The lava world that refused to be bare: a rocky planet keeps its atmosphere against all theory

TOI-561 b circles its star in 10.5 hours, close enough that its dayside should be molten and its atmosphere long since blasted away. Instead, 37 hours of James Webb observations — more than three full orbits — watched by a team led from the Université de Montréal and the University of Waterloo show a planet reflecting away about three-quarters of the heat it receives, most likely through high clouds acting as sunscreen. 'We would expect a heavily irradiated rocky planet like this to have lost its atmosphere billions of years ago,' said project lead Lisa Dang. 'Instead, the evidence suggests it still has a significant atmosphere today.' The result, in The Astronomical Journal, reopens the question of whether rocky planets can hold onto air — and, with it, the raw material of habitability.