Map of rocky exoplanet reveals a lava world

The most detailed map of a small, rocky 'super Earth' to date reveals a planet almost completely covered by lava, with a molten 'hot' side and solid 'cool' side. We still don't know exactly what this planet is made of - it's still a riddle. These results are like adding another brick to the wall, but the exact nature of this planet is still not completely understood. Brice-Olivier Demory An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, has obtained the most detailed 'fingerprint' of a rocky planet outside our solar system to date, and found a planet of two halves: one that is almost completely molten, and the other which is almost completely solid. According to the researchers, conditions on the hot side of the planet are so extreme that it may have caused the atmosphere to evaporate, with the result that conditions on the two sides of the planet vary widely: temperatures on the hot side can reach 2500 degrees Celsius, while temperatures on the cool side are around 1100 degrees. The results are reported in the journal Nature . Using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the researchers examined a planet known as 55 Cancri e, which orbits a sun-like star located 40 light years away in the Cancer constellation, and have mapped how conditions on the planet change throughout a complete orbit, the first time this has been accomplished for such a small planet.