JWST catches star vaporizing the hottest rocky exoplanets

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JWST catches star vaporizing the hottest rocky exoplanets

For planets, just like in real estate, the most important property they can possess is “location.” If you want to form a rocky planet, that’s no problem if you’re in the inner part of your stellar system: interior to the analogue of the asteroid belt in our own Solar System. Further out, beyond those frost lines, ices and other volatiles can dominate, giving rise to solid-surfaced worlds that are more akin to giant iceballs than to planets like …