The most unusual planets known at the moment

as scientists continue to explore the vast expanse of the universe they've made some incredible discoveries that have left them with more questions and answers from a scorching super Earth to a football-shaped world the exoplanet discoveries of 2022 are truly out of this world so hold on tight the future of exoplanet discoveries is looking brighter than ever one new type of exoplanets red dwarfs make up over 70 percent of all stars in space so in September of 2022 scientists decided to take a closer look at the small worlds orbiting them what they found was amazing new type of exoplanets that were made of half Rock and half water either in liquid or ice form the researchers suggested that these planets likely arose from Icy material and were born far away from their Stars past the ice line where surface temperatures are freezing but they later migrated closer in to where the astronomers detected them this discovery could have huge implications in the search for life in the cosmos though these planets are loaded with water they might not be covered in oceans who knows maybe one of them will be the next Earth 2.0 number 2 Jupiter size World Imagine a planet so massive and mysterious it's like a hidden Jupiter in our galaxy well we just discovered one of those orbiting a star just 379 light years away just we've named it the toi 2180b and it's got everyone talking why well for starters this planet takes a whopping 261 days to orbit its star which is much longer than most distant gas giants we've come across so far but that's not all the temperature on this world is surprisingly mild averaging at a balmy 170 degrees Fahrenheit for a comparison the temperature on Jupiter and Saturn is around minus 280 degrees just like a bridge between the giant exoplanets we found and are Jupiter but the question remains how did this planet get to be so different scientists are still trying to figure that out let's hope that we get some answers soon number three the Hulk Planet this world is a place where the surface is covered in molten magma and the year lasts just half a day welcome to toi 1075b an exoplanet that's been dubbed the planet oak by scientists located 200 light years away this super Earth is one of the most massive ever discovered its proximity to its parent stock causes its surface to reach scorching temperatures of 1922 degrees it's so hot that any form of water would evaporate instantly and the air would be filled with vaporized rocks but it's not just the heat that's impressive it's also its size toy 1075b is nearly 10 times the mass of Earth making it one of the most massive super Earths ever discovered but the mystery doesn't stop there the planet's orbit takes just 14 and a half hours making it one of the shortest orbital periods ever recorded for a planet of its eyes an exciting addition to our catalog number four three doomed planets astronomers made a shocking discovery of three planets that are circling in a dangerous dance next to the slowly fading Stars just a decade ago scientists never even imagined such planets could exist these gas giant planets similar in size to Jupiter orbit way too close to their slowly fading Stars they're basically Walking On The Edge take one of them for example dub toi 2337b its orbit will likely send it hurtling straight into the fiery arms of its host star in less than a million years well I won't be around then as these Stars enter their final days they're pulling in nearby planets like a black hole altering their orbits and potentially causing catastrophic collisions and as these planets get closer to their Stars their atmospheres heat up and swell leading to some mind-boggling differences in density five despite the Doom and Gloom studying these worlds could give us valuable insights into the evolution of our own solar system number five planet with a barium's atmosphere these are two hot blazing planets each with an atmosphere made of the heaviest element ever found in an exoplanet barium these planets known as waaf's 76b and was 121b our Ultra hot gas giants called super Jupiters that orbit incredibly close to their Stars these planets are basically like giant balls of fire with one side facing the star cooking at temperatures hot enough to vaporize iron and other metals but as the hot iron vapor is blown into the planet's cooler Nightside it turns into liquid and Falls as iron rain and these planets held a special surprise for us barium is a heavy metal about two and a half times as heavy as iron and yet scientists were able to detect it in the upper layers of these planets atmospheres this is truly a mystery and a puzzle we're still trying to solve imagine landing on a planet like this and looking at this rain of iron and the heavy barium in its Skies that would be awesomely horrifying number six the football planet get ready to have your mind blown space enthusiasts because we've just discovered the ultimate football shaped planet and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before meet wasp 103b the ultra hot exoplanet that's more than a thousand light years away from Earth this gas giant is so close to its parent star that its shape is being stretched by the intense gravitational forces but this isn't just a fun Shape Shifter it's also a valuable scientific discovery by studying the planet's passes across its star we were able to measure its deformation for the first time ever it's like taking a snapshot of a planet in motion and it's giving us insights into the extreme conditions that these planets can endure this is truly a great discovery number seven a zodiacal light are you ready for a cosmic ghost story scientists and high school students in China have uncovered a spooky phenomenon on three distant exoplanets it's called zodiacal life a glow that's similar to the one seen here on Earth during sunset this isn't just some Eerie light show it could hold clues about the makeup of these potentially habitable worlds imagine watching the sunset from a dark spot on earth and instead of Darkness a triangle of light appears that's zodiacal line it's caused by sunlight reflecting off dust particles that fill the solar system the remains of asteroids and comets a team of researchers analyzed 47 potential habitable exoplanets named kepler-69c Kepler 1229b and Kepler 395c all super Earths had signs of this life this discovery is more than just a spooky phenomenon it could reveal information about the presence of asteroids and comets in these exoplanet systems which could be difficult to detect otherwise so that's pretty neat number eight a planet with silicate clouds introducing VHS 1259b not a home video