{"id":244921,"date":"2026-10-05T05:03:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T10:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/coolest-lava-world-yet-with-signs-of-an-atmosphere-offers-clues-to-early-earth"},"modified":"2026-10-05T05:03:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T10:03:48","slug":"coolest-lava-world-yet-with-signs-of-an-atmosphere-offers-clues-to-early-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/coolest-lava-world-yet-with-signs-of-an-atmosphere-offers-clues-to-early-earth","title":{"rendered":"Coolest lava world yet with signs of an atmosphere offers clues to early Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/coolest-lava-world-yet-with-signs-of-an-atmosphere-offers-clues-to-early-earth.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the search for extraterrestrial life, it makes sense to first look for rocky planets with an atmosphere, like Earth. Without an atmosphere, a planet can\u2019t have surface water. But of the more than 6,300 exoplanets cataloged thus far, the vast majority are not rocky, and only a handful of the rocky worlds appear to have an atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>In a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a group led by University of Chicago scientist Brandon Park Coy reports another: a rocky super-Earth 154 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. Named HD 3,167 b, this very hot \u201clava world\u201d zips around its host star in just one Earth day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s so surprising is that the closer a rocky planet orbits its star, the harder it should be to have an atmosphere, because it\u2019s bombarded by stellar wind and gets more high-energy photons from the star. But it seems that many of these lava worlds do,\u201d explained Edwin Kite, UChicago associate professor of geophysical sciences and co-author of the study. \u201cThese planets are too hot for life, but by studying them, we can say something about the processes that matter for other rocky worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the search for extraterrestrial life, it makes sense to first look for rocky planets with an atmosphere, like Earth. Without an atmosphere, a planet can\u2019t have surface water. But of the more than 6,300 exoplanets cataloged thus far, the vast majority are not rocky, and only a handful of the rocky worlds appear to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244921","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\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}