Exoplanet That Shouldn’t Exist Named the Most Reflective Planet Due to Its Metallic Clouds

Astronomers discovered the most reflective planet in the Solar System. The researchers said the ultra-hot extrasolar planet acts like a mirror due to its highly reflective metal clouds.

Exoplanet LTT9779 B - The Most Reflective Planet

Around 264 light-years from Earth, LTT9779 b reflects about 80% of the light from its parent star. Earth only reflects 30% of the sunlight that strikes it compared to LTT9779 b. The extremely hot LTT9779 b is the first exoplanet discovered that rivals Venus as the solar system's brightest planet; Venus has a thick layer of clouds that reflect about 75% of incident sunlight, Space.com reported.

The exoplanet is the largest known cosmic mirror since it is almost five times as wide as Earth. According to research co-author and Diego Portales University astronomer James Jenkins, picture a burning planet near its star with thick clouds of metal floating above and pouring titanium droplets down.

The exoplanet was discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in 2020 when it was on a two-year mission to the European Southern Observatory in Chile to measure the brightness of stars using the transit technique, per Washington Examiner. Its clouds are composed of titanium and silicates, which, when condensed to form a cloud, have a high albedo and a significant optical eclipse depth.

Vivien Parmentier, a researcher at France's Cote d'Azur Observatory and co-author of a new study in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, said the case was puzzling. However, they later realized they should consider the cloud formation like condensation in a bathroom after a hot shower. The hot water steams up the bathroom.

In the same way, the scorching stream of metal and silicate oversaturated the exoplanet's atmosphere until they formed metallic clouds. And these clouds "act like a mirror" that reflects the light away, said European Space Agency's Cheops project scientist Maximilian Guenther.

However, the amazing property of LTT9779b is not the only attribute that caught the astronomers' attention. The exoplanet is an additional illustration of a planetary kind that has confounded scientists for years and continues to be a mystery.

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Exoplanet LTT9779 B Should Have Never Existed

The planet is unique in various respects despite being around five times the size of Earth. Only exoplanets that are rocky planets half the size of Earth or gas giants ten times its size have been discovered that orbit their stars in less than 24 hours.

The "Neptune desert" is a place where planets of its size are not intended to exist, but LTT9779b happens to reside there.

According to Parmentier, it is a planet that shouldn't exist. They anticipate atmospheres on planets like these to be blasted away by their star, leaving only bare rock.

Guenther added that the metallic clouds of the planet keep its atmosphere from being blown away. According to him, it resembles a shield, as in the old "Star Trek" movies where the ships had shields surrounding them.

The study is "a big milestone" since it demonstrates how a planet the size of Neptune might endure in the Neptune desert, he continued. The discovery of such a planet led scientists to consider alternative hypotheses for the origin of these metal clouds.

The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.