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‘Truly tortured’ planet discovered by astronomers is constantly exploding

‘Truly tortured’ planet discovered by astronomers is constantly exploding

This planet is crazy hot, and very far away.

There's nothing quite like a new bit of research to make us realize just how vast, unknown and terrifying the universe is.

And now, scientists have discovered an astonishing incandescent planet that is almost completely covered by constantly-eruptive volcanoes.

Researchers used NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to find the planet around 66 light-years away from Earth, and it's been named HD 104067 - a useful reminder that planet naming systems are not as fun as you might like them to be.

The planet's volcanic surface is apparently caused by two nearby planets squeezing it into an elliptical orbit around its star, and is seemingly quite similar to what's happening to Jupiter's moon Io. The stretching and squeezing that these orbits cause results in a whole bunch of volcanic activity, basically.

Martin Korsawe / Getty
Martin Korsawe / Getty

Stephen Kane, a planetary astrophysicist at UC Riverside, said: "This is a terrestrial planet that I would describe as Io on steroids. It’s been forced into a situation where it’s constantly exploding with volcanoes. At optical wavelengths you would be able to see a glowing, red-hot planet with a molten lava surface."

Even the phrase "optical wavelengths" is a fun sci-fi-sounding one to us, but it simply means that if you could actually look at HD 104067 you'd see a glowing, terrifying planet - it almost sounds like Mustafar, from Star Wars, for the nerds among us.

The planet's surface temperature apparently sits at around 2,600 degrees Kelvin, or some 4,220 degrees Fahrenheit - that's incredibly hot for a planet, getting to around a quarter of the heat of our Sun's surface.

Of course, it might leave you with the existential question that can accompany plenty of astronomical breakthroughs - 'So what?'

Well, this is how science works, people: we learn more about the universe in order to learn more about the universe.

So, you can easily see how learning more about a distant planet that is going through similar processes and being subjected to the same forces as a moon of Jupiter could lead us to conclusions and breakthroughs that have a far more local set of outcomes.

NEMES LASZLO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty
NEMES LASZLO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty

That might not mean we're colonizing Jupiter's moons anytime soon, but it could help us to understand them more accurately.

All of this, meanwhile, deepens our understanding of the basic laws of physics, testing certain principles and gaining new insights into how they interact.

While one aim of finding distant exoplanets is to see if we can discover life, though, there's no doubt that the ultra-hot HD 104067 will not fit that particular billing.

Featured Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Chris Smith / NASA / ESA / CSA / Dani Player