent that of our planet.
Although researchers first thought the planet was covered in deep oceans, new data suggests it may be a kind of world we’ve never seen before.
Due to the presence of magma and large waves likely to roll over the molten and mushy magma ocean, surface temperatures would reach 900 C (3500F).
The atmosphere is found to be fetid with a pungent stench of rotten eggs due to the presence of hydrogen sulfide. Given the atmospheric conditions on the planet, scientists have deemed it unfavorable for harboring life.
“The whole thing is really in a mushy, molten state. It looks like molasses. It’s likely that the core of this planet will also be molten,” says Dr. Harrison Nicholls, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford.
“The planet lacks a clear magma ocean structure, so there is no crust, upper mantle and lower mantle,” he added.
Regarding the alien nature of the planet, Nicholls said: “If there are aliens that could live in lava that would be amazing, but I don’t think it’s likely to be habitable. It’s fun to enjoy the strangeness of the planet itself.”
According to the researchers, such a revolutionary discovery will increase our understanding of our universe beyond the solar system. It also shows the possibility of other types of planets waiting to be discovered.
Since the 1990s, more than 6,100 planets have been discovered outside the solar system, called exoplanets. But this bizarrely molten planet is the first of its kind.
