This hellish planet has magma oceans, rock rain and 3,000-mile winds

There’s a planet that might just resemble hell, littered with a miles-deep magma ocean. It’s known as K2-141b, a “lava planet” that revolves so closely around its host star that its surface is, well, lava.

Unlike other comparable lava planets, researchers from McGill University, York University and the Indian Institute say that K2-141b is uniquely grim, with extreme temperatures and winds at up to 3,100 miles per hour.

The group recently discovered that a third of the planet is perpetually in the dark and is below -200 degrees Celsius. The other two-thirds of the planet faces perpetual sunlight at degrees of up to 3,000 degrees Celsius — hot enough to melt rocks and create an “atmosphere.”

What ends up happening is that the melted rock — with a composition of sodium, silicon monoxide, and silicon dioxide — evaporates, rises up into the “atmosphere,” and creates “rock rain” or mineral vapor. The mineral vapor then is blown back to the freezing part of the planet, where it becomes a magma ocean, and flows back into the perpetually-hot area. The process then begins again.

What will likely end up happening, researchers say, is that the surface and atmosphere will evolve to the point where it becomes inhabitable.

“All rocky planets, including Earth, started off as molten worlds but then rapidly cooled and solidified,” said Nicolas Cowan, a McGill University professor of Earth and planetary sciences, in a statement. "Lava planets give us a rare glimpse at this stage of planetary evolution."

The findings were published Tuesday in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Follow Joshua Bote on Twitter: @joshua_bote.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: K2-141b: The 'hell planet' with magma oceans, rock rain, 3K mile winds