A second wind – literally – for a scorching hot super-Earth

A nearby rocky planet orbiting very close to its host star may be sporting a second-generation atmosphere: It used to be more like Neptune, but the star blew the planet’s air away, and what we see now are noxious gases released by a magma ocean afterwards.

That’s pretty weird. But it’s also expected.

Planets form from a disk of material orbiting a young star. Farther out, where it’s cooler, are lighter atoms and molecules like hydrogen, helium, and ices; while closer in it’s too hot for those ...