Jul 31, 2026 · 52 min · 16 segments
The culture of the Yurok tribe in Northern California is deeply intertwined with the Klamath river’s salmon. So, when toxic conditions caused by the dams on the river resulted in a massive fish kill…
Amy Bowers CordalisGuest
Kevin HandGuestMatthew CampbellGuest
Jenny DoeringHost
Ainsley O'NeillHost
Bella Smith
Paloma Beltran
Quite a bit farther from Earth is a planet that's probably not hospitable to life, but it's given astronomers a lot of food for thought.
Living on Earth's Elle Wilson and Bella Smith teamed up on this note on Emerging Science.
Scientists have been studying exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, for decades.
But a 2026 study published in Nature Astronomy found that one exoplanet is unlike anything we've seen before.
This planet is called L9859d, and it's about 1.6 times the size of Earth and 35 light-years away from us.
What makes it so special is that unlike other exoplanets of a similar size and density, it's neither a rocky planet surrounded by gas nor a water world.
It's more like when you see those videos of people like poking magma when they go to Iceland or something like that.
It's like a molasses, like a honey type viscosity.
So yeah, you could attempt to walk on it.
And given the density of rock, you would not sink, but it would be like walking on molten lava.
That's Harrison Nichols, a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the study.
He said scientists had known about this planet for years, but new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope revealed that its atmosphere is rich in hydrogen sulfide.
In order to sustain such a volatile atmosphere, they concluded that the planet must be in a liquid molten state.
Nichols and his colleagues then used computer simulations to reconstruct the planet's history.
They found that L9859d likely has a global magma ocean hundreds of miles deep, and possibly a molten core as well.
Planets form through an incredibly energy-intensive process, so young planets are extremely hot and cool over time.
But a sulfur-rich atmosphere trapped this planet's internal heat, preventing it from cooling.
so it stayed in this molten, mushy state, even though it's about 4.5 billion years old.
And that hydrogen sulfide atmosphere would likely come with another defining feature, the overwhelming smell of rotten eggs.
While this planet is almost certainly uninhabitable, Nichols is excited about what this new discovery could mean.
I think we're going to have to keep in mind that there's going to be a big diversity of worlds out there beyond anything we see in the solar system.
So by looking at these molten worlds, we can, to some extent, look at Earth when it was just born.
Quite a bit farther from Earth is a planet that's probably not hospitable to life, but it's given astronomers a lot of food for thought.
Living on Earth's Elle Wilson and Bella Smith teamed up on this note on Emerging Science.
Scientists have been studying exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, for decades.
But a 2026 study published in Nature Astronomy found that one exoplanet is unlike anything we've seen before.
This planet is called L9859d, and it's about 1.6 times the size of Earth and 35 light-years away from us.
What makes it so special is that unlike other exoplanets of a similar size and density, it's neither a rocky planet surrounded by gas nor a water world.
It's more like when you see those videos of people like poking magma when they go to Iceland or something like that.
It's like a molasses, like a honey type viscosity.
So yeah, you could attempt to walk on it.
And given the density of rock, you would not sink, but it would be like walking on molten lava.
That's Harrison Nichols, a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the study.
He said scientists had known about this planet for years, but new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope revealed that its atmosphere is rich in hydrogen sulfide.
In order to sustain such a volatile atmosphere, they concluded that the planet must be in a liquid molten state.
Nichols and his colleagues then used computer simulations to reconstruct the planet's history.
They found that L9859d likely has a global magma ocean hundreds of miles deep, and possibly a molten core as well.
Planets form through an incredibly energy-intensive process, so young planets are extremely hot and cool over time.
But a sulfur-rich atmosphere trapped this planet's internal heat, preventing it from cooling.
so it stayed in this molten, mushy state, even though it's about 4.5 billion years old.
And that hydrogen sulfide atmosphere would likely come with another defining feature, the overwhelming smell of rotten eggs.
While this planet is almost certainly uninhabitable, Nichols is excited about what this new discovery could mean.
I think we're going to have to keep in mind that there's going to be a big diversity of worlds out there beyond anything we see in the solar system.
So by looking at these molten worlds, we can, to some extent, look at Earth when it was just born.
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