This Melting Planet May Reveal How Venus Became a Hellscape—and Why Earth Was Spared

Astronomers are desperate to know what happened to Venus. Now, thanks to the recent discovery of the hot gassy planet’s virtual twin—LP 890-9 c, an apparently rocky, wet, Earth-and-Venus-sized planet orbiting a red dwarf star 98 light-years from Earth—those astronomers might finally have a chance to crack the mystery wide open. The problem is, right now there’s just one telescope capable of surveying this twin.

You’ve probably already heard of it by now: the James Webb Space Telescope. “JWST observations of LP 890-9 c have the potential to provide critical new insights,” a team led by Jonathan Gomez Barrientos, a Cornell University astronomer, wrote in a new peer-reviewed study that was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

But the JWST is in really high demand, and the line of researchers waiting to use it for their own investigations feels like it’s expanding at the same rate as the universe itself. And it remains to be seen whether the NASA-organized committee that doles out time on the $10-billion telescope agrees with Barrientos and his coauthors—and decides those insights are worth it.

Read more at The Daily Beast.