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K2-141b: The world of eternal fire and eternal night
Did you know there’s a planet that might have oceans of lava? It’s called K2-141b, located about 200 light-years from Earth, and it orbits so close to its star that it completes a full lap in under 7 hours. Its day side reaches 3,000°C, hot enough to melt the rock on its surface. Since it always shows the same face to its star, one side lives in eternal fire while the other sits in freezing darkness at -200°C. Scientists believe the extreme heat vaporizes rock and creates a kind of mineral atmosphere, which drifts toward the cold side, condenses… and falls back down as rain. But rock rain, not water.…