The Planet Where it Rains Rocks
On K2–141b it rains rocks and the oceans are lava
The prospect of alien worlds is exciting, spurning hundreds of different depictions in science fiction media. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote about the harsh, icy world of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness. Meanwhile, Star Wars imagined an erratic lava-filled planet called Mustafar. However, the reality of far-off worlds is much stranger than fiction. Hundreds of light-years away from us lies a strange planet called K2–141b. Though it’s a rocky planet the size of our own, it is not one we would want to visit.
This planet and its weather are much worse than anything we might experience here on Earth or even on Mars. The climate of this world is hellish and Kafkaesque. The entire planet includes its atmosphere, oceans and even precipitation are rocks.
Yes, rocks.
Using state-of-the-art computer software, researchers can simulate the environment of faraway planets. Researchers at McGill University used these techniques to illuminate the weird and wonderful world of K2–141b. Recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers reveal the extreme climate of this rocky world.
The first author of the study, Giang Nguyen, a Ph.D. student at York University, described the novelty of their…
