15 Most Terrifying planets and where to find them
Hi, we gathered up some of the most unusual planets in the whole universe.
Check them out!
15) Slasher Planet
In this image, the nightmare world of HD 189733 b is the killer you never see coming. To the
human eye, this far-off planet looks bright blue. But any space traveler confusing it
with the friendly skies of Earth would be badly mistaken. The weather in this world
is deadly. Its winds blow up to 5,400 mph (2 km/s) at seven times the speed of sound,
whipping all would-be travelers in a sickening spiral around the planet. And getting caught
in the rain on this planet is more than an inconvenience; it’s death by a thousand
cuts. This scorching alien world possibly rains glass—sideways—in its howling winds.
The cobalt blue color comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean, as on Earth, but rather
a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing high clouds laced with silicate particles.
In its atmosphere, there are a lot of silicates. Under the influence of the heat given by the
nearby star, they evaporate and produce gas clouds which, after cooling down, produce
precipitations. On this planet, you would find yourself dealing
with a cascade of blue drops of glass. That's why astronomers refer to it as the
slasher planet.
14) TrES-2b
This is an alien world as big as Jupiter, but unlike the giant of our Solar System - whose
ammonia clouds, reflecting more than a third of sunlight, make it sparkle salmon and white
- it is a dark, gloomy world, darker than the blackest piece of coal. can imagine. The
only glimmer that indicates its presence is a faint reddish light, like the resistance
of an electric stove: the effect of the scorching heat generated by a sun not even 5 million
kilometers away. TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of
the light that floods it, making it blacker than any known moon or planet. It's far less
reflective than a brushstroke of black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world.
What astronomers think makes it so dark could be its chemical composition, but honestly
they do not yet have clear ideas. However, it's not completely black, not like pitch,
at least: it's hot enough to emit a faint glow, a bit like a glowing ember.
TrES-2b orbits its star in synchronous rotation, like the Moon around the Earth, always turning
the same face towards it.
13) 55 Cancri E We have known for years about the rocky planet 55
Cancri E, twice the size of the Earth but with a mass eight times greater: characteristics
that make it one of the densest exoplanets ever studied so far.
55 Cancri e is the closest super-Earth to us, making it one of the best candidates for
detailed observations of the surface and atmospheric conditions of rocky exoplanets.
This planet is so close to its host star that astronomers expect the atmosphere to be stripped
away by escape and evaporation processes due to the intense stellar radiation. Nevertheless,
it seems that 55 Cancri e managed to keep most of its primordial atmosphere, but it
is not yet clear how this could have happened. In the past, 55 Cancri E was nicknamed the
' diamond planet ', since models based on its mass and radius have led some astronomers
to speculate that its internal composition was rich in carbon.
Turns out carbon actually exists, but studies indicate it is almost completely stored in
the atmosphere.
12) PSR B1257+12
Have you ever heard about pulsars? These are spherical, compact objects that
are about the size of a large city but contain more mass than the sun. When two pulsars merge
together, a gravitational wave propagates in space, and we are able to detect the space-time
deformation caused by such a wave!
Well, this planet, PSR B1257+12 b, along with fellow doomed worlds, were among the first
and creepiest to be discovered as they orbit an undead star known as a pulsar.
That's exactly what makes it so unusual. Its mass is 0.02 Earths, it takes 25.3 days
to complete one orbit of its star: imagine celebrating your birthday every 25 days or
so! How weird is that?
11) Hd 189733b Hd 189733b is a giant, hot exoplanet, in
close orbit around a very active dwarf star. So hot that its atmosphere reaches temperatures
of over 900 degrees and for this reason, it expands enormously in space, where it can
partially dissolve and create long trails that follow or precede the planet.
It is actually one of the most extreme exoplanets known. With a mass about 13 percent larger
than that of Jupiter, the planet is very close to its parent star, a bright orange dwarf,
completing a circle around it in just 2.2 days. The proximity to its star causes the
planet's atmosphere to touch temperatures of about 925 ° C: this is why HD 189733b
is defined as a hot deadly Jupiter.
10) KEPLER-70b From what we know, Kepler 70 b is a rocky
exoplanet smaller than the Earth, and it has a surface temperature of over seven thousand
Kelvin, probably the hottest known surface temperature of any exoplanet. Although the
precise temperature is unknown, it is predicted to be warmer than the Sun's surface! How
extreme is that?
