Finding an unknown element on Earth may sound interesting but how about finding an alien world that might have the possibility to harbour life? In a bid to find exoplanets, scientists recently came across one of the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system which is stated as “a scorching-hot world a bit larger than Mars and just about as dense as pure iron zooming around its home star every eight hours.”

The exoplanet discovered on 3rd December, is located 31 light years away from earth and perceives some of its important traits, illustrating the improvements in recent years in the ability to characterize smaller-sized planets that are hanging in mystic beyond our solar system.

Named GJ367b, an international team of scientists spotted the newly discovered exoplanet using NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) spacecraft. The tiny planet hugging a red star possessing ferocious surface temperatures and perhaps a molten lava surface on the side facing its star.

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Since the discovery of the first exoplanet back in 1992, scientists and researchers have turned towards characterizing exoplanets more precisely in order to obtain a deeper understanding of their variety, nature – ranging from large gas giants akin to Jupiter to smaller rocky Earth-like planets where life could harbour.

“Gas giants such as Jupiter, as we know it, are not habitable because they have more extreme temperatures, weather, pressures and a lack of essential building blocks to support life,” said astronomer Kristine Lam of the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), lead author of the study published in the journal Science.

“Unlike gas giants, small terrestrial worlds like Earth are more temperate and consist of important ingredients, such as liquid water and oxygen, to harbor life forms. Although not all terrestrial exoplanets are habitable, searching for smaller worlds and identifying the type of planets they are can help us understand how planets were formed, what makes a planet habitable and if our solar system is unique,” astronomer Kristine Lam Lam added.

Know about the new planet:

The smallest planet of the variety, GJ367b has a diameter of about 9,000 km – compared to Earth’s 12,700 km and the 6,800 km of Mars. Its mass is 55% that of Earth and it is more dense – could be called a tiny rich iron world!
The researchers calculated that 86% of the exoplanet is composed of iron, with an interior structure resembling Mercury, the closest planet to our sun. Scientists are wondering whether the exoplanet lost an outer mantle that once encased its core.

“Perhaps like Mercury, GJ 367b could have experienced an episode of giant impact which stripped away the mantle, leaving behind a large iron core. Or maybe the exoplanet is a remnant of a Neptune or super-Earth sized gaseous planet, where the atmosphere of the planet has completely blown away as the planet is blasted by a large amount of radiation from the star,” Lam said

GJ 367b is orbiting very close to a red dwarf star that is smaller, cooler and less luminous than our sun – more than 99% closer than Earth’s distance to the sun and the exoplanet orbits its star once every 7.7 hours, placing it in a category of “ultra-short period” exoplanets that travel around their home stars in less than 24 hours.

One side of GJ 367b probably faces its star at all times, with surface temperatures up to about 1,500 degrees Celsius. This temperature is high enough to evaporate any atmosphere that GJ 367b might have had in the past, as well as melting any silicate rocks and metallic iron on the planet.