- Hey, don't mind me, just floating by
doing a little exploring.
Space is a wondrous and expansive place
filled with mind-blowing and inconceivable beauty.
And as we explore the cosmos,
we continue to find more and more amazing things,
but none more so than planets.
In fact, we've discovered numerous planets
that are both incredible and very strange at the same time.
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Here are the top 10 Strangest Planets
You Won't Believe Exist.
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Number 10 is 55 Cancri e.
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With a name like 55 Cancri e,
it's no surprise that it's one strange planet.
Also known as Janssen,
named after famous Dutch telescope pioneer,
this extrasolar planet has twice the diameter of Earth
and nearly nine times as massive.
Orbiting a star that's somewhat like our own,
it's what's known as a super-Earth
and was the first planet of its kind
to be discovered around a main sequence star.
But unlike our home world
which takes 365 day to orbit our sun,
Janssen orbits its star in just 18 hours.
That's because the planet is 25 times closer to its star
than Mercury is to the sun.
Being that close, Jansen endures temperatures of
more than 1,700 degrees Celsius.
That's hot enough to melt iron.
In fact, it would also explain why recent measurements
by the Hubble telescope indicate that
the planet is covered in oceans of molten lava.
Number nine id Dimidium.
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Dimidium is 50 light years away from our solar system
and has some mesmerizing features.
In fact, is may be the first ever discovery of
a new type of planet dubbed hot Jupiters.
And no, that's not just because they good looking.
Know what I'm sayin'?
They actually include massive giants
which reach searing temperatures.
Our own Jupiter sits much farther away from our own star,
but hot Jupiters tend to be closer.
This was a big deal because most solar system models
up until that time predicted that large gas giants
should not be close to a star.
Dimidium's discovery turned that idea on its head.
Astronomers believe that Dimidium is covered in
a gloomy, gray gas, but underneath this,
the atmosphere glows red due to heat and radiation.
Think about that.
Imagine looking up and just seeing a red sky.
Many believe that Dimidium is close and large enough
to later become the first ever
extra solar planet to be photographed.
Number eight is the Genesis Planet.
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The Genesis Planet is mind-blowing
simply because of how old it is.
Also known as Methuselah because of the Bible story
about a man who lived in 969,
the Genesis planet has that age easily beat.
This planet is a staggering 12.7 billion years old.
That's so old it gets a galactic discount at IHOP.
It's way older than most known planets
and three times as old as Earth itself.
Methuselah has some other quirks including
being the first planet to be discovered orbiting
a star in a global cluster.
What's more, the planet orbits not one, but two stars.
One of these stars is a pulsar neutron star
which revolves 100 times a second.
This has actually left scientists perplexed
because such stars are the result of a supernova.
That's an explosions which should have either destroyed
or ejected Methuselah from the system.
Number seven is Gliese 436B
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Gliese 436B is a strange exoplanet
which has confused astronomers.
This gas giant was the first of its kind to be documented
and has been labeled as a hot Neptune.
This is because it has a similar mass to Neptune itself.
NASA detected clouds on this planet back in 2013,
but it's what's happening beneath those clouds
that's so strange.
Gliese 436B is way hotter
than scientists would have predicted,
reaching temperatures of 439 Celsius
which means something other than its nearby star
is heating the planet.
It could be a greenhouse effect, but no one knows.
The other thing that's amazing is
that this higher temperature causes the hydrogen and helium
in the atmosphere to evaporate
as the planet moves around its star.
Theories suggest that this leaves
a huge gaseous trail behind
making the entire planet look like a comet.
You hear that?
Every time you fart, you look like a comet.
Hm, that's science.
Number six is the Dark Planet.
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This planet, also known as TrES-2B,
stands out from other discovered planets.
It would be quite a sight if we could see it.
This exoplanet is 750 light years from Earth
and has a low geometric albedo.
This is a fancy way of saying that
the planet's atmosphere reflects a tiny amount of light.
My head has a low geometric albedo.
In fact, the Dark Planet's atmosphere
reflects just 1% of the light which strikes it,
and some believe that it could be even less than that.
No one's entirely sure why the planet is so dark.
But one theory is that the planet has
thick clouds of potassium or gaseous titanium oxide.