9) WASP 12 b
Wasp-12b is another extremely dark planet. Using the image spectrograph on board the
Hubble Space Telescope, an international research group has measured its albedo, or how much
light the exoplanet reflects. High temperature is the most plausible cause
for a very low albedo value. Probably the day side of Wasp-12b is so hot
that it prevents the formation of clouds and the alkali metals, which have a highly light-absorbing
power, are found in ionized form. However, the heat on Wasp-12b is also intense
enough that it can break apart hydrogen molecules into atomic hydrogen, causing the planet's
atmosphere to behave more like the atmosphere of a low-mass star. And it is precisely this
that probably determines the low albedo of this suggestive celestial body.
8) GLIESE 436-b
Astronomers think this planet hosts a large concentration of an exotic form of water-ice known
as "Ice-x" on top of a rocky core. But this is really strange, given the high temperatures
found on this planet. This ice substance can remain solid despite blisteringly hot temperatures
— we're talking so hot, it could literally melt your face off!
Just so you understand, if you managed to catch a drop of it in your mouth, your face
would literally melt.
So, how come water is still solid at these temperatures?
This is because of the immense gravity of the planet.
This strong gravity compresses the trace amounts of water vapor in its atmosphere, keeping
it from reverting back to its liquid form.
7) VENUS
Despite being in our solar system, Venus is a very unusual planet.
It is the second planet from the Sun and has an atmosphere so thick and full of clouds
that its surface is much hotter than that of mercury.
Volcanic eruptions are always present on Venus. Clouds on this planet are not made of water,
but of sulfuric acid which condenses and rains down on the ground! This is scary, isn't it?
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6) OGLE-2005-BLG-390L b
This planet's name is very hard to spell, but this is not the most interesting thing
about it.
It is likely the coolest planet ever discovered!
It orbits around a very cool star, a red dwarf, reaching temperatures of no more than 53 Kelvin
degrees! The received radiation accounts for only a
thousandth of the heat that the Sun would send it.
It could be an icy planet, a frozen analog of the ocean planets.
5) 51 Pegasi b 51 Pegasi b was the first exoplanet to be
discovered. When it was discovered, planetary formation
theories were not compatible with a giant planet so close to its star and it was considered
an anomaly. This was what made it so strange.
However, since then, numerous others have been discovered, such as in the 55 Cancri
and Tau Boötis systems, and astronomers have begun to revise their theories and study the
possibility of orbital migrations. At first, it was thought to be a rocky planet,
but today it is believed to be a gas giant. It is massive enough to hold its own atmosphere
without being torn off by its host star's stellar wind. The planet is in synchronous
rotation with its own star, that is, it always shows the same face.
4) COROT-7b
CoRoT-7b is the first extrasolar planet that was shown to be a rocky planet like Earth.
This was a discovery for the search for life as we know it, because, if we want to look
for some signatures of alien life, we better look for them on planets similar to Earth!
And COROT 7b had some familiar features, thus suggesting that planets like Earth exist,
and we are not just a bug in the universe!
CoRoT-7b orbits its star every 0.85 days at a distance of 1.6 million miles.
It is so close to its star that its surface temperature is about 2,000 °C.
CoRoT-7b’s radius was determined to be 6,600 miles—only 1.68 times that of Earth, and
its mass was initially found to be at most 21 times that of Earth. Such extrasolar planets
that are larger than Earth but are not gas giants are called “super-Earths”.
3) COROT-3b This is corot 7 b brother.
It is an amazing planet, just under twice the size of Earth.
Its temperature is so high that it is probably covered with lava or water vapor. What makes
it so special again is its mass. Only a few of the exoplanets identified so
far have a mass comparable to that of the Earth and other terrestrial planets such as
Venus, Mars, and Mercury. The terrestrial planets are in fact extremely difficult to
identify. Until now, most of the methods used have been indirect and sensitive to the mass
of the planet: the more massive it is, the easier to be found.
2) Osiris
With temperatures towards the core of the planet exceeding 3,600°F (2,000°C), Osiris
makes a swim in the center of an active volcano seem like a treat.
Moreover, an enormous envelope of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen surrounds this planet.
This acts like a greenhouse, and the planet is able to reach temperatures of almost 10,000°C.
That’s almost 5,000 degrees hotter than many regions on our own Sun, which means that
you’d fry long before you even got close to the planet.
Unfortunately, or luckily? this amazing world is dying.
1) OTS 44
Astronomers say OTS 44 could be both a free-floating planet or a brown dwarf located at 550 light-years
(170 pc) in the constellation Chamaeleon. It is among the lowest-mass free-floating
substellar objects, with approximately 11.5 times the mass of Jupiter, or approximately
1.1% that of the Sun. Its radius is not very well known and is estimated to be 23–57%
that of the Sun. Given the uncertainties, they are not really
able to say if OTS 44 is a rogue planet or a stellar object.
Further studies will surely break this degeneracy, and maybe we will understand some other weird
features of this mysterious object.
This video ends here! What's your favorite exoplanet?
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