Can a “Hell Planet” have an atmosphere? In a new paper published May 8 in the journal Nature, researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have finally cracked this decades-old exoplanetary mystery — and, in doing so, detected the best evidence of an atmosphere around a rocky world outside our solar system.
55 Cancri e is a fiery world. Classified as a rocky “super-Earth”, this exoplanet is twice the diameter of Earth, and orbits its star at a mere 4% of the distance between Mercury and the sun. Its surface is probably covered in a sea of molten magma, with ambient temperatures hot enough to melt iron.
Ever since 55 Cancri e was discovered in 2004, scientists have been puzzling over various aspects of its existence: its orbital period, its density, and most of all, its atmosphere. Initially, researchers weren’t sure whether the exoplanet could even support an atmosphere; some believed it was simply too hot and too close to its star. But new evidence from JWST suggests that 55 Cancri e is indeed blanketed with a layer of gas — albeit an unusual one.
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