Strange Exoplanets That Are Both Interesting and Terrifying
What Are Exoplanets?
Exoplanets are planets that lie beyond our own solar system and revolve around other stars many light years away. In the past two decades, thousands have been discovered, most of them with NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Many of these planets take the namesake of this telescope – the Kepler-10b was one of the first confirmed terrestrial planets to be discovered outside of our solar system. It is incredibly close to its star the Kepler 10. The discovery of this planet excited scientists as it was the first confirmation of an exoplanet.
Geoff Marcy, a pioneering scientist in exoplanets declared the discovery: "as among the most profound scientific discoveries in human history... it is a bridge between the gas giant planets we've been finding and the earth itself.”
NASA's Kepler mission has already identified more than 5,000 potential exoplanets – with the discoveries expected to continue to grow over time.
These many newly discovered worlds come in a variety of material and orbits. Some are gargantuan gas worlds that dwarf Jupiter. Others, rocky and icy barely skidding past their roaring suns. NASA and other space agencies are interested in discovering a variety of planets, but one such kind has also sparked their interest – planets within the habitable zone where liquid water oceans could be formed. The boundaries of what’s habitable and what’s even possible in the universe seem to change every day. Strange compositions we thought impossible are being discovered all the time and with an average estimate of 1 trillion planets in just our galaxy alone, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.
Here Are Some Of The Interesting ones.
Here Are Some Of The Interesting ones.
1.Kepler-16b: Tatooine Planet
Astronomer’s research once posited about the possibility of a circumbinary planet – that is, a planet that circles around two stars. In an homage to Luke Skywalker’s home planet in Star Wars, Kepler-16b is nicknamed Tatooine. Whereas Skywalker’s homeworld was habitable, this planet is cold, gaseous and most likely cannot harbor life.
It is 200 light years away from earth. The discovery of a circumbinary planet was hinted at and then confirmed with the observation of brightness of the dual star system being dimmed by a planet’s transit in front of it.
2.PSR B1620-26 b: Methuselah
One of the oldest planets in the known universe so far, Methuselah is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter. It’s also another planet that orbits two stars. At 12.7 billion years ago, this exoplanet tops the aging scales. Interestingly enough, the two stars that it orbits are both burnt out dead stars. It is 12,400 light years away in the constellation of Scorpius.
At first, scientists didn’t know whether to classify it as a brown dwarf or a planet. Since it was created some 1 billion years after the big bang, astronomers have concluded that planets are not a rare phenomenon and ou early universe was probably teeming with them everywhere.
3.TrES-2b: Coal Black
Found during the Transatlantic Exoplanet Survey, TrES-2b is one of the darkest planets we’ve ever been able to see. Similarly sized to Jupiter, this coal black planet is less reflective than black acrylic paint. Jupiter, on the other hand, reflects more than a third of the sunlight that reaches it.
TrEs-2b is also burning up as it orbits its star at only three million miles. It’s not clear what makes the planet so dark. There are hues of red that emit a faint glow. The darkened planet is 750 light-years away in the Draco constellation.
4.Kepler 452b: Earth 2.0
A planet that’s more equally matched to Earth floats along some 500 light years away from our planet. It’s no larger than 10 percent more of Earth’s size. It encircles a red dwarf star with a 130-day orbit. A smaller sized planet is more likely to harbor and support life, especially inside the habitable zone.
Inhabitants on this planet would feel about twice as heavy as they did on earth. The planet is a lot older than our sun as well as it clocks in at about 6 billion years old. There’s no confirmation whether or not the planet is rocky or gaseous.
5.TRAPPIST-1f: Seven Wonders
An exoplanet system called TRAPPIST-1 named so for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, located a system of seven planets all within the habitable zone and relatively close to us on a galactic scale. At only 40 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, TRAPPIST-1f part of the seven wonders is a rocky planet that could have liquid water.
This discovery set a new record for the most amount of planets in a habitable zone orbiting a star outside of our own solar system. There is a potentiality that all seven of these planets could have liquid water.
6. HD 189733 b:Rains of molten glass
HD 189733 b is one of the most extensively studied exoplanets discovered till date. About the size of Jupiter, it was first detected transiting its host star with the help of X-ray enabled telescopes. Being a hot Jupiter is probably the major reason why it has been studied with different spectral wavelengths and instruments over the years.
HD 189733b, orbits very close to its host star HD 189733. The planet's atmosphere is scorching with a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometer-per-hour winds!
7. 55 Cancri e :Diamond Planet
55 Cancri e is a toasty world that rushes around its star every 18 hours. It orbits so closely -- about 25 times closer than Mercury is to our sun -- that it is tidally locked with one face forever blisters under the heat of its sun.
The planet is proposed to have a rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a "super-critical" state, where it is both liquid and gas, and then the whole planet is thought to be topped by a blanket of steam. Because of extreme pressures , it is thought of the planet surface is made entirely out of Diamonds.
8.HIP 68468 System
At a distance of 300 light years from the Earth, astronomers have discovered a Sun-like star or solar-twin, which is apparently eating away its own planets. The wired star Hip 68468 is orbited by two confirmed planets HIP 68468 b and HIP 68468 c.
But according to various calculations and studies done on stellar composition indicated that at least one more planet used to orbit the star alongside the two other companions. While it might be the first ever planet eating star discovered, this phenomena could be more common than we actually think.
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