A burning planet discovered: it’s covered in so many active volcanoes and lava eruptions that it’s brilliant. It is a rocky planet slightly larger than Earth orbiting the star called HD 104067, about 66 light years away and already known to host a giant planet. Described in The Astronomical Journal, the glowing planet is. was identified thanks to data from the Tess space telescope by Stephen Kane’s group, from the University of California at Riverside,
“It was one of those moments of discovery where you think, wow, it’s amazing that this could actually exist,” Kane said of the discovery. The data indicate unequivocal traces of the presence of two other smaller planets: the innermost of the three would have a mass approximately 30% greater than that of Earth.
The surface of the planet would have a temperature of over 2,300 degrees, even higher than that of some stars, and the reason for so much heat would be its intense volcanic activity. What triggers continuous eruptions would be the combined gravitational force of the star and the giant companion planet, which ‘squeeze’ the rocky planet, producing large tidal forces in its still molten heart, thus generating deep cracks from which lava escapes.
A situation that closely resembles that of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons and considered the object with the greatest volcanic activity in the Solar System. Just as the Moon’s movements produce tides on Earth, Jupiter causes the fluid parts of Io to move. The new planet discovered around HD 104067 “resembles Io but on steroids, forced – commented Kane – into a situation in which it continually explodes through volcanoes”. The discovery which not only expands the catalog of the oddities of the exoplanets discovered in recent years , but it demonstrates the often underestimated importance of the impact of stars and other planets on the energy balance of their neighbors.
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