SPACE
Webb detects a one-of-a-kind atmosphere around a ‘hell planet’
WORDS JOANNA THOMPSON
An artist’s illustration of 55 Cancri e, which may be the first rocky exoplanet confirmed to have an atmosphere
Can a ‘hell planet’ have an atmosphere? In a new paper, researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope 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 ‘superEarth’, this exoplanet is twice the diameter of Earth and orbits its star at a mere four per cent 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.