recording system but a strange and exotic World shrouded in mystery and wonder a place where the clouds are made of sand and the sky is forever red this isn't the stuff of Science Fiction but a real life discovery made by the Brilliant Minds at Nasa this is a brown dwarf exoplanet that's making waves in the astronomical Community it's way too massive for a planet nearly 20 times the size of Jupiter but it's not quite a star it's something in between a cosmic Enigma that defies definition but what's really crazy about VHS 1256b is its atmosphere scientists have discovered that the strange world is cloaked in thick clouds of silicate grains similar to sand it's the first time this kind of cloud has ever been detected on an exoplanet and it's discovery that sure to change the way we think about the universe and the possibilities of life beyond our world and there you have it folks the year 2022 was filled with Incredible discoveries and groundbreaking findings in the world of exoplanets but this is just the beginning as scientists and researchers continue to explore the vast expanse of space we can only imagine what other wonders await us so let's keep looking who knows what Secrets the stars hold for us next our universe is full of both amazing and terrifying things you already know about quasars black holes dark matter and so on but how about the horrors of space that you haven't even heard of would you like to visit the most bizarre worlds in the universe and it's not me who made this list but NASA themselves welcome to the Galaxy of Horrors NASA's awesome Halloween collection please join me on a journey to some planets and tell tell me which ones you would consider the most horrible buckle up our first destination is a gas giant called tress 2B it's located 750 light years away from us if we used a regular spaceship it would take us about 10 million years to get there trash 2B orbits a yellow dwarf a star similar to our sun it also weighs about 1.5 times more than Jupiter so what's so special about it well if you're afraid of the dark you definitely don't want to visit this place it's the planet of Eternal Night the darkest one of all the planets known to us but it's not that far from its Stars so why is that the thing is the surface of tress 2B reflects light even worse than coal does because of this it seems that there's no light at all if you were flying across the surface of this planet it would be like walking with a blindfold on your eyes oh wait actually there is some light an eerie deep red glow surrounds the surface of the planet this glow is created by the burning atmosphere which makes tress 2B a scorching Planet the air there is even hotter than lava oh but if you think that was bad let me show you the next place of our horror Journey NASA wasn't beating about the bush while nicknaming this one now we're not just talking about one planet but three at once they're also located quite far away 2300 light years from the sun we would have reached them by ship in about 35 million years all the planets are in the constellation Virgo and each is extremely light much lighter than the earth these three exoplanets are called Poltergeist dragger and fobator cool names huh it's because each of these planets is about to become a ghost soon the thing is they don't revolve around a star but around a pulsar pulsars are rotating neutron stars with an extremely powerful magnetic field in simple words these are the stars that exploded one day after the explosion they usually emit such a powerful pulse that it causes the star to rotate at an unimaginable speed several thousand rotations per second at the same time they constantly emit electromagnetic pulses that affect everything around them so you've probably already guessed what's happening with our zombie planets they're slowly gradually being destroyed under the gigantic influence of radiation one day they'll disappear Without a Trace ghost-like planets orbiting an undead star yeah Zombie World Is A fitting name it's also not surprising that scientists nicknamed this Pulsar Lich despite the Long official name well at least these guys stick together on their final dance this planet has a long name so bear with me hd189733b this gas giant is 65 light years away from us it would have taken around 1 million years to get there on a spaceship HD well this planet is slightly more massive than Jupiter and orbits its star an orange dwarf all alone at first glance it may seem friendly a pleasant blue color and curls on the surface kinda resembles a summer sky or foam on sea waves right oh looks are very deceptive my friend this planet has a pleasant cobalt blue color due to the hazy blow torched atmosphere this atmosphere contains silicates that condense when heated in other words the clouds on this planet have rain made of glass yes it rains hot glass shards here oh and if that's not enough there's a raging wind on the surface which is moving at a speed of 5400 miles per hour just to compare the fastest wind on Earth had a speed of 254 miles per hour about 20 times weaker and because of this hundreds of thousands of glass shards Rush horizontally across the planet's surface at Breakneck speed I really don't envy anyone who would want to try to land there by the way this isn't the only example of strange Reigns in our universe for example it rains molten iron on the planet dimidium or let's take so-called carbon planets their existence hasn't yet been proven but if they do exist there would be tons of black poisonous clouds and it would rain pure gasoline and hot liquid asphalt oh and also raindrops would explode upon touching the surface nothing special the next planet though is actually really strange it didn't just revolve around its star it lived inside the star this Cosmic Miracle is called koi 55b or kepler-70b this planet is very far away from us 4 000 light years it would take about 70 million years on a spaceship it's twice as light as Earth and fully rotates around its star in just a couple of hours a long time ago it was an ordinary Earth-like planet about the size of Jupiter it was peacefully and calmly orbiting its red dwarf star koi 55 but everything changed about 700 million years ago perhaps you've heard that in a couple billion years our sun will begin to expand into a huge star absorbing everything in its path well this is the fate of red dwarfs sooner or later the increase turning into incredibly hot blue giants the same thing happened with koi 55 this star began to increase in size and heat up in temperature gradually turning into a blue white giant it was ready to devour its nearest planets but koi 55b didn't care about it when the star reached