Outer Planets that are IMPOSSIBLE to Exist (But They Do)

 

it may be hard to believe today but back in the 1990s we had no idea about what sort of extrasolar planets may exist in our galaxy and the rest of the universe back then we didn't even have any means to discover them even though astronomers were sure that many kinds of planets may revolve around other stars in our galaxy we had no idea how crazy these planets would be and if they would make us question everything we know about space and the universe

 welcome to Science Reads and today let's look at five exoplanets that shouldn't exist

 but do forecast for today molten iron rain first on our list of impossible exoplanets is wasp 76b this planet was spotted and studied

 by the espresso instrument on a very

 large telescope located in the paranal's european southern observatory in Chile. Wasp 76b is in the pisces constellation and orbits an f-type star 31BD-01316 or Wasp 76 what makes this planet so interesting is that it is a tidally locked planet and is almost as big as Jupiter with 92 percent the mass of Jupiter this planet is far from an ideal vacation spot as the planet's equilibrium temperature is around 1,920 degrees celsius or 3,488 degrees Fahrenheit and because only one side of the planet

 is constantly facing its parent star the temperature on the sun-facing surface gets around 2,500 degrees celsius or 4,532 degrees Fahrenheit that temperature is enough to vaporize iron yes you heard that right this is not melting iron this is iron becoming a gas and if extreme heat wasn't enough the star-facing side of Wasp-76b is roasted by radiation that is thousands of times more intense than what earth receives from the sun the opposite side is not pleasant either the temperature on the dark side is around 1 000 degrees celsius which is still cool enough to condense iron do you remember what school taught you about why rain happens now you know what got this planet on this list as the powerful winds carry iron vapor to the side of the planet facing away from the star it begins to cool down to be honest cooling down is a relative term here if you can consider a thousand degrees temperature cold still it's cold enough to condense iron vapor into hot molten iron droplets which then bombard the surface of the darker side of the planet it's like molten bullets firing from the sky the key clue that allowed astronomers to discover the presence of these iron rains came when the espresso instrument was

 used to investigate wasp 76b's atmosphere and no traces of the element were found on one side of this world wasp 76b isn't the only planet that experiences nightmare reigns of this nature however not every astronomer and physicist is convinced that such a phenomenon can happen and the jury is still out if molten iron does rain on the surface of wasp 76b do you dare to go there and find out for yourself crystal rain death trap looking through a telescope you may find serenity in observing hd189733b from far away this beautiful big

 ball resembles a blue icy marble

 however no planets on this list fits the phrase looks can be deceiving better than HD18973b the gas giant is only 63 light years away from earth and though its blue color may allure you the planet is nothing but hostile to life even its blue atmosphere's hue is the result of a horrific phenomenon that is not that different from the condensing iron droplets on wasp 76b the blue atmosphere of hd189733b is most likely made up of clouds of molten glass just like Wasp 76b. HD189733b is a scorching ball of fire but for a different reason

 this planet is so close to its stars that it can complete a round of its orbit in a mere 2.2 earth days yes i said star because HD189733b is not one star but a binary system this is why the weather on this planet is maniacally horrendous located in the constellation of Vulpecula this planet was discovered orbiting the star HD189733 on October 5th 2005 by french astronomers.

 One of the first observations they made was that winds blow up to 5,400 miles per hour on this planet that is two kilometers per second or three times the speed of sound obviously this much speed means that chunks of rocks get whipped up in the sky melt due to the extreme temperature because of the proximity to the star and then rain down in the molten form of glass if you managed to travel to the surface of this planet it would be like getting caught in a super powerful tornado while being surrounded by shards of glass giving you a death of a thousand cots but wait there's more the supersonic winds of this planet also cause the exoplanet's glass rains to arc sideways towards the ground rather than just falling they pick up silica particles and turn them into microscopic projectiles however this death trap of weather is just a small portion of the answer to why astronomers are so interested in this exoplanet the giant exoplanet has been observed to possess an atmosphere that is surprisingly much larger than physicists would expect for such a world interestingly this extended atmosphere works to catch more of the considerable radiation hd189733b receives from its parent star thanks to its perilously close orbit meaning the giant planet experiences temperatures as high as 1700 degrees fahrenheit or 930 degrees celsius sadly because this exoplanet's atmosphere is catching so much concentrated radiation from the stars of the hd189733 binary system it is rapidly being stripped away to space and will be gone forever in some time the planet that re-birthed itself on the surface pun intended gliac-1132b resembles earth in many ways its radius is only slightly larger and so is its mass the planet is 4.5 billion years old