These substances absorb a lot of light,
and if they're abundant enough in the atmosphere,
they could stop clouds from being reflective.
Literally even up close,
this planet would be difficult to see.
It would basically appear as a giant ball of black gas.
Number five is 16 Cygni Bb.
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Just 69 light years from our own sun,
16 Cygni Bb was the first eccentric Jupiter ever detected.
Like a hot Jupiter, these planets get their name
from our own massive gas giant
due to being a similar size or mass.
But eccentric Jupiters don't orbit
their stars like Jupiter does.
Jupiter orbits our own sun in a stable manner,
maintaining the same distance from the sun as it moves.
However, this planet has an erratic orbit
and moves closer then farther away from its star.
Because of this, its seasons are just all over the place.
Summer heats can reach as high as 760 Celsius
and then followed by bone-crunching winters of -250 Celsius.
This exoplanet's erratic orbit and mass
means that it has probably collided with
or thrown out smaller Earth-like planets
to the far reaches of its solar system.
In other words, it's unlikely we're ever gonna find
life around because it would
literally just throw an alien into space.
Number four is WASP-17b.
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WASP-17b orbits a star in the constellation Scorpius.
It has a strange quirk
that scientists thought was impossible.
This planet has what's known as a retrograde orbit.
This means that WASP-17b orbits
in an opposite direction from its star.
If you imagine a star orbiting clockwise from your viewpoint
then WASP-17b would be going counter-clockwise.
Astronomers have no idea why this happens
as models of planet movement up until that point
predicted that all planets should revolve
in the same direction as their parent star.
One theory to explain this strange behavior
is that at some point in the planet's past,
it came into close proximity with another large planet.
The gravitational forces then acted like a slingshot
and propelled Wasp 17B in an opposite direction.
That's right, the rebel planet.
It probably listens to Marilyn Manson and wears eye makeup.
Number three is Deep Blue.
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Deep Blue or HD 189733b as it's known,
is 63 light years away from our solar system,
but you'll be glad it keeps its distance
as it has a split personality.
With a mass of 13% higher than Jupiter,
Deep Blue is tidally locked.
This means that just like our moon
which only ever shows Earth the same side,
Deep Blue always faces its star in the same direction.
The planet is split down the middle
with one side in perpetual day,
and the other in perpetual night.
This environment creates huge storms.
The wind on Deep Blue travels from the day side
towards the night side at speeds
of 8,700 kilometers an hour.
Just gonna do the math on that one really quick.
Carry the six, yeah, that's fast!
Seriously, that's seven times the speed of sound.
If those storms were on Earth,
they would destroy every manmade structure
and grind them into dust in probably seconds.
Number two is the Lonely Planet.
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Hurdling through the universe 80 light years away
is the loneliest planet of all.
Well, at least for those discovered so far.
For years, astronomers speculated that
there may be planets which exist outside of our star system.
When the Lonely Planet was discovered,
it proved once and for all
that these rouge planets do exist.
With no parent star to orbit,
you'd expect such a planet to be a frozen wasteland,
but astronomers believe that the lonely planet
has clouds of molten iron and dust.
Beneath them, due to eternal forces,
it's possible that the temperature could reach
as high as 1,800 degrees Celsius.
While rogue planets are often ejected from
parent star systems due to incredible forces
such as a supernova, the lonely planet is so young
that it's more likely to have formed by itself.
Someone give this planet a hug.
And number one is WASP-18b.
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This planet is massive!
Seriously, it has 10 times the mass of Jupiter
and is just beneath that of a failed star
such as a brown or red dwarf.
But what really makes WASP-18b something special
is that it has a spiral orbit.
This means that the planet is slowly but surely
getting closer and closer to its parent star.
In our solar system, we see something similar
with Mar's moon Phobos.
That diminutive moon is 40 times closer to Mars
than our moon is to us,
and because of this, it will smash into the planet
in 11 million years.
This is exactly the same as what will happen to WASP-18b.
Eventually, it's going to smash straight into its star
in 1 million years.
But the planet is actually fighting back.
It's big enough to disrupt the star's magnetic field
which stops it from releasing bursts of X-rays.
It's literally a cosmic fight to the death!
And that's it.
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