There are places in the Universe
where you could turn to ash,
freeze to death
or be completely crushed by gravity.
And you're about to visit them all.
Earth exists in the precious
Goldilocks zone of our Solar System.
That means that its orbit is
within a distance from the Sun at which
liquid water could exist on the surface.
And with liquid water,
there’s the potential for life.
And while the search continues
for other planets in the Universe that could support life,
there are many that are so dangerous
that you can cross them off the list right now.
But before you do,
why not take a death-defying journey through space
to check them out.
Or are you too scared?
Before we leave for the furthest reaches of space, let's take a moment to clean up our own home.
Last month, the U.S. passed the Inflation Reduction Act.
This is the most significant investment in combating climate change in the nation's history.
Finally, after decades of big talk, this country is putting a plan into action.
If they follow through, America can reduce emissions by 40% by 2030.
And the tax incentives for families are crucial.
We're talking tax breaks up to $7,500 for purchasing electric vehicles
and $14,000 in direct customer rebates for more energy-efficient home appliances.
These devices can save you up to $350 a year.
And once you own the vehicle, you can take advantage
of electric vehicle tax credits to save up to $1,000 a year.
This is just the beginning, but now you can invest in a greener world while protecting your own green.
Hey, the change begins at home with you and with me.
And now, a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 is more possible than ever before.
So you can make this planet much safer than the worlds you're about to visit.
Let’s start with a planet that orbits not one,
but two stars.
And the combined mass of this binary star system
is five to six times that of the Sun.
If the larger of the two stars,
b Cen A,
were placed in the center of our Solar System,
it would be hot enough to melt rocks here on Earth.
Luckily, this exoplanet is located far enough away
to keep things cool enough for us.
What makes this planet so dangerous for you
is that it’s gaseous,
just like Jupiter.
There’s no surface for you to exist on.
And the deeper you go, the more it could crush you.
At 692 km (430 mi) down into its clouds,
you’d feel atmospheric pressure
that's over 1,100 times stronger than Earth's.
Picture a super-Earth with a mass of nearly
four of our home planets combined.
It whips around its star in just 14 days
and is too close to be in its star's habitable zone.
But those things wouldn’t be what makes it so dangerous for you.
Kepler-36b and its neighbor,
Kepler-36c are packed together.
Sometimes they’re only separated by less than five times
the distance between Earth and the Moon.
Meaning in the night sky,
you’d see this other planet towering above you.
But the proximity causes some huge gravitational tides.
So much so that they deform both planets.
And the result?
Well, if you made a stopover here,
you’d probably die from the tons of epic volcanic eruptions on the surface.
This exoplanet has a mass of 5.5 Earths,
it takes nine years to make one full orbit
and is located far away from the habitable zone of its dim star.
That means that it has a lot in common
with a planet a bit closer to home,
Neptune.
To visit this frigid world,
you’d need an especially warm space suit.
Temperatures here would be about -220 °C (-364 °F).
That’s even colder than liquid nitrogen.
If you accidentally inhaled the atmosphere here,
your lips would instantly suffer cold burns.
And your cheeks and tongue would be dealing with severe frostbite.
Keep it up and you could destroy the lining of your mouth,
throat and airways to your lungs.
Get ready to zip around a star every few hours.
Because on this exoplanet,
you’d make one full orbit in just one third of an Earth day.
That would be about every seven hours.
K2-141b is almost 140 times closer to its star
than Earth is to the Sun,
and the two are tidally locked together.
That means that one side of the planet always faces its star.
The hot side would have temperatures as high as 3,000 °C (5,432 °F).
And besides burning you to death,
this heat creates other dangers.
An ocean of magma as deep as 100 km (62 mi),
an atmosphere of vaporized rock
and supersonic winds
with speeds up to 5,000 km/h (3,100 mph).
And on the colder side,
temperatures would plummet to as low as -200 °C ( -330 °F).
If you landed here,
you’d be exposed to rocks raining down from the sky.
And they’d hit you faster than bullets from a gun.
Speaking of the weather,
this next exoplanet would be one of the most insane places
you could even think of stopping by.
This gas giant has a mass nearly 1.5 times that of Jupiter.
And yet, it’s located about 40 times closer to its star
than the Earth is to the Sun.
You’d arrive to find it has an intense surface temperature
of about 1,725 °C (3,140 °F).
This is so hot that iron evaporates into clouds
in the upper atmosphere.
Check the forecast before leaving your ship
or you could just get caught in a hot molten iron rainstorm
that would burn you alive.
If you thought that was hot,
get ready to check out one of the hottest planets ever discovered.
This tidally locked gas giant
receives 44,000 times more energy from its star
than Earth gets from the Sun.
On the day side,
temperatures could be as high as 4,315 °C (7,800 °F).
That would make it hotter than most stars.
At that temperature even hydrogen molecules
wouldn’t be able to stay intact.
You'd be a goner in less than a millisecond on this planet.
Pulsars are fast rotating neutron stars
that regularly emit pulses of electromagnetic radiation.
This exoplanet is a pulsar planet.
So if you land here,
you’d be showered in radiation ranging
from visible light to X-rays
and even gamma rays.
Located 980 light-years away in the Virgo constellation,
its pulsar star spins at an incredible 161 times per second.
And it's also one of the smallest exoplanets ever found.
It may be so small
that there'd be almost no gravity to keep you in place.
But it’s the radiation that would be your demise here.
Acute radiation sickness would kick in within hours,
and you’d experience nausea,
confusion and possibly lose consciousness.
Stick around for up to three days,
and you’ll almost certainly be in a coma,
or dead.
Don't let this gorgeous cobalt-blue planet fool you.
This world is the deadliest planet of them all.
That color may look like an ocean,
but what you’d be seeing
are high clouds full of silicate particles.
And these particles would tear your body apart.
The winds here are blowing
at speeds of up to 8,700 km/h (5,400 mph).
That's seven times faster than the speed of sound.
And if the wind itself couldn’t kill you,
the glass rain certainly would.
All that silicate would hit you at thousands of kilometers an hour.
It would pierce your body over and over,
which is why this is nicknamed the slasher planet.
OK, so maybe these dangerous places
wouldn’t make for the most fun vacation.
So why not explore a little more locally first?
Like a day on every planet in our own Solar System.
Well, that’s a story
for another WHAT IF.