 which is also nearly the same as earth

 one can say gliace1132b is earth's brother from another mother however there's one thing that makes Gliese 1132 B strikingly different from earth Gliese 1132 B orbits a red dwarf quite closely and is located nearly 40 light years or 13 parsecs away from earth in constellation vela you've never heard of the Millennium Falcon should i have it's a ship that made the kessel run in less than 12 parsecs and when we say it orbits quite close to its star we mean it completes its orbit in only 1.6 earth days because of such intimacy with its star Gliese 1132 B is not the ideal planet to be considered as life-friendly as earth for the temperature on its surface is around 278 degrees fahrenheit or 137 degrees celsius this closeness with its star also means heavy radiation and due to that this exoplanet's atmosphere was unvarnished but recently astronomers have discovered an extraordinary phenomenon on Gliese 1132 B. Gliese 1132 the parent star of Gliese 1132 B is a red dwarf about 20 percent larger than our sun the lack of safe distance between these two causes a gravitational influence that creates intense tidal forces that squeeze and stretch the planet this flexing gives rise to violent volcanic activity and causes gas to rush to the planet's surface because of the new gases emerging from the volcanic activity all over the planet something impossible is happening these gases exhaled by the planet are building a second but brand new atmosphere while this exciting and unprecedented phenomenon is causing waves of exhilaration among the astrophysics community this resurgence of the atmosphere is providing astro geologists a unique opportunity to study the interior chemical composition of an exoplanet by proxy who knows maybe one day we can apply some of the findings to help our planet's atmosphere the planet with a tail Kepler-10b was the first rocky exoplanet discovered by the Kepler space telescope on January 10 2011. if you aren't aware of nasa's Kepler mission the space telescope aimed to discover more earth-like planets by capturing them when they pass in front of their host stars with a radius of about one and a half

 earths and a mass of nearly four earths

 Kepler-10b is as they say right in the face of its host star for comparison Kepler-10b orbits its star at a distance that is merely a twentieth of the gap between our sun and mercury oh boy that would be a hoot precisely more than thirteen hundred degrees celsius or nearly twenty four hundred degrees fahrenheit like Wasp 76b Kepler-10b is tidally locked and creates molten droplets of iron and silicates in a way if you combine wasp 76b and hd189733b and then you get the monstrous weather of Kepler-10b to add to this hellish nightmare Kepler-10b also has its surface covered in lava so think Mustafar but way way worse but as Kepler-10b is much smaller than the other two concerned planets like liace 1132b the harsh radiation from its host star has washed away the atmosphere from the planet therefore there are no planetary winds to carry the molten iron to the dark side of the planet instead they are blown clear away from its surface by stellar winds which creates a spectacular fiery trail or tail since the discovery of Kepler-10b we have found more similar planets like Kepler-78b which is even closer to its host star than Kepler-10b how these exoplanets have not been devoured by their host stars yet is sort of an enigma a planet of fire and ice cue the game of thrones theme oh wait we can't because of copyright issues but if there was a planet that may have inspired George RR Martin's fantasy series title it would be this one up salon andromeda b formerly named sapphire is located 44 light years away from our solar system in the constellation of andromeda the planet orbits the solar analog star upsilon andromedae a approximately every five days what is a solar analog star you ask well it's a star that is particularly similar to the sun upsilon andromedae b was discovered in june 1996 and was the first of the hot Jupiter's to be discovered as it is the innermost planet of its planetary system the tug of war between the gravity of this massive planet and its star has resulted in Upsilon Andromedae b being tidally locked with Upsilon Andromedae a the host star but unlike other tidally locked planets mentioned in this article up salon andromeda b has a radical difference in temperature between its night side and dayside the star-facing half of the planet experiences temperatures as high as almost 3 000 degrees fahrenheit or 1600 degrees celsius in contrast the darker side of the planet is significantly cooler averaging at minus 20 degrees celsius or minus four degrees fahrenheit this means if you try to jump from one hemisphere of this planet to the other it will be like jumping from the top of a glacier in Antarctica to a volcano in equatorial Africa but only worse and that is what makes this planet so unique and impossible as though we have found other massive tidally locked planets in the galaxy none of them have such extreme contrast in temperatures between their night side and day side physicists believe that the reason this exoplanet experiences such a radical difference in temperature could be due to the tremendous size of its parent star Upsilon Andromedae a however there is also a possibility that this exceptional phenomenon is the outcome of the star possessing a hot spot almost directly overhead this exoplanet so which of these planets astonished you most which of them would you wish to experience in person if you could tell us in the comments