it this planet just settled inside and moreover after some time it left its star simply returning to the new orbit how is that even possible life inside its star turned koi 55b into a red hot round Stone it's one of the hottest planets we've discovered so far the temperature on it reaches 12 000 degrees Fahrenheit it's hotter than the sun which is let me remind you an actual star and for some reason it's still alive and lives as if nothing happened unfortunately sooner or later the planet will disappear anyway it's slowly evaporating itself due to the incandescent atmosphere but still it somehow managed to survive the journey through the star which isn't typical for regular planets to put it mildly I envy this willpower however not all planets are so lucky some are gradually being destroyed by their stars and there is even an entire system among them this last planet is a sad loner it's located 870 light years away from us the journey by ship to it would take about 25 million years this planet is about 1.5 times more massive than Jupiter this is a very sad dark planet a doomed gas giant which is very similar to hot Jupiter orbits its star all along at the same time it's located so close to its star that its orbital period takes just one day of course because of this proximity the star gradually absorbs wasp 12b the scorching heat of the star is slowly destroying and devouring the planet's atmosphere the planet has only around 10 million years left but what's more interesting because of this stretching lost 12b acquired the shape of an egg it doesn't even resemble an actual planet anymore it's also very hot the surface temperature of the gas giant reaches 4 000 degrees Fahrenheit also a spectrograph of cosmic origin or cos for short found that the planet exchanges matter with its star they're located so close that they give each other part of their chemical elements this is a common phenomenon in closely spaced binary star systems but this is the first time scientists have seen this in a star planet relationship what a unique system to be honest if I was guaranteed complete Security I'd be excited to visit at least some of them what about you please let me know in the comments hey ready to test your knowledge of course you are you'll get one point for each correct answer so without further Ado the sun is yellow do you think this is a myth ask someone to draw a picture of the Sun and chances are you'll get a yellow or orange circle in the sky surprise the sun is not really yellow if you see it somewhere outside the Earth's atmosphere it'll look white how come according to NASA the Sun's temperature is the reason why it's white the sun consists of all colors mixed together so it appears to our eyes as wide then why do you think we see it as yellow or orange from Earth colored wavelengths which are yellow and orange are longer and they are the only ones that make it to our eyes the other short wavelength color sprawl in the atmosphere and the sky looks blue to US during the day for the same reason meteorites are hot as fire when they land on Earth what do you think myth or fact when people see a fireball around a meteorite they think it's super hot well this is a myth meteorites don't immediately land on Earth most of them have been in space for billions of years space has a cold environment just a few degrees above absolute zero cold you know but don't meteorites fall into the Earth in Flames how come the fireball is actually the air in front of the meteorite it is compressed by the super high speed of the meteorite the outside catches fire but that layer is burned off on impact as a result of landing on Earth as you would probably guess when they land the meteorites are a lukewarm at most but not as hot as lava one side of the moon is permanently in the dark do you think this is a myth or a fact this is a myth oh come on first the Sun and now the moon am I living a lie so people look at this guy and see only the bright side of the moon the reality is the earth shines equally on all sides of the Moon as it rotates and orbits the earth half of the moon is in Shadow and half gets sunshine similar to Earth that's not true similar to Earth it doesn't have a permanent Dark Side the logic is simple the moon orbits Earth but it also rotates on its own axis when you think about it we're always looking at the same side of the mode black holes take in everything that comes their way what is it myth or fact black holes don't have infinite mass and gravitational force but still no one really knows for sure what happens to the things pulled into them experts do know black holes do not have super gravity though let's imagine this if there was a black hole as big as the sun it wouldn't immediately eat the whole planet imagine black holes as vacuum cleaners it does draw in a cloud of dust near its range but other specks of dust remain where they are so even if there was a black hole replacing the sun all the planets would continue to orbit similarly they wouldn't go into the black hole if a star or something else got into the rain to the black hole only then would its gravity affect the star someone the signal bounces off a satellite is this a myth or a fact yep it's a myth or rather an urban legend or misconception you name it I mean there are some satellite phones but we you know regular people don't use those every day although your mobile phone works in a much different way when you call someone the nearest Tower connects you to the other person online this is why there are Tower connections huge networks of tower to Tower connections and hidden cables the moon has no gravity any guesses myth or fact this is an urban legend ask any astronaut you know if you don't know any just trust me there is footage proving that the moon has gravity when I say the moon has gravity don't think it's similar to the gravity on Earth that makes the apple fall the moon's gravity is only about 1 6 of Earth's how does it feel to walk on the surface of the Moon the second man on the moon Buzz Aldrin mentioned it's like moving in slow motion and quote perhaps not too far from a trampoline but without the springiness and instability end quote the sunset on Mars appears blue do you think this is a myth or a fact this is a fact magnificent sunsets the sky is filled with different shades of yellow now imagine this in blue according to NASA sunsets on Mars would look bluish watching them with bare eyes it's because of dust dust particles closer to the sun appear in blue tones there is something called moonquakes does it sound like a myth or a fact it's a fact Quakes happen on the Moon too and they're called moonquakes they have different features