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Thirty-light-years from the Earth, orbiting a small red dwarf star named GJ 367 astronomers have discovered a small infernal planet covered in oceans of molten lava. The small planet which is approximately 3/4 the circumference of our world is larger than Mercury but still smaller than Mars. However, most interestingly it is believed to be as dense as Iron and orbits GJ 367 at an insane 8 hours per orbit! The little planet dubbed GJ 367b is believed to be a “more extreme version of Mercury” according to BGR.com, which would mean that the planet’s core is likely metallic with the rest of the rapidly moving world wrapped mostly in a layer of molten crust.
Scientists theorize that G 367b orbits so quickly that it’s tidally locked to its star always presenting the same face to the fiery blast of the red dwarf . So it’s possible that there may be a solid surface on the night side, of course opposite that…
“That side of the planet we think is just molten rock,” Caltech Atrophysicst and NASA Exoplanet Science Institute Scientist Jessie Christiansen tells Inverse. She’s one of the authors on a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science describing the discovery of the exoplanet GJ 367b, a world of “big lava lakes, or lava oceans?
Hades? A ‘Lava World’? Infernus?
According to Christiansen, the planet might have whisps of a hydrogen and helium atmosphere or may even have clouds of fine silicate dust blasted from any solid surface there may be by the solar winds of its red dwarf star. “That’s how intense the radiation is,” Christiansen says.
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o let’s tick off some boxes to qualify for this planet being almost literal Hell:
- Likely at least 50% covered in molten lava ✓
- A blindingly fast orbit ✓
- No Day/Night cycle ✓
- 2,200-degree Fahrenheit estimated high temperature ✓
- An atmosphere of hydrogen & helium nuclear fuel, radioactive solar plasma, and microscopic glass ✓
Sooo…. Scariest environment imaginable? Yup, scariest environment imaginable.
So How’d They Discover This Hellscape?
The Caltech team under Jesse Christiansen used the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or the TESS space telescope to inspect the orbit of GJ 367. The TESS launched in 2018 has an easier time scanning around M-type stars. Christiansen confirmed to INverse that M-type stars usually offer the best chance to follow up on the observations of a planet. The observations gathered from TESS have led the astronomers to theorize that it is an iron core type planet where the mantle has melted and that its orbit is being influenced by some unknown other body.
With additional observation, they hope to discover if another planet orbiting GJ 367 altered the orbit of the hellish little lava world. Maybe it’s frozen… then we can do some sort of cool play off of the Pat Benatar hit ‘Fire And Ice’ … or maybe a scene from Blades of Glory… Just thinking out loud.
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