Unassuming blue worlds where you’ll get shredded by raining glass going at Mach 7,
worlds being devoured by their own stars, planets where darkness is the rule of life,
and so much more - These are the Scariest Planets Scientists Have Ever Discovered.
Let’s start with Kepler-70b. This nightmarish exoplanet is also commonly referred to as
Kepler’s Inferno on NASA’s website because it burns so hot it could be another circle
of Hell. It’s one of two postulated exoplanets that orbit the Subdwarf B star Kepler-70. The
other planet is known as Kepler-70c. Kepler-70b is the hottest known exoplanet, with a surface
temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 6,800 Celsius. That’s hotter than our sun!
If you were to try to visit this slowly evaporating planet, you’d be vaporized
before you even realized you were burning. Gnarly. But that’s if it even exists. Some
research indicates that it may not actually be real. Confused? Don’t worry, we’ll explain.
70b and 70c were discovered by the Kepler telescope with the reflection
of starlight by the planets instead of blocking the light. At least,
it’s not a real planet in the way we typically think of a planet. It seems
to actually be a gas giant, and millions of years ago, it was most likely a hot Jupiter.
A hot Jupiter, which is also known as a hot Saturn, is a class of gas giant exoplanets.
They got their name from bearing physical similarities to the planet Jupiter, but they
typically have much shorter orbital periods. Hot Jupiters are often close to their stars,
which accounts for their brain-blisteringly high temperatures and the “Hot” part of their name.
Remember this definition. We’ll be seeing Hot
Jupiters come up a lot when it comes to frightening planets.
In Kepler’s Inferno’s current state, it could not sustain life - Unless we discover some
kind of impossible alien race made from pure fire. You also probably wouldn’t want to get
anywhere near it unless you’re looking to be burned up in the vacuum of space.
From burning bright to lurking murky. Are you afraid of the dark?
If so, you might want to steer clear of TrEs-2b, the planet where night never
ends. It’s the darkest known planet to orbit a star. According to NASA,
it’s less reflective than coal or black acrylic paint. Wow. In fact,
It reflects less than 1 percent of any light that hits it. If you could stand on its surface,
you would be trapped in absolute darkness, the likes of which are physically impossible
on Earth. NASA was able to determine TrEs-2b’s reflectivity - or lack thereof - from the data
collected by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, designed to precisely measure the brightness of distant stars.
It’s a gas giant and, like Kepler’s Inferno,
a Hot Jupiter. So, if you could stand on TrEs-2b, you would be both trapped
in darkness and burned to death at 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, or 980 degrees Celsius.
And eerily enough, despite the overwhelming darkness, the planet emits a red glow,
most likely from how hot it burns. You could compare it to the burning coils
on an electric stove. Like our moon, it is tidally locked, which means one side
of the planet always faces its start, and it takes 2.5 days to complete one orbit.
The very sight of it practically screams “EVIL”, like a planet-sized Eye of Sauron.
But sometimes, horror hides in unexpected places.
HD 189733 b is a cute-looking cobalt blue planet with a long, disarming name, but don’t be fooled.
It’s a lot scarier than it first seems. It’s a deadly planet. For those of you who like
pina coladas and getting caught in the rain, you might rethink it here. On this planet,
it rains sideways glass that is swirled around into spirals by the howling winds.
The winds blow at 5,400 mph, ensuring that the glass would slice you into minuscule pieces.
It sounds like the plot of a deranged horror movie where the world you’re standing on is
the killer. The soft blue color of the planet is deceptively welcoming, recalling images of
our own planet taken from space, but don’t be fooled. While Earth is blue due to our oceans,
on HD 189733 b, it’s because the clouds are laced with silicate particles. Like TrEs-2b and TrEs-2b,
it is a hot Jupiter - A class of planet we’re really starting to distrust.
Speaking of Hot Jupiters, Wasp 12b is a hot Jupiter that orbits the star WASP-12. Wasp
12b is in the process of being devoured by its own star. It’s so hot that it eats all visible light,
is 40 times bigger than Jupiter, and completes an orbit in less than one
Earth day. It’s also egg-shaped due to how it’s being pulled by gravity.
Wasp 12b is actually 4700 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2600 degrees Celsius. Hydrogen molecules
are broken down into atomic hydrogen simply because the planet is so darn hot. This causes
the atmosphere facing its star to act like a low-mass star in its own right. It’s another
planet that’s fun to read about, but would be a nightmare to actually be faced with visiting it.
Scarier still is that WASP-12b is a doomed planet. Since it’s so close to its star,
it may only have 10 million more years before it is completely swallowed up.
Now, let’s go for a different kind of horror.
OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb is a Neptune-like planet that was discovered on August 10,
2005. It’s as large as 5.5 Earths, and it takes 9 years to orbit its star. What makes this one
so scary? It’s a relatively cool planet, unlike the others we’ve mentioned so far.
The planet is believed to be 220 degrees Celsius, or 428 degrees Fahrenheit,
below zero. It’s too cold for liquid water, and it’s thought that the rock
surface covers frozen oceans. Think Pluto, but somehow even less welcoming.
Unofficially, it’s referred to as Hoth at NASA because it bears a
strong resemblance to the menacing ice planet from the Star Wars franchise. As
the coldest known exoplanet, it is a terrifyingly deadly place.
But a planet’s water doesn’t need to be frozen to be scary and dangerous…
GJ 1214 b, also known as Gliese 1214 b, is a planet that scientists often refer to as
a “water world” since it's basically all ocean. It was discovered in 2009, and it’s considered
a Super-Earth that orbits the star GJ 1214. It’s larger than Earth but smaller than the gas giants.
GJ 1214 b orbits around its star, GJ 1214, and its parent star is 48 light years away from the Sun,
located in the Ophiuchus constellation. It bears an eerie resemblance to Earth, and it’s only 40
light-years away from us. Actually, it has even more water than Earth does. But there’s
one important distinction that sets it apart from our planet - and earns it a place in this video.
While there are plenty of oceans on GJ 1214 b,
you wouldn’t be able to drink any of it or swim in the bright blue waters. Even
just lying beside the water could get you cooked due to the planet’s extraordinarily
high temperatures. The water is most likely all steam, high-pressure ice, or a hot viscous fluid.
Regardless of what form it takes, it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience
for any human who might accidentally find themselves crash-landed on the planet. At
temperatures of 446 degrees Fahrenheit, you’d be burned alive. Breathing would
also prove difficult due to a thick and steamy atmosphere that’s mostly hydrogen and helium.
If that somehow miraculously didn’t kill you instantly,
you’d probably have a really silly high-pitched voice, too.
As far as we know, it’s inhospitable for life as we know it on Earth. It would take some
kind of organism that could breathe its air and withstand its temperatures to make it habitable,
and as far as we know, no such organism exists. But if it does, we hope it’s friendly.
Let’s go to another planet; it’s a little difficult to breathe here…
Dimidium, also referred to as 51 Pegasi b, is an extrasolar planet, a planet outside of our
solar system. It’s another hot Jupiter, and it’s around 50 lightyears away from the constellation
of Pegasus, which helped earn the name 51 Pegasi b. It is tidally locked to the sun, meaning that
one side of the planet is always facing its star, and the other side is always facing away.
The side facing its sun is 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, or 980 degrees Celsius,
making it unbearably hot and hostile to life as we know it. There’s a lot of iron on the planet,
which melts in the extreme heat. This creates clouds that rain down molten iron. Any life
that might try to exist on this planet would be burnt up by the rain alone.
So you better bring a really strong umbrella, just to be safe.
55 Cancri e, or Janssen, is completely uninhabitable. It orbits the star Copernicus
and has a completely molten surface. If not for all the lava that would kill you instantly,
it sounds like it could be a beautiful place. Although no one has been to 55
Cancri e to prove it, scientists believe that the sky sparkles at night. On the planet’s dark side,
the side that never faces its sun, silicates in the atmosphere condense
into the clouds to reflect the lava. This is what would cause the sky to sparkle.
It’s a shame it’s ruined by all that molten rock and extreme temperatures.
What about a place a little more similar to our world, just to make us feel better?
The planet Osiris is the first exoplanet that scientists have discovered that has carbon and
oxygen, but it’s not enough to help sustain life on this scary planet. Osiris is a hot Jupiter,
but its star is tearing off its atmosphere at around 35,000 km per hour. As the gas escapes,
it forms something like a tail following the planet.
One of the common themes of this list seems to be planets that
can burn you alive, and Osiris is no different.
If you’ve seen Lars von Trier's Melancholia, you may have a fear of rogue planets colliding
with Earth, planets like Ots-44. It’s a two million-year-old free-floating brown
dwarf that’s 15 times bigger than Jupiter. Fortunately,
it’s very unlikely that a rogue planet will ever collide with Earth, but it’s still not hard to
be worried about a free-floating planet in space. Who knows where it’ll end up?
We’ll stick to planets with a fixed orbit, thank you. Speaking of…
AU Microscopii b is a gas giant exoplanet that was discovered in 2020. It orbits an M-type star,
and it’s 32 light years from Earth. It takes 8.5 days to complete one orbit around its star. It’s
known as a planet that actually throws temper tantrums. Its star is constantly
blasting it with deadly X-rays and other radiation. We bet it’s very clean, at least…
PSR B1257+12 b is a creepy terrestrial exoplanet that was discovered in 1994.