not really similar to the Quakes on Earth though a planet can be hot enough to vaporize rocks any guesses is this a myth or a fact this is a fact the temperature in this universe is indeed very high there's a planet the temperature of which is enough to melt and even vaporize rocks it's two times bigger than the earth this super Earth is similar to our planet but it is way too hot experts believe that it possibly has oceans of lava and clouds that rain molten rock one million Earths can fit inside the sun do you think this is a myth or a fact this is a fact although the sun is one of more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way which is at the heart of our solar system it can fit one million Earths yeah it looks small when we see it from here but it's only because it's so far away from Earth all comets have tails myth or fat it's true some comets simply don't show their Tales they look like someone threw a snowball into space space is completely silent what do you say I knew it was too easy this is a fact space doesn't have an atmosphere so there's no way to hear any sound there Mercury is the hottest planet myth or fact Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun so this should be a fact huh no not really Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system and the second planet from the Sun but the distance from the sun isn't what defies the temperature the heat depends on the atmosphere so Venus's atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide and some nitrogen this combination makes the atmosphere very thick when I say thick I mean it throughout the year the surface of Venus maintains a temperature of around 860 degrees Fahrenheit Mercury surface resembles the temperature of a desert but is much higher in terms of temperature variations Venus spins clockwise what do you say this is a fact Venus spins in the opposite direction compared to many other planets the sun rises in the west and its rotation is very slow Venus needs 225 Earth days to complete its spinning around the Sun the planet's distance from the Sun affects the duration of one rotation it's too close to the Sun and the sun has a strong noticeable pull on the planets Prince on the moon can stay there for millions of years do you think this is a fact or a myth fact checked the moon has no atmosphere so there's no wind blowing and without the wind there's no way to erase the footprints without any intervention so how many points did you get let me know in the comments [Music] so check this out astronomers have discovered an exoplanet they're calling super Saturn it's got Rings over an auy an au is the astronomical unit the distance between the Sun to the Earth that's an incredibly huge ring system hence its name supersatured is being called mamajex object after the astronomer who led the team to whom we owe the discovery Professor Eric mamajac of Rochester University in New York found super Saturn while scouring through data downloaded from wide angle Transit observations wasp is the acronym for wide angle search for exoplanets it's an ingenious project developed in the year 2000 by astronomers at Queen's University in Belfast Northern Ireland and Saint Andrews University in Scotland using four telescopes the CCD video cameras on the Scopes record the slight dimming of Starlight caused by objects passing in front of stars this is called the transit method of exoplanet detection so for example the planet Venus transits across our view of the Sun every couple hundred years a black dot the silhouette of Venus is visible Crossing in front of the Sun as Venus passes between our line of sight and the sun this tiny Eclipse causes the amount of sunlight coming to Earth to be reduced by a minuscule amount also known as teeny tiny the same is true for all the stars in the Milky Way that have planets going around them exoplanetary transits in front of stars must be in direct line of sight with Earth for the Starlight to be dim such transits do not occur very often that's why thousands of stars must be looked at simultaneously for as long of a duration as possible between four and eight hours a night wasp was created to stare continuously at as wide of a range of stars as possible maybe one of them would show an exoplanet Transit that translates into a lot of data being produced about 40 gigabytes per viewing session computer scientists at Leicester university in England developed a computer program to store the data and generate photometric graphs of the light intensity of each star open University also in England joined the WASP project took this data and made it available for research by astronomers worldwide the graphs of the intensity of Starlight show that changes in its brightness are called light curves these graphs have two axes one is in the timeline axis the other one is the intensity of light as the object considered an exoplanet though it could also be a brown dwarf star crosses in front of the star the timeline axis keeps track of how swiftly it is moving it tells us how close the object is to the star while the brightness axis keeps track of how much the Starlight dims this way we can find out how large the object is now obviously big objects will dim the light more and be easier to detect at present earth-based equipment is not sensitive enough to measure the dimming caused by planets as small as Earth Neptune's size and larger ones are the limit for wasp however the James Webb Space Telescope which is now in operation has a much greater sensitivity and will be able to resolve the transits of earth-sized exoplanets now I know you want me to get to Super Saturn but there's something else you should be familiar with before we get there if the exoplanet has an atmosphere or in the case of super Saturn a ring system The Starlight from the Star the planet is transiting will shine through the atmosphere or ring system and that can be detected too the light Curve will show less dimming in the photometric data because not all the Starlight is being blocked so some light is still getting through the atmosphere or rings this is important because it gives astronomers a reading of the atmosphere the James Webb Space Telescope is fitted with spectroscopes that can determine the gas content of the transiting exoplanet atmospheres oxygen methane carbon Etc the WASP project has been really catching on there's a super wasp project now consisting of wasp North and a wasp South one looks at the sky above the northern hemisphere the other looks at the sky above the southern hemisphere there's also a Next Generation Transit survey ngts based on the WASP project it's automated so astronomers don't have to stay up