A distant super-Earth named “55 Cancri e” is wetter and weirder than astronomers thought possible. The discovery has researchers re-thinking the nature of alien worlds. 55 Cancri e lies 40 light years away and circles its host star at a distance that is 26 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun. If Earth were in the same position, the soil beneath our feet would heat up to about 3200 F.

Researchers have long thought that 55 Cancri e must be a wasteland of parched rock. Now they’re thinking again. Observations from the Spitzer space telescope indicate that about a fifth of the planet’s mass must be made of light elements and compounds—including water. Given the intense heat and high pressure these materials likely experience, researchers think the compounds likely exist in a “supercritical” fluid state.

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