It has the same mass as 0.02 Earths, and it takes 25.3 days to complete
one orbit of its start. But why do scientists think that it’s so creepy?
Well, it orbits a pulsar, a dead star. It’s a rapidly rotating neutron star and the dense
core of a massive star that exploded. Orbiting a pulsar makes it a doomed world, inhospitable and
faced with constant radiation from its star. One of the nicknames for PSR B1257+12 b is
Poltergeist, so this nightmare planet really is haunted - If only by deadly radiation.
TOI-849 b is a Chthonian planet that orbits TOI-849, a dwarf star. What’s
that nightmarish Lovecraftian word, you ask? When celestial objects result from stripping
away a gas giant’s hydrogen and helium atmosphere and outer layers, you get a
Chthonian planet. It was discovered in 2020, and it has little or possibly no atmosphere at all.
According to NASA, every day is a bad day on planet TOI-849 b. It’s so close to its
star that one orbit takes less than a day. The planet’s surface temperature is around
1,500°C. Its days are shorter and far more intense than most of the planets we’ve looked at, and we
don’t recommend planning a vacation there any time soon - Even if accommodation is extremely cheap.
GJ 504 b, also known as Gliese 504, is a Jovian planet. It’s several times the mass of Jupiter,
but it’s close in size. It’s one of the lowest-mass exoplanets ever discovered
that has a star-like sun. It’s also around 237 degrees Celsius. But why is it on our list?
Because of its eerie glow, of course! It glows a dark cherry blossom or dull magenta from the
heat of its formation. You can see this planet from Earth in the Virgo constellation. Spooky
for sure, but a little more fun than some of the other nightmares we’ve seen today.
Next, let’s talk about the mysterious TYC 8998-760-1 b! It has something in common
with GJ 504 b: it’s so recently formed that you can still see a glow around the planet. It can
be seen from a ground-based telescope. It’s only around 17 million years old. It may not
sound young, but it’s still a positively infantile planet by astronomy standards.
Since it’s a brown dwarf, it’s not really a planet, but it’s not a star,
either. That’s where the mystery comes in. There are a lot of unanswered questions
about TYC 8998-760-1 b. Adding it to our list still felt fitting,
especially since the planet’s surface is around 1,400 degrees Celsius.
PSO J318.5-22 is another rogue planet where it is forever night. It doesn’t orbit a star,
so it just free-floats through space. There’s something scary about a wandering celestial
body with no sun to call its own. Despite the fact that it doesn’t orbit a star, the planet’s
surface still has a deadly high temperature that exceeds 1,520 Fahrenheit, or 826.67 degrees
Celsius. If a human were to ever crash land on this planet, they would not only be aimlessly
floating in the darkness of space, they would be burned alive almost instantly. Fun, fun, fun!
Next, LHS 3844 b is an exoplanet that orbits LHS 3844, a red dwarf. The planet is sometimes
known as Kua’kua, and its host star is called Batsũ̀. It orbits an M-type star,
and it’s a super Earth exoplanet. Sounds good so far, right? Nothing
scary here… Except this super-Earth has a dark side that might be tectonically active.
The dark side of the planet seems to be a hellish quagmire of constant volcanic
activity. The light side of the planet doesn’t seem to see this same kind of volcanic activity,
but the temperature on the day side often reaches 1,410 degrees Fahrenheit. And
back on the dark side again, it’s negative 418 degrees Fahrenheit.
Anyone trapped on LHS 3844 b would have no reprieve. On the day side, they would
struggle with agonizingly high temperatures. On the dark side, they would be frozen to
death and possibly trapped in volcanic activity. There’s a metaphor for life somewhere in there…
One familiar planet that might scare the pants off of you is Jupiter. We’ve been talking about
“hot Jupiters,” so it was only natural we’d talk about the originator of the title. We’ve
grown accustomed to sharing a galaxy with Jupiter, but it is by no means a gentle
planet. If someone were to ever go to Jupiter, they would be immediately frozen in negative
162 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures. Jupiter emits synchrotron radiation, so our traveler’s
body would be exposed to deadly radiation, on top of being turned into a super popsicle.
And that’s not to mention the fact that our traveler’s body wouldn’t be able to
withstand the pressure in the atmosphere. 650 million pounds of pressure would be squeezing
every inch of their body. At that point, our traveler might as well have someone
park 160,000 cars on top of them. So they’d be frozen, irradiated, and crushed. A real triple
threat that we just can’t wait to visit - If ever we lose all sense of self-preservation…
Now check out “You Won’t Believe These Insane
Planets That Actually Exist!” Or watch this video instead!