all night sipping coffee but they can if they want to located at the European Southern observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile the ngts scans millions of stars and has discovered over a hundred exoplanets down to a size as small as three times the size of Earth ngts has started a Planet Hunters Club on social media citizen scientists can search the online database of light curves and perhaps discover your very own exoplanet what had been a strictly British effort started by one or two astronomers is now a worldwide phenomenon with the ability to read the spectroscopic signatures of atmospheric gases during exoplanet transits a new idea emerged techno signatures that is specifically identifying gases in exoplanet atmospheres that are produced by civilizations the James Webb Space Telescope can do this gases from pollution such as chlorofluorocarbon CFCs can be seen spectroscopically if present tritium from Fusion reactions if they have them can also be detected along with heat patterns from cities on the planet surfaces techno signatures is a recent concept that originated after the WASP project started who knows what it will turn up foreign now let's get back to Super Saturn the star that supersaturn orbits is j1407 a small dim sun-like pre-mane sequence star of the 13th magnitude huh well the human eye can only see stars to about the sixth magnitude and each magnitude is two and a half times dimmer than the previous one so it's not an exceptional star just another telescopic star out there in the Scorpius Centaur region of the night sky j1407 is a young star that hasn't yet settled into its stable long duration phase this is important because super Saturn officially j1407b is showing signs of having a ring system in an early stage of development super Saturn's light curve was tucked away in the mountain of data from the super wasp project Professor Eric mamijak and his associate Matthew Kenworthy of Leicester University studied the data thoroughly and produced a detailed report on it knowledge depends on good data the horizontal axis of j1407b's light curve the time axis is what's causing all the hubbub it took supersaturn weeks to Transit across in front of its parent star 56 days to be exact planetary ring systems that we are familiar with in our solar system orbit right around the equators of the gas giant planets and are very thin from only a few meters thick down to a few centimeters in a telescope Saturn's rings will seem to disappear when the planet is at zero inclination toward Earth Saturn must be inclined at an angle in relation to Earth to see Saturn's beautiful ring system it's something everyone should make a point of seeing Saturn in a telescope if super Saturn's rings block most of the light from j1407 for 56 days it means that the planet had to be orbiting at a steep inclination to its start if it were at zero inclination we wouldn't see the Rings blocking any line therefore the orbital time could be determined 10 years minimum to 200 years if the orbit is highly elliptical the super Planet itself is calculated to be 24 times the mass of Jupiter which means that if it is gaseous it could be a brown dwarf star supersaturn appears to have a mars-sized object orbiting around it because there is a huge gap in the rings that was most probably cleared out by a large object the Cassini division in the rings of Saturn is where the moon mimus has cleared out a path through Saturn's rings the light curve of super Saturn has only been observed once all the exoplanet detection systems are keeping an eye out for it to come back around j1407 no one knows when that will occur some astronomers have suggested that j1407b is a brown dwarf star system in itself merely passing in front of but not connected to Star j1407 an orbital reappearance of super Saturn would disprove that conjecture the center region of super Saturn blocked out all the light from its primary star this is what indicates that the ring system is new and in an early developmental phase over time the very dense ring Mass close to the planet is expected to thin as all this matter gets absorbed into the planet or ejected into space this is what has happened with our Solar System's gas giant planets the mamajek object is a shocker never before or since has a light curve been detected like super Saturns supersaturn has added a new chapter to our understanding of the formation of ring systems so here's to you super Saturn hope to see you again soon now Mercury is the planet that's usually closest to Earth does that surprise you did me Venus certainly gets closer to us than Mercury it can be as close as 25 million miles after all Venus is the second planet from the Sun and Earth is the third even Mars gets closer to Earth and Mercury the red planet can come as close to our home as 35 million miles as it will in the year 2287. I won't be around for that the average distance from Earth to Mercury is 48 million miles but Mercury is still usually the closest planet to Earth that's because Venus is usually somewhere on the other side of the Sun for 112 days and Mars is usually far away in its highly elliptical almost two-year long orbit that leaves Mercury zipping between the Earth and the Sun every 44 days and thus usually closer to Earth than either Venus or Mars hey good trivia question to pull on your friends isn't it 22 spacecraft have successfully flown to Venus and over 30 spacecraft have flown to Mars but only two have ever gone to Mercury so what's so hard about going there well it has to do with the Sun Mercury is not only the planet that is usually closest to Earth it is also the planet that is always closest to the Sun 28.6 million miles close to be precise being that close to the Sun creates navigational challenges to put it mildly any spacecraft going to Mercury gets accelerated by the tremendous gravitational pull of the Sun the spacecraft will be moving too fast to go into orbit around Mercury that's why the first spacecraft that went to Mercury the USA's Mariner 10 merely flew by mercury three times but made no attempt to achieve orbit around Mercury the only other ship to go to Mercury the USA's messenger spacecraft took six and a half years to get there now that's a trip messenger did achieve orbit for a period of four years before finally running out of fuel and crashing onto the surface of mercury on April 20th 2015. many other spacecraft have flown to Jupiter in about the same time or less than it took Messenger to go to Mercury the hang up is the deceleration of the spacecraft quite simply it takes too much onboard fuel supply to fire the engines in the reverse Direction and break the speed of the ship