{"id":233391,"date":"2026-03-16T10:13:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T15:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/a-new-class-of-molten-planet-stores-abundant-sulfur-in-a-perpetual-magma-ocean"},"modified":"2026-03-16T10:13:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T15:13:57","slug":"a-new-class-of-molten-planet-stores-abundant-sulfur-in-a-perpetual-magma-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/a-new-class-of-molten-planet-stores-abundant-sulfur-in-a-perpetual-magma-ocean","title":{"rendered":"A new class of molten planet stores abundant sulfur in a perpetual magma ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-class-of-molten-planet-stores-abundant-sulfur-in-a-perpetual-magma-ocean.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our solar system\u2014one that stores large amounts of sulfur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The findings have been published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41550-026-02815-8\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Astronomy<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The exoplanet (a planet that orbits a star outside the solar system), known as L 98\u201359 d, orbits a small red star about 35 light-years from Earth. Recent observations from the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-09-nearby-super-earth-sulfur-rich.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n<p>Until now, astronomers would have placed a planet like this into one of two familiar categories, either a rocky \u201cgas-dwarf\u201d with an atmosphere of hydrogen, or a water-rich world made of deep oceans and ice. But these new findings reveal that L 98\u201359 d fits neither description\u2014instead, it appears to belong to an entirely different class of planet containing heavy sulfur molecules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our solar system\u2014one 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 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}