- Science
- Global
Lava planet has hydrogen-rich, active atmosphere
- June 17, 2026 at 11:00 PM
- 11 views
It's 2158, and you're chugging away on your Ph.D. in planetary volcanology from the University of Utopia Planitia on Mars. Graduate students still get paid a sub-living wage, so you've been stuck eating freeze-dried ramen for the past three years. You've completed studying Jupiter's moon Io, but now you have to leave the solar system for a good exoplanet analog. While Io's volcanism is caused by tidal heating, you need an exoplanet whose volcanism is caused by extreme heat from its host star. You recently secured funding from the Exoplanet Research Institute for a faster-than-light (FTL) ship, but the exoplanet is required to be less than 50 light-years away.
Originally published at Phys.org