NASA reported on the investigations that it will carry out in the coming weeks, with the James Webb Space Telescope, of two exoplanets classified as “super earths”, one of which bears the name of 55 Cancers and and whose very high temperatures keep their materials in a state of lava.
A note from NASA dated May 27 explains that, due to its proximity to its sun-like star, the exoplanet located 41 million light-years from Earth, has “surface temperatures well above the melting point of typical rock-forming minerals.”
Therefore, “it is believed that the day side of the planet is covered with oceans of lava”. With these characteristics, this planet has been considered by some as hell in which souls are eternally damned.
Due to the “infernal heat” of 55 Cancri e, one hypothesis of the scientists is that “the surface would heat up, melt and even vaporize during the day, forming a very thin atmosphere”.
“At night, the steam would cool and condense to form lava droplets that would rain back to the surface, solidifying again at nightfall,” NADA specifies.
NASA further reports that “although nothing of the kind exists in our own solar system, planets like this one, rocky, roughly the size of Earth, extremely hot and close to their starsare not uncommon in the Milky Way galaxy.”
The exoplanet 55 Cancers and is it hell?
Fr. Mario Arroyo, doctor of Philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, said that “scientists seem to have discovered the place of hell, planet 55 Cancri, because it is so close to its star that it is like lava, melted All the materials are liquid due to the very high temperature they experience”.
The also professor at the Pan-American University in Mexico City told ACI Prensa that “oobviously this is a metaphorbecause hell is not a place but a state, the state of eternal and definitive deprivation of God”.
“This planet 55 Cancri, although it is in such extreme situations of heat and temperature, is not deprived of the presence of God, God is also present there.
Instead hell is characterized by the absence of God”.
Father Arroyo then explained the differences between the material fire and the spiritual fire of hell.
“According to the particular revelations that we have, hell also has, like the planet 55 Cancri, fire and a very high temperature, but it is a special fire, it is a spiritual fire”.
The Mexican priest specified that on the exoplanet “materials are liquefied, but with a properly material fire, it is not a spiritual fire like the one described by souls who have seen hell: the fire that burns souls without consuming them”.
Due to the above, the priest told ACI Prensa, “we can conclude that planet 55 Cancri e is not hell, but it does remind us that hell is the place of definitive deprivation of God, with a spiritual fire that burns souls and from which we hope to be free for all eternity”.
To conclude, Fr. Arroyo assured that “it never hurts to remember that doctrine of hell that it has not been abolished, that it has not been removed, and that it is part of the truths taught by the Catholic faith”.
Contributed to this note David Ramos, Editor in Chief of ACI Prensa