A new NASA study has discovered a new exoplanet nearly the size of Earth orbiting the same type of star as our sun. Unfortunately, this promising planet candidate is also tidally locked, and one side of it has heated up into a giant sea of ​​lava.

One of the exciting things about searching for exoplanets is the possibility that one of them could turn out to be an Earth-like planet orbiting a sun-like star, where life as we know it could exist. However, it turns out that finding such a planet is more complicated than imagined.

Located 73 light-years from Earth in the constellation Gemini, HD63433d orbits the star HD63433 and looks promising at first glance. It is a rocky world about 1.1 times the size of Earth orbiting a G5 sun, roughly the same type and with roughly the same mass as our sun.

sounds good. However, the chances of life on HD63433d seem low. First, it's only about 400 million years old. This makes it the smallest confirmed exoplanet to be less than 500 million years old. Its orbit is only four days long, and it is only about 5 million miles (7 million kilometers) from its star, one-eighth the distance of Mercury from the sun.

The bottom line is that HD63433d likely lacks an atmosphere and is tidally locked like the Moon, so it always faces the same face toward its parent star. To make matters worse, the temperature on this sunny side is estimated to be 2294 degrees Fahrenheit (1257 degrees Celsius). This temperature is enough to turn the entire sunside hemisphere into a giant molten ocean.

As for what night noodles look like, it is a matter of speculation. Depending on traces in the atmosphere and the planet's composition, the hellish dayside could be balanced by a Pluto-like nightside with frozen nitrogen glaciers.

Astronomers discovered HD63433d while studying two other exoplanets orbiting HD63433, based on data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). When the effects of these planetary transits are removed, HD63433d emerges.

While this lava planet may not be high on future explorers' bucket lists, it's still of great interest to scientists because such a young Earth-like planet orbiting an Earth-like star can tell us a lot about how planetary systems form and evolve.

The findings were published in the Astronomical Journal.