NASA to Study Planet That Rains Lava

By Adam Barnhardt

The James Webb Telescope will soon be fully operational. Once NASA's latest piece of technology is live, the space agency and its researchers will have another tool to discover the furthest reaches of spaces, including a distant planet where it rains lava. Just prior to the holiday weekend, NASA shared a blog post detailing some of the Webb Telescope's first missions — further research on Super-Hot Super-Earth 55 Cancri e.

You see, 55 Cancri e is nearly twice the size of Earth, and roughly half the size of Neptune. While our planet is roughly 93 million miles from the sun, 55 Cancri e is just 1.5 million miles from its Sun-like star. 

In comparison, that distance is just one twenty-fifth the distance Mercury, the first planet in our solar system, is located from the sun. With an average temperature of 3,1000 degrees Fahrenheit, 55 Cancri e is quite the hellish place. Because of the close proximity to its star, traditional rain is nowhere to be found. No, on 55 Cancri e, it rains lava.

"Imagine if Earth were much, much closer to the Sun. So close that an entire year lasts only a few hours. So close that gravity has locked one hemisphere in permanent searing daylight and the other in endless darkness. So close that the oceans boil away, rocks begin to melt, and the clouds rain lava," NASA said in its post.

The blog added, "While nothing of the sort exists in our own solar system, planets like this—rocky, roughly Earth-sized, extremely hot and close to their stars—are not uncommon in the Milky Way galaxy."

Various teams at NASA and research universities will use the new tools built into the Webb Telescope to retreive more data from that planet. Those same teams will also research another intriguing planet, simply titled LHS 3844 b. Since the second planet lacks an obscuring atmosphere, teams will be able to study its surface with spectroscopy.

"It turns out that different types of rock have different spectra," added Laura Kreidberg at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. "You can see with your eyes that granite is lighter in color than basalt. There are similar differences in the infrared light that rocks give off."

Cover photo by NASA, ESA, CSA, Dani Player (STScI)

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