Half Lava & Half Rock, 5 Cancri E Might Be The Weirdest Exoplanet Ever Discovered

This is interesting, ATS. Astronomers have found an Exoplanet that they call 5 Cancri E and it's a planet they think is a molten world filled with lava tubes. Astronomers think that it's so close to its parent Star that a year only lasts 18hrs and since it may be tidally locked that would mean one side of this world would have permanent day. There's a short video but I couldn't upload it.

A lava-loaded “super earth” called 55 Cancri e is twice the size of our own planet but eight times as dense. And it’s so close to its star that a year lasts only 18 hours. Just 40 light years away, 55 Cancri e may also be tidally locked to its sun the way the moon is to Earth. One side would be a blazing hot eternal night with temperatures of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the other an even hotter permanent day, according to a heat map of the planet published in the journal Nature that used data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. “The day side could possibly have rivers of lava and big pools of extremely hot magma, but we think the night side would have solidified lava flows like those found in Hawaii,” Michael Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium said in a news release.

The Universe is filled with surprises! It never ceases to amaze me..........what says ATS?

www.huffingtonpost.com...

a reply to: lostbook

Earth was like that once!

a reply to: lostbook

Good find OP.

I love to hear about all new space related discoveries however, I just hate how many of the articles or blurbs are made to sound like factual information yet it's often little more than speculation, hopes and some imagination.
Not referring to just this specific article but others like it as well.

An article such as this one laced with words like: might, may, would, could, we think, may etc.. sounds great but in the end it's just speculation.

Granted these are smart people and their educated guesses are quite possibly right I just dislike how they tend to say whats what when in the end they really don't know for sure.

Anyway great find and sorry to sound like a Debby downer about it. Just don't like having my excitement piqued only to have it let down when they change the findings later.

a reply to: ShadowLink

I understand your sentiments. But if you dig deeper, these methods astronomers use to try and "see" what's happening on other worlds are quite ingenuous. They aren't just guessing blindly, they're using hundreds of years' of verifiable research in order to gain that insight.

It's akin to forensic evidence experts on a crime scene; an ordinary person may not get any kind of clue from it, but those clues can lead the experts straight to the criminal.