Astronomers detect rocky planet with atmosphere

WASHINGTON – Astronomers have searched for years for rocky planets beyond our solar system with an atmosphere, a trait considered essential for any possibility of harboring life. Well, they finally seem to have located one. But this hellish planet – apparently with a surface of molten rock – offers no hope for habitability.

Researchers said Wednesday the planet is a “super-Earth,” a rocky world much larger than our planet but smaller than Neptune, and it orbits perilously close to a star dimmer and slightly less massive than our sun, rapidly completing an orbit every 18 hours or so.

Infrared observations using two instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope indicated the presence of a substantial – if inhospitable – atmosphere, perhaps continuously replenished by gases released from a vast ocean of magma.

“The atmosphere is likely rich in carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide, but can also have other gases such as water vapor and sulfur dioxide. The current observations cannot pinpoint the exact atmospheric composition,” said planetary scientist Renyu Hu of NASA’s Jet

Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

The Webb data also did not make clear the atmosphere’s thickness. Hu said it may be as thick as Earth’s or even thicker than Venus’s, whose atmosphere is the densest in our system.

The planet, called 55 Cancri e or Janssen, is about 8.8 times more massive than Earth.