Modern science fiction has brought us worlds of ice or fire or giant plants. However, actual science is a few steps ahead in terms of being unimaginable and downright weird.
In fact, scientists are constantly on the move to find new planets outside our own solar system. Recently, a team of scientists have rediscovered a planet formerly lost due to technological constraints. With a new method in scanning exoplanets, more "lost" planets can be rediscovered, if not the discovery of entirely new worlds.
Aside from the Hoths and Mustafars of the real universe, below are some planets that remind us of how little we actually know about the endless expanse of space. Here are four of the weirdest planets ever discovered:
Diamond Planets
PSR J1719-1438b is an exoplanet first discovered in August 2009. Aside from the "b", its name corresponds to the pulsar which the planet revolves around. Two years later, in August 2011, its existence was confirmed. As a high-pressure body moving around a rapidly rotating neutron star, its carbon content was compressed - turning the actual planet into a huge chunk of diamond.
Another candidate in the diamond planet category is the 55 Cancri e, one of the first super-Earths discovered rotating around a sun of its own. Eight times as massive and twice as large, the planet also known as Janssen is a carbon planet with scientists estimating a third of it being in diamond form.
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Light-Eating Planets
Most of us have been taught black clothes feel warmer because of all the light it absorbs. In the context of exoplanets, there have been known examples of bodies absorbing their native star's light instead of reflecting them off. WASP-12b is one of the darkest and the hottest exoplanets, mostly because its daytime side absorbs up to 94% of all light it receives from its star. It was first discovered back in 2008.
Three years, in 2011, an even darker planet was discovered. TrES-2b or Kepler-1b is largely similar to Jupiter, which is a gas giant, based on the exoplanet's size and mass. However, it reportedly reflects less than 1% of the light it receives.
The Oldest Living Planets
According to available dating methods, such as radiometric estimations, we now know that our own Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old. However, there is a planet that is almost three times as old as Earth. Officially tagged as PSR B1620-26 b, it is also known as "the Genesis planet" and "Methuselah," after the oldest character in the Bible. Believed to have been formed around a billion years after The Big Bang, it is now close to 13 billion years.
Following the PSR ancient planet is an entire system revolving around the star Kepler-444. In 2015, five terrestrial exoplanets were discovered by the NASA Kepler mission. The five bodies orbiting Kepler-444 are estimated to be about 11 billion years, still more than twice Earth's dated age.
A Planet That Defies Physics
Gliese 436b is an exoplanet around the same size as Neptune and orbiting its star 15 times closer than the distance between the Sun and Mercury. Although it should be going up in flames, its surface is covered in ice. But don't let that fool you, that ice remains solid even at 439 °C, four times higher than the boiling point of water.
Its extreme proximity to its star entails high gravitational forces, compressing the water vapor despite the intense heat. It completes an orbit around its star, Gliese 436b, in 2 days and 15.5 hours.
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