List of the strangest planets in the universe
The first planets were discovered through the strange movement they exhibited in the night sky, different to the other stars. Greeks first referred to these irregular stars as wanderers, as translated from the old Greek word ‘planan’.
The incredibly complex nature of planetary systems were first hinted at when Galileo looked at Jupiter through a telescope and noticed that celestial bodies orbited the gas giant, discovering what would eventually be referred to as the Galilean satellites.
In 1994, the first planet outside of our solar system was discovered. Dr. Alexander Wolszczan observed unusual variations in the signal of a pulsar known as Beta Pictoris, proving the existence of up to three planets in orbit. Since that discovery, at least 1,888 more exoplanets have been revealed, leading to a revolution in the way scientists understand planetary formation – and even the evolution of the universe as far back as 13 billion years.
The most bizarre planets in the known universe sometimes sound more like than science fiction than hard science, occasionally confounding researchers simply through their existence.
10. Glise 581C: The Murder Planet
Similar to other planets which are tidally locked, this planet's one side always faces its star. Due to this, its one side is extremely hot while the other side is extremely cold. You would think that life can not exist on such planet but intrestingly, scientists think that maybe life exists on this planet. It is because despite one side extremely hot and one side extremely cold scientists think that life could be in the narrow zone where the hotter side mets the colder side.
9. HD106906
This strange planet lies in the Crux constellation. Over 11 times bigger than jupiter, this planet's discovery confuses the scientists. But its size is not the only thing for which this planet is strange. In fact the main reason for which this planet is strange is that the distance between this planet and its host star is almost 20 times greater than the distance between the Sun and Neptune which make up the distance about 60,000,000,000.
The distance confuses the astrophisists because this sized planet would require a lot of raw material for which it needs to be near the star. Another hypothesis is that HD106906 b is a failed star- this would change the binary star because HD106906 is considered too small for binary formation.
8.TrES-2b: The dark planet
When you go 700 light years away, a planet close to the size of jupiter woupd appear which is named TrES-2b. This planed is literally a dark planet. This planet is as dark that scientists think it is the darkest planet of the known universe. Despite the fact that it is a Jupiter-class gas giant, it reflects only 1% of light coming to it while Jupiter reflects about 33% of light coming to it which makes this planet strange.
As a result the planet is darker than coal and black acrylic paint. This had made great speculation about the atmosphere of TrES-2b. It is thought that the atmosphere is laced with chemicals or mix of compounds yet to be discovered. TrES-2b is not entirely dark, it is hot enough at 1800°F to emit a dull, radish glow, likely only visible because the planet absorbs so much of its oncoming light.
7. Planet Methuselah
Planet Methuselah, also nown as PSR 1620-26b is only 1 billion years younger than the universe. It is so.old that it defies traditional astrophysics models. Traditionally, it was thought that a planet can not be 13 billion years old because of the lack of material which planet need to form during that time of the universe. Yet Methuselah is nearly triple the age of Earth and is likely to be formed only 1 year after the big bang.
Methuselah roams among a globular cluster of stars, locked togeather by gravity in the constellation of scorpius. Within the cluster Methuselah orbits a binary star system consisting of a white dwarf star and a pulsar.
6. Planet Osiris
The first exoplanet to be discovered in the transit of its orbiting star, planet Osiris also known as HD209458b, is located 150 light years away from us in the constellation of pegasus. This planet is about 30% larger than the size of the jupiter and with an orbit that is one-eighth the distance of mercury from sun. The tempreture of this planet's surface is around 1832° fahrenheit. The amount of heat and pressure exerted on this gas planet has resulted in a significant evaporation of various atmospheric gases, which stream out of this planet's gravitational field like gas from a invisible balloon. Osiris stunned the astronomers and astrophysics experts wgen hydrogen, oxygen and carbon were detected rushing away from the planet. This led to an entire new type of planet classification, reffered to as chthonian. This planet is truly very strange.
5.Planet CoRoT 7b
If you think that the planets described earier in this blog were very strange this planet would totally stun you. CoRoT 7b is the first rocky planet to be discovered in orbit of another star than sun. Astronomers believe it used to be a gas giant similar to saturn or neptune, before its layers of atmosphere and gas were striped away due to its close proximity to a star.
Due to the planet is tidally locked, the side of the planet which faces the star has a tempreture of around 4000° fahrenheit and the dark side has a tempreture of 350° fahrenheit but this is not the thing which makes this planet strange. The thing for which this planet ranks that high in our list is this planet's rain. Unlike earth, in CoRoT 7b water does not falls as rain but here the rocks fall as rain. The process is the same as rain occurs on earth. The high tempreture of this planet makes the rock to evaporate and then fall on the surface in liquid form eventually hardening into solid befor making empact.
4. HAT-P-1
A recent dicovery by Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, HAT-P-1 is a gas giant. The thing strange about this planet that this planet has a size of about half of jupiter but it weights roughly the same as a ball of cork. This incredibly strange planet has caused an uproar in the halls of academic astronomy because it is cpassified as a "hot jupiter" planet that is nearly 25% larger than modes esrimate. The controversy has scramblled the astrophysicists to find a reason has swelled beyond the established norm.
3. 55 cancri
55 cancri is a roughly twice the size of the Earth wuth tempretures exceeding 3900° fahrenheit on the surface, was discovered in 2004. After years of observation scientists have found an astonishonishing thing about this planet. If you thing due to this planet's high tempreture this planet does not need any focus you are wrong. The thing for which this planet is on this list is that this big, rocky planet is mostly made of carbon that turne into diamond and graphite. In other words this planet is mostly made up of diamond and graphite.
Well about this planet's value, according to the current market value this planet is worth $26.9 nonillion. Well, this is about 384 quintilllion times more than the earth's paltry GDP of around $74 trillion.
2.J1407 b
Discovered in 2012 with its data recently compiled and submitted for pubication, J1407 b is located 400 light years away from us. Well you would have probably thinked that Satern's rings are quite big but this planet have even bigger. The thing which makes this planet strange is that it has rings which are 200 times bigger than the rings orbitting saturn. To understand its rings hugeness, if Saturn had such ring system, it would dominate the Earth's sky and even appear much larger than the full moon.
Scientists have observed gaps in J1407 b's ring system leading them to think that these gaps represents exomoons orbiting the exoplanet. The ring system is so large that astronomera observed a 56-day eclipse of the star that J1407 b orbits.
1.Gliese 436 b
A strange planet classified under the Gliese catalogue of nearby stars, Glise 436 b is roughly the size of Neptune. It's about 20 time larger than Earth but orbits its star at only 4.3 million miles away from its star, compared to Earth which orbits about 93 million miles away from the Sun.
Well after reading this this you would think that this planet would be fupl of molten rocks. But strangely this planet is fully covered with ice. But its not the only thing strange about this planet, the thing most strange about this planet is that even when ice exits in solid place there the tempreture at the surface of this planet is around 822° fahrenheit. Well, actually the reason behind this is that this planet's gravity is very strong which bounds thie water on this planet in solid form. The burning ice on this planet is known as ice-ten.
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