Overview
- An international team confirms four planets around LHS 1903 with the sequence rock, gas, gas, rock.
- CHEOPS transit radii combined with HARPS-N radial-velocity masses show the outer planet, LHS 1903 e, has a rocky composition.
- The configuration conflicts with photoevaporation and thermally driven mass-loss expectations that predict gas-rich worlds farther out.
- The authors favor a Gas-Depleted Formation scenario in which the outer world formed when little nebular gas remained.
- TESS first flagged the system around the red dwarf about 116 light-years away, with orbits spanning roughly 2 to 30 days.