against the sun's great gravity slowing down sufficiently to get into orbit around Mercury is a no-go using rocket power some other way had to be found to slow messenger down a way that didn't use much or any fuel messenger was a hefty 2400 pounds or so loaded with nine pieces of state-of-the-art scientific equipment now 55 percent of the total weight or about 1300 pounds was fuel but this fuel would not be used to slow the spacecraft down the fuel would be used for five engine Burns associated with gravity assists and also for orbital adjustments once messenger got to Mercury now gravity assists uses the gravity of a planet and the planet's orbital velocity to either speed up or slow down a spacecraft if the ship approaches a planet at a forward moving angle that is an angle in the direction the planet is revolving around the Sun then both the planet's gravity and the orbital velocity of the planet give the spacecraft a slingshot boost greatly increasing the speed of the craft and sending it off in a different direction this boost in speed can be added to by the spacecraft firing its rocket engines at just the right time both of America's Voyager probes use Jupiter's massive gravity to slingshot them to the outer gas giant planets and eventually out of the solar system assists can also be used to slow down a spacecraft as in the case of messenger by entering a planet's orbital path ahead of the planet the planet's gravity pulls back on the spacecraft and slows it down an engine burn is necessary at this time to escape the orbital path of the planet messenger performed one gravity assist flyby of Earth two gravity assist flybys of Venus and three gravity flybys of mercury only then had messenger been slowed enough to enter into orbit around Mercury the probe traveled an astounding 5 billion miles to get to Mercury from Earth that's farther than Pluto is away from Earth at its most distant the name messenger is an acronym almost as clever as its intricate flight path to Mercury because Mercury is the fastest moving Planet the ancient Greeks appointed Mercury as the messenger of Olympus news traveled fast even back then messenger really stands for mercury surface space environment geochemistry and ranging what do you think do they have a contest to come up with that now the good news is there's another mission to Mercury underway right now it is a combined Essa jaxa space mission that is bringing two orbiting satellites to Mercury the mission doesn't use an acronym for its spacecraft it has a real name Betty Colombo no it's not a cartoon character Dr Giuseppe Colombo after whom the spacecraft is named was an Italian mathematician and professor of Applied mechanics he worked with NASA on the Mariner 10 mission to Mercury beppy is Giuseppe's childhood nickname which everyone knew and loved him by NASA had been content with one flyby of mercury the first ever but Professor beppy calculated that with a slight adjustment of the flight path to enable a gravity assist at Venus Mariner 10 could fly by Mercury again and again on different orbits around the Sun thanks to beppy NASA got three flybys of mercury for the price of one Betty Colombo the spacecraft is scheduled to perform nine gravity assist flybys one at Earth two at Venus and six at Mercury itself each planetary deceleration slows beppy Colombo relative to the speed Mercury is moving around the Sun this will allow for orbital insertion otherwise beppy Colombo would head off into the sun now what's an orbit around Mercury Betty Colombo's Mercury transfer module or MTM for short will release two satellites one European the mpo Mercury planetary Orbiter and one Japanese the Mio Mercury magnetospheric Orbiter both are expected to orbit Mercury for one year altogether the MCS Mercury composite spacecraft consists of the mpo the Mio the MTM and mosif which protects the spacecraft from the Sun and houses the electronics for Mio this alphabet soup of mission components highlights the other reason it is difficult to get to Mercury after six gravity assist slowdowns six engine Burns 18 orbits around the Sun six and a half years of travel time and 9 billion miles of distance you have to bring a tailored complex of equipment it's like that mountain picnic you'd like to go on you can't just drive there you have to hike a long way up a tricky Mountain Trail and bring along insect repellent sunscreen and your hat oh and lunch and beverages it's not easy bippo Colombo has packed it all including lunch yeah not really the design is incredibly complex nothing can face the Sun not even the solar panels the solar panels must be kept turned almost to a right angle to the Sun or the heat and particle flux will corrode the solar cells and without electricity you have nothing therefore at right angles to the Sun the solar panels must be extra long as if there were only a little bit of sunshine Pepe's solar panels are 50 feet long the sun shield must remain gyroscopically aligned towards the Sun so that all instruments are always in the shade but still have a line of sight to what each is meant to Monitor and there are a lot of instruments five in the jaxa Orbiter and 11 in the Essa Orbiter it's one amazing picnic anyway the science objectives are meant to add to what we have learned from the previous two missions to Mercury the data collected by Betty Colombo will enable scientists to study the planet's interior and composition along with Mercury's geology and surface morphology Mercury's magnetic fields formation and evolutionary history the planet's solar wind interactions and overall environment as a metal Rich planet Mercury May hold a vast wealth of minerals that messenger failed to detect Bebe Colombo launched in October 2018 and still has a long way to go before it goes into orbit around Mercury however beppy has already flown past Mercury and returned new photographs the European Space Agency is excited about its first hot Mission all of the s's previous missions have been cold missions to objects further out into space such as Mars the asteroid belt Comet Rendezvous and elsewhere far out in the solar system well all I can say is best wishes to Betty Colombo let's hope all goes well on its 800 degrees Fahrenheit mission to Mercury let's hope that Mercury's long tail of exosphere gases sodium magnesium and potassium blown off the planet's surface by the solar wind don't fog up the lenses or coat the solar panels have a nice time Ciao Baby you take off from Earth and park your spacecraft somewhere near the moon you're now almost 240 000 miles away from your home planet that's almost 100 widths of the United States now you take out a giant hammer and an enormous chisel