Twenty years after scientists confirmed the first planets beyond our solar system, there are more than 900 confirmed exoplanets and thousands of additional candidates. Some of the worlds out there are just plain out-there.
1. The Pink Planet
Official Name: GJ 504b
Distance: 57.3 light-years
Why it's weird: At first glance, the planet appears covered in a dark shade of pink. The planet's still glowing from the heat of its formation, thus causing the uncommon planetary hue, according to NASA. But beyond its peculiar magenta colouring, this particular world has scientists reconsidering how planets and solar systems form. Although the Pink Planet is about the same size as Jupiter, it's much farther from its parent star than many astronomers believed such a huge planet could form - debris was believed to be too sparse to form such large celestial bodies. At 43.5 AU (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from the Earth to the sun), GJ 504b is farther from its star than even Neptune is from the sun. Yet there it is in all its pink glory.
2. Methuselah
Official Name: PSR 1620-26 b
Distance: 12,400 light-years
Why it's weird: Methuselah, a well-known old timer from the Bible, is an apt description for this planet: It's really old. In fact, it's too old. The planet's age is about 13 billion years, almost three times as old as Earth. This means that the planet formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, a time when astronomers thought planets couldn't form due to lack of materials needed to create a planet's core. It seems the galaxy was an efficient world-maker even in its infancy.
3. The Diamond Planet
Official Name: 55 Cancri e
Distance: 40 light-years
Why it's weird: Want to make a quick US$26.9 nonillion? That's US$26.9 followed 29 zeros, and that's how much the diamonds on this planets would be worth, if only you could travel 40 light-years to retrieve them.
One-third of this planet's surface is likely to be made of diamonds due to high temperatures, interior pressures, and carbon-based composition. Scientists say this planet offers the first glimpse of a world with an extremely different chemistry from our own.
The Diamond Planet is twice the size of Earth and eight times as dense. However, mining the planet is out of the question. Despite the 40-light-year distance, surface temperatures reach close to 3900 degrees Fahrenheit. However, there are a few other planets with a similar bling composition, such as WASP-12b and the next planet on our list.
4. The Sun Hugger
Official Name: PSR J1719-14 b
Distance: 3900 light-years
Why it's weird: Other than being a possible member of the diamond-planet family, this world exhibits a few other strange characteristics, most notably its amazingly short orbital period - just 2.2 hours. If you lived for 80 Earth years, on this planet you'd be around 321,200 years old. Sounds exhausting. The dense planet - a pulsar planet, technically, because its parent star is a pulsar - completes almost 11 years in a single Earth day and is the fastest planet in the USPP (ultra-short-period-planet) category, which also includes Kepler-70b (5.5 hours) and SWEEPS-10 (10 hours).
5. Earth Jr.
Official Name: Gliese 581 d (possibly Gliese 581 g)
Distance: 20 light-years
Why it's weird: Nestled in the Libra constellation, Gliese 581 d rests on the outer edge of the "Goldilocks zone," or habitable zone. This means the planet has a habitable temperature in which water would remain a liquid. Furthermore, Gliese 581 d's atmosphere produces a significant greenhouse effect, which could warm the planet's surface and make it a strong candidate for the possible existence of life.
However, in September 2010, scientists using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii located another possible planet around the same star, Gliese 581 g, with even more favourable conditions for supporting life: It sits snuggly in the middle of the habitable zone. But other scientists have disputed whether the planet even exists, as results from doppler spectroscopy, otherwise known as the wobble method, can be open to interpretation. Gliese 581 g has yet to be confirmed as an exoplanet.
What we do know is that at only 20 light-years away, Gliese 581 offers a tantalizing place to seek alien life.
6. The Dark World
Official Name: TrES-2b
Distance: 750 light-years
Why it's weird: This Dark World is exactly that. The planet reflects only 1 percent of light that falls on it, making it even darker than coal or black acrylic paint, according to David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and lead author on the paper revealing this weird world.
There are a few theories as to why the planet devours light. It's possible that TrES-2b has no reflective clouds due to its high temperature, or that its atmosphere contains chemicals that absorb light. However, there is a third possibility that is the most intriguing: "It's a mystery as to what's causing it to be so dark," Kipping told Space.com in 2011. "There's a good chance it's a chemical we haven't even thought of yet."
7. The Doomed Planet
Official Name: WASP-18b
Distance: 325 light-years
Why it's weird: One million years - that's how long this planet has until it inevitably collides with its star. This world faces oblivion due to the slow degradation of its orbit, meaning it's gradually being pulled into its own sun.
Even the planet's existence is a mystery, as scientists think that it should have disintegrated by now. One theory is that the planet's orbit has been degenerating for some time and is coming close to the end of its death spiral.
A similar instance of this space phenomenon can be seen with Mars's moon Phobos, which approaches the Martian surface 1.8 meters every 100 years. It will meet its demise and eventually break up into a planetary ring in 30 to 50 million years.
8. Waterworld
Official Name: GJ 1214 b
Distance: 42 light-years
Why it's weird: Waterworld is possibly Kevin Costner's biggest regret. But in astronomy, a water world is far less disappointing. Discovered in December 2009, this planet has the best possibility of being an ocean planet over any exoplanet yet discovered. Ocean planets are, of course, completely covered by one giant ocean, with depths far deeper than the oceans on Earth. These depths could cause a core to form, composed of different forms of ice. The planet most likely hosts water in a medley of phases, including as steam, liquid, and plasma.
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