Every day, NASA scans the galaxy in search of new planets, stars, and systems dispersed throughout the cosmos. We have sent many probes into space, from Voyager 1 to Juno, all with the task of first exploring our solar system and later investigating beyond it.
The Kepler spacecraft has discovered the most exoplanets, which are planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. As you’ll notice, many planets are named Kepler because of this.
Although we find tons of new exoplanets every year, many are just cold lumps of rock orbiting distant, unknown stars. Occasionally, however, a planet is found that is bizarre enough to make even the most seasoned astrophysicist gape in awe. We’ve rounded up 10 of them for you.
5-OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb The Iceball Planet
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| Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
A light-year is a measure of relative distance, somewhere that’s one year away if you’re traveling at the speed of light. That speed is equal to almost 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 mps) or over 1 billion kilometers per hour (670 million mph). So you have to travel a long way at high speed to see this huge ball of ice.
So far, the fastest speed we’ve ever reached in space occurred with New Horizons, a space probe launched in 2006 to conduct a flyby study of Pluto, its moons, and the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons sped along at over 58,000 kilometers per hour (36,000 mph), a far cry from the speed of light. So you can see that we don’t have the technology yet to visit our nearest neighboring system only a few light-years away.
That’s why we use long-range technology to discover distant exoplanets as well as to determine their mass and the makeup of their atmospheres. OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb was found using microlensing, a process used to discover planets when they pass in front of their stars and we see the stars dim briefly.
All the ice on OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is thought to be freshwater. Although this is good, it’s unlikely that we will be able to use this water in the foreseeable future. It would take 13,000 years to get to this exoplanet traveling at the speed of light. Perhaps an advanced alien race uses this faraway planet as a source of freshwater.
4- KELT-9b The Hot One
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| Photo credit: Robert Hurt/JPL/Caltech |
The gas giant is approximately three times the size of our Jupiter and burns at a temperature of 4,315 degrees Celsius (7,800 °F). This is hotter than most stars and almost as hot as the surface of our Sun, which burns at 5,505 degrees Celsius (9,941 °F).
A few million years from now, KELT-9b will have burned off all its gases and will disappear, leaving nothing but its lonely star.
3- GJ
1214b The Steamy Waterworld
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| Photo credit: sci-news.com |
GJ 1214b is thought to have oceans that may reach depths of as much as 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi). In contrast, the deepest part of our own oceans is the Mariana Trench, 11 kilometers (7 mi) deep.
We’ve only explored about 5 percent of our oceans, and we’ve found countless astounding creatures that we never expected to exist. Imagine what horrors lie within the deep waters of GJ 1214b!
2-PSR
J1719-1438 b The Diamond Planet
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| Photo credit: futurism.com |
A large, carbon-based planet with a diameter roughly five times that of Earth, PSR J1719-1438 b can be found about 4,000 light-years away from our solar system. Due to immense pressure caused by the planet’s gravitational pull, the carbon has been condensed, forming a gigantic diamond.
This exoplanet orbits a millisecond pulsar named PSR J1719-1438. Astronomers believe that the pulsar was once a massive star that became a stellar corpse in a supernova. These rare millisecond pulsars are supposedly formed by eating the material from a companion star.
In this case, the companion star was probably a white dwarf, which is what our Sun will become when it dies. A white dwarf is a remnant that has no more nuclear fuel.
Here, the millisecond pulsar probably ate the material from its companion white dwarf. With only 0.1 percent of its mass left, the white dwarf then formed an exotic crystalline companion to the pulsar—the diamond planet.
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CoRoT-7b The Planet That Snows Rocks
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| Photo credit: ESO/L. Calcada |
Like many other exoplanets, it is tidally locked with its star. The side facing the sun reaches temperatures as high as 2,200 degrees Celsius (4,000 °F), while the other side drops to as low as -210 degrees Celsius (-350 °F).
Lava on the star side is heated so much that it evaporates much like water does on our planet. This creates large stone clouds that later condense on the relatively cooler side of the planet, where it rains large rocks. If we could survive the extreme temperatures of this planet, it would be a sight to see.
On the hotter side, it rains magma. On the colder side, the magma hardens before hitting the ground (much like snow does on Earth). This creates rock snow that would kill you if you happened to be in its presence.
Sourse: Listverse
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