using the robotic arms of your spaceship you place the Chisel at the Earth's north pole and strike its head with the hammer Earth splits open like an eggshell and you see it another planet it's there and it's hiding inside our planet like a yolk in an egg you'd need to go back in time 4.5 billion years to find out how it got there this beautiful nebula will soon become our solar system colored dust and various space debris are slowly coming closer toward the Common Center soon this jigsaw puzzle of debris becomes too heavy and dense the temperature inside the giant is rising soon it gets so high that it triggers a nuclear chain reaction Another Second and Bam there's an explosion so powerful that the shock waves travel far into dark space and the blinding Flash from this blast can be seen from the other side of the Milky Way galaxy when the dust clears a little you can see that a bright light is still shining at the very center of the explosion this newborn star is the sun it weighs as much as 333 000 Earths if the sun was a bucket you'd need 1.3 million earth-sized planets to fill it you are interested in a small object over there 93 million miles away from the Sun this pile of rocks and hot lava is Earth right now the planet is busy forming its core while the oceans of lava are gradually cooling down but a few tens of million years after the sun's birth you notice a strange object hurtling toward Earth it's Thea this small planet was born at about the same time as Earth and now it's following a crazy spiral trajectory at enormous speed scientists believe Thea was kind of a ball Jupiter and Venus played with Venus was pulling Thea in One Direction then Big Brother Jupiter pulled it back but the sun makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system that's why the star sets its own rules it makes Thea move in almost the same orbit as Earth so they inevitably come closer and closer to each other until they become next door neighbors we see that Thea is the size of Mars and as wide as the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Portugal [Music] a collision can't be avoided Thea is traveling toward Earth at nearly 9 000 miles per hour that's 11 times faster than the speed of sound if the smaller Planet crashes into Earth at a particular angle Earth will most likely be torn apart as well as Thea itself the Collision will cause a huge blast visible on other planets even on a bright day nothing will be left but some burning dust and debris even if Thea touches Earth only lightly it'll still knock out a chunk of our planet the size of Australia but the collision with Thea happens at a perfect 45 degree angle it strikes the Earth at tremendous speed the explosion literally vaporizes huge amounts of rock and the shock wave sends the remaining debris into Earth's orbit a huge crater is formed at the impact site soon it gets filled with boiling lava the remnants of Thea and the ejected fragments of earth begin to orbit our planet according to one version these fragments form Two Moons at first they travel together but one day they get too close to each other and Collide forming one large space body the other Theory claims that all the shards start being pulled by the remnants of Thea some time later they form the moon as we now know it at that point in the past though it's just Red Hot Rock and lava the collision at this angle slightly tilts our planet and accelerates its rotation it's because of Thea that we have different seasons and 24 hours in a day Earth has lithospheric plates these are enormous solid pieces that make up the crust of our planet after the collision with Thea they start to break and crack it causes carbon a primary component of all known life on Earth to start moving all over our planet so Earth gets some kind of metabolism after a few hundred million years the first living creatures start to appear on our planet over nearly 4 billion years simple single-celled organisms have been evolving into the life you see today according to scientists such a collision is a very rare event the probability that somewhere out there there's a planet like ours that has survived the same catastrophe is extremely small this may be the reason why we are yet to find traces of other civilizations out there in space meanwhile the remains of Thea are still here on Earth of course it doesn't look like an entire planet stuck inside our own most of the fragments have melted and blended into the Earth's crust if you take the top layer off our planet you'll see two huge lava blobs the size of entire continents they're right below Africa and the Pacific Ocean presumably these are the remains of Thea they didn't mix with Earth's mantle because of different densities it's like mixing water and oil in a glass the oil will always float up over the water and create an even layer on top of it but if you raise those lava patches up to the surface they'd be 100 times higher than Mount Everest other remains of Thea might be on the moon the Apollo space missions brought back many soil samples for analysis scientists have concluded that the Moon is very similar to Earth and structure people could drill deep down and take samples there then they'd analyze the blobs from Earth if their structure matched it'd be 100 proof that Thea did hit Earth 4.5 billion years ago and that's how he got the Moon but for the time being Thea remains somewhat mysterious scientists are still not sure that the planet actually existed the whole idea perfectly fits the model of the moon's creation but in fact this incredible Collision may have never happened hop on the bright side of life together with our brand new teas hoodies and more click the link to pick your choice now you travel 41 light years away from Earth to the Planet 55 cancri e it's about twice the size of Earth and eight times heavier you take out your giant hammer again and use it to hit the Chisel the planet cracks and you see it's a giant diamond the temperature on this planet is tens of times higher than that of earth and its soil is rich in carbon the heat puts a lot of pressure on this carbon its structure changes first it turns into graphite some more pressure and graphite turns into diamond on Earth diamonds form at depths below 60 miles where the pressure is 50 000 times greater than on the surface the temperatures there rise over a thousand degrees which is as hot as fire diamonds are rejected closer to the surface in volcanic eruptions still people have to dig mines 1500 feet deep to find these beautiful gems the golden jubilee diamond is the biggest cut and faceted diamond on Earth it weighs as much as a chocolate bar and is the size of a hamster its price