Astronomers found a planet made of molten lava that somehow has its own atmosphere.
April 16, 2026
Original Paper
An Atmosphere on the Ultra-Short Period super-Earth HD 3167 b
arXiv · 2604.11911
AI-generated illustration
The Takeaway
Planet HD 3167 b is so close to its star that its surface is literally liquid rock, which should have blasted away any air long ago. But the James Webb Space Telescope found that the planet is actually much cooler than it should be, meaning it has an atmosphere that's either reflecting sunlight or blowing heat around to the "dark" side. Finding an atmosphere in a place this hellish redefines the extreme limits of where atmospheres can exist in the universe. It’s like finding a soap bubble that won't pop inside a furnace. This discovery forces us to rethink what "habitable" or "stable" means in the most violent corners of the galaxy.
From the abstract
'Lava worlds'-Earth-sized planets hot enough (Teq >~ 1100 K) to melt their dayside silicate surfaces-have emerged as promising candidates for atmospheric detection and characterization. Thermal emission observations show an apparent dichotomy: the hottest lava worlds have colder daysides than the temperature of a maximally emitting bare rock, indicating the likely presence of thick and/or reflective atmospheres while the coldest ones do not. However, where in instellation flux this potential bif