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Coolest lava world yet with signs of an atmosphere offers clues to early Earth

Lava planet illustration
A newly catalogued planet has been found to have an atmosphere despite how hot it is—giving scientists more clues about how planets form and keep atmospheres.Illustration courtesy NASA

In the search for extraterrestrial life, it makes sense to first look for rocky planets with an atmosphere, like Earth. Without an atmosphere, a planet can’t have surface water. But of the more than 6,300 exoplanets cataloged thus far, the vast majority are not rocky, and only a handful of the rocky worlds appear to have an atmosphere.

In a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a group led by University of Chicago scientist Brandon Park Coy reports another: a rocky super-Earth 154 light-years away in the constellation Pisces...

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