Astronomers in a recent breakthrough have identified a first-of-its-kind planet characterised with a unique hellscape and atmosphere.
The planet is found to be orbiting a star in our neighbourhood of the Milky Way galaxy that shows a distinguished hellscape, covered with an ocean of magma and surrounded with a fiercely hot sulfur-rich atmosphere.
Scientists have discovered a planet called L98-59d. It is much larger than Earth and circles a small red star about 35 light years away.
The molten planet’s diameter is 60 percent greater than Earth and its density is only about 40 percent that of our planet.
While researchers first thought the planet was covered in deep oceans, new data suggests it might be a type of world we have never seen before.
Owing to the presence of magma and large waves likely to roll over the molten and mushy magma ocean, the surface temperatures would reach 900 C (3,500F).
The atmosphere is found to be stinking with a pervasive stench of rotten eggs due to the presence of hydrogen sulphide. Given the atmospheric conditions of the planet, the scientists have deemed it unfavourable for hosting life.
“The whole thing really is in a mushy, molten state. It’s like molasses. It’s likely that this planet’s core would also be molten,” said Dr Harrison Nicholls, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford.
“The planet lacks a distinct structure within its magma ocean, so there is no crust, upper mantle and lower mantle,” he added.
Talking about the alien nature of the planet, Nicholls said, “If there are aliens out there that could live in lava that would be amazing, but I don’t think it’s likely that it’s habitable. It’s nice to revel in the alienness of the planet itself.”
According to the researchers, such a revolutionary discovery will broaden our understanding of our universe beyond the solar system. It also shows the possibility of other types of planets that are waiting to be discovered.
Since the 1990s, more than 6100 planets beyond the solar system, called exoplanets, have been discovered. But this bizarrely molten planet is the first of its kind.
