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September 23, 2025<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
This Blazing Exoplanet Breaks All the Rules About Alien Atmospheres, JWST Finds<\/p>\n
Hot, small and old\u2014exoplanet TOI-561 b is just about the worst place to look for alien air. Scientists using JWST found it there anyway<\/p>\n
By Elise Cutts edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier<\/span><\/p>\n New research suggests a rocky \u201clava planet\u201d orbiting very close to its star likely carries an atmosphere.<\/p>\n Chris Butler\/Science Source<\/p>\n Astronomers found an atmosphere where they least expected it\u2014clinging to an exoplanet that\u2019s too small, too hot and too old to have air, at least in theory.<\/p>\n James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of the blazing-hot lava planet TOI-561 b suggest not only that it has a thick atmosphere but also that it may have had one for billions of years. This is the strongest evidence yet for air around a hot rocky world that isn\u2019t just a temporary veil of hydrogen and helium left over from planetary formation. The discovery, posted on the preprint server arXiv.org, will soon appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s super old and ultrahot. It\u2019s the worst conditions,\u201d says the preprint study\u2019s co-author Tim Lichtenberg, a planetary scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. \u201cThis should not have an atmosphere. And it has one.\u201d<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Planetary scientist Joshua Krissansen-Totton of the University of Washington, who wasn\u2019t involved in the study, agrees. \u201cIt is definitely surprising and exciting to find a substantial atmosphere on this hot rocky planet,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In our solar system, atmospheres obey a simple rule: bigger, cooler worlds hold onto their air, and smaller, warmer ones don\u2019t. But TOI-561 b weighs in at just two Earth masses and is very, very hot; the planet orbits so close to its orange dwarf star that its years last less than an Earth day, and its estimated temperature is a rock-melting 2,300 kelvins. TOI-561 b is also about twice as old as our solar system, so its sunblasted atmosphere would have had plenty of time to escape. But researchers suspected the planet might be more than a bare ball of magma because of its unusually low density. And scientists previously spotted air on a bigger hot super-Earth called 55 Cancri e, though the data were \u201cmessy and weird,\u201d Krissansen-Totton says.<\/p>\n To check for alien air, the research team used JWST to take TOI-561 b\u2019s temperature. The planet is tidally locked, so one side bakes in ceaseless sunshine while the other is always dark. The scientists found that TOI-561 b\u2019s sun-soaked dayside was cooler than they had expected for a naked rock\u2014most likely because gas was there to spread the heat around.<\/p>\n The team is \u201cconfident\u201d that an atmosphere is the best explanation for the data, says exoplanet astronomer and study co-author Johanna Teske of Carnegie Science. But finding an unexpected atmosphere \u201cis the kind of result that generates more questions than it answers,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n For one, scientists don\u2019t know what TOI-516 b\u2019s air is made of or how it survived eons of hellish heat. Lichtenberg thinks the atmosphere most likely bubbled up from the planet\u2019s magma ocean. Every planet in our solar system was once molten like TOI-561 b, he points out; this unexpected atmosphere could have a lot to teach us about the origins of our own air.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September 23, 2025 2 min read This Blazing Exoplanet Breaks All the Rules About Alien Atmospheres, JWST Finds Hot, small and old\u2014exoplanet TOI-561 b is just about the worst place to look for alien air. Scientists using JWST found it there anyway By Elise Cutts edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier New research suggests a rocky<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[12421,189,817,14219,1614,1101,1695,14220,7633],"class_list":{"0":"post-23302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-atmosphere","9":"tag-finds","10":"tag-james","11":"tag-lava","12":"tag-planet","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-telescope","15":"tag-toi561","16":"tag-webb"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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