Using data collected by NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a team of scientists has discovered an exoplanet that could potentially be covered with volcanoes. The exoplanet is Earth-sized, and the team’s results suggest that the gravitational pull of a neighboring exoplanet could be causing an increase in volcanic activity on the exoplanet.
If the results and conclusions from the team, which is led by Merrin Peterson of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) at the University of Montreal, are true, the exoplanet, named LP 791-18 d, could be extremely similar to one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, Io — which is the most volcanically active celestial body in our solar system — and undergo regular outbursts of volcanic activity.