NASA discovers a new planet K2-141b with unique attributes

The knowledge of the universe is constantly expanding as the human race progresses, and new discoveries are made about the vastness of space and the planet that inhabit it. NASA has been voyaging into the unknown for over almost a century, and they continue to send spacecraft into space to gain an understanding of something that we cannot fully observe. Recently NASA has gotten imaging from a planet that was discovered light years away from our solar system, with attributes that are rarely seen in planets remotely close to earth.

The exoplanet K2-141b was discovered back in 2018, and is a planet orbiting a star 200 light years away from the Milky Way Galaxy. Recently images have come back from this exoplanet that have given NASA information about the climate and the composition of the surface of the planet. This exoplanet is especially unique because of its attributes regarding its atmosphere and the overall composition of the surface of the planet. K2-141b is referred to as a lava world or planet, which almost sounds like something out of fiction. It is called this because of the vast lake of lava that covers the surface of the exoplanet. This causes the temperature when it is day on the planet to be extremely hot, around 3,000 degrees Celsius. Night time on K2-141b is extremely cold as well reaching temperatures of -300 degrees Celsius. This lava world is so hot because it orbits extremely close to the star that it is revolving around. The proximity of the planet to the star causes the lakes of lava and the rocky surface. Lava planets such as K2-141b are foreign in our solar system, because there is no planet that orbits close enough to the sun for this type of climate to occur. This magma climate is particularly useful to NASA because it can provide information about the origin of planets, and how they change from a fiery cataclysm, to a planet that could potentially inhabit life.