A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our solar system—one that stores large amounts of sulfur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The findings have been published in Nature Astronomy.
The exoplanet (a planet that orbits a star outside the solar system), known as L 98–59 d, orbits a small red star about 35 light-years from Earth. Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and ground-based observatories suggest something unusual: the planet has an especially low density, given its size (which is about 1.6 times that of Earth) and contains significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide in its atmosphere.
Until now, astronomers would have placed a planet like this into one of two familiar categories, either a rocky “gas-dwarf” with an atmosphere of hydrogen, or a water-rich world made of deep oceans and ice. But these new findings reveal that L 98–59 d fits neither description—instead, it appears to belong to an entirely different class of planet containing heavy sulfur molecules.