is about 12 million dollars now imagine a diamond the size of an entire planet you decide to fly back to the solar system your destination is Jupiter's moon Europa it's as wide as the distance between Seattle and Houston and its mass is less than one percent the mass of Earth its surface is enclosed in an icy crust it's about 19 miles thick but what if you crack this crust with your giant hammer wow Europa is completely covered in water it's freezing here three times colder than at the North Pole on Earth the water turns into ice almost instantly but the ocean beneath the surface is still liquid Europa interacts with Jupiter gravitationally just like the moon with Earth this creates tidal forces and heats europa's core the core melts the ice around it the result is a huge ocean two to three times larger than all of Earth's oceans combined scientists believe that water is the basis of life it may mean that life may exist on Europa there could be thermal Springs just like at the bottom of our oceans the water there is probably much warmer and even though the pressure and temperature in such places are likely to be extreme simple bacteria may live there Europa is almost the same age as Earth this means there's been enough time for living organisms to appear and evolve who knows maybe some Advanced civilization is already blooming under this crust of ice they may be building big cities and dreaming of conquering space right now but the only thing people can do at the moment is send a probe to Europa and find out if life is possible there [Music] t-r-e-s-2b or not to be is a planet where night never ends and it's not your regular night with stars shining in the beautiful Skies here it's pitch dark and scorching high tre-s-2b is a gas giant roughly one and a half times more massive than Jupiter and its surface absorbs light better than charcoal it might also have a faint dark red glow because of its burning air which is as hot as fresh lava lovely in the star system of 55 cancri there are five planets four of which are gas giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn but the fifth one or rather the first because it's closest to the star is different in a most horrible way 55 cancri e is so close to its Sun that half the planet's surface is a literal ocean of molten lava the other half is an eternal Darkness because it never sees the sun the planet is always turned to its star on one side and between the scorching and the dark there's the Twilight Zone a thin strip of gloomy nothingness that's a getaway spot hd189377 B well I'm not going to say that again is the only exoplanet in the orbit of its star and at first glance it looks quite pretty blue and white swirls making up wondrous patterns on the surface but these Pleasant colors actually come from hard silicate particles in the planet's atmosphere which means it rains glass here but the worst is that winds reach the speed of 5400 miles per hour or almost Mach 7. well for comparison the fastest wind speed on Earth was 254 miles per hour over 20 times less thus the glass falling from the sky travels horizontally at Hypersonic speeds shredding everything in its bath better duck the next system whose name I won't even try to pronounce this one has three exoplanets which are all being slowly destroyed by their own star it happens because that star is not a regular it's a pulsar a rapidly spinning core of an exploded star it creates powerful electromagnetic pulses in several directions while rotating at several thousand times per second as a result the planets orbiting this deceased star are slowly being eaten away and will eventually disappear entirely Kepler 70. hey I can say that one is a hot blue dwarf star that exploded into a red giant some 18 million years ago at the time it was orbited by at least two planets the closer of which was a jupiter-like gas giant its name was kepler-70b and it still exists but the overgrown star consumed it and transformed it into a blazing hot Rocky world right now it's one of the hottest planets ever discovered its temperature is higher than the surface of our sun it was lucky to survive spending time inside the star but it's evaporating now and will probably be no more in the near future wasp 12b is one of the weirdest and saddest planets out there the enormous gravity of its star combined with the planets consisting mostly of gas result in the star slowly devouring its Protege uh so pal like what's eating you my mother wasp 12b has already taken the form of an egg stretched toward its merciless sun and it's unable to do anything with its condition in another 10 million years the planet will inevitably succumb to the voracious star's appetite hey you asked if you ever wondered what it's like to walk on eyes and hot coals at the same time policy 436b is a planet that would give you a vivid example being extremely close to its Sun the Neptune size exoplanet boasts temperatures hotter than a blazing oven and yet it's covered in eyes which burns incessantly this ice is much denser due to the enormous gravity of the planet staying solid even under extreme conditions and not melting away no list of frightening worlds could do without mentioning Venus the Earth's evil twin the second planet from the sun has an atmosphere so thick and full of clouds that its surface is much hotter than that of mercury volcanic eruptions constantly thrash Venus its gravity is almost a hundred times stronger than ours and those clouds I mentioned are not made of water but of sulfuric acid which condenses and rains down on the ground adding to The Inferno but even if you were Brave or crazy enough to try to pass through these clouds you probably couldn't the winds up there are as strong as some of the most powerful hurricanes back on Earth here we have a very long name for a very very cold Planet although the host star is not too far away it's a small and rather cool Red Dwarf whose light in heat barely even reached the planet the temperatures out there fall as low as minus 370 degrees which is only marginally warmer than absolute zero the exoplanet is thus dark gloomy and covered in Eternal eyes that never thaws I thought I saw that thumbworth still if it has a rocky core it might generate some heat so there's a chance that deep below the Frozen surface some unknown alien things might lurk dominium located roughly 50 light years away from our solar system is a planet hostile to any living thing on many accounts it's tidally locked to its sun which means one of its sides is always facing the star while the other is always turned away the hot side is heated to over 1800 degrees perpetually blown over with winds reaching 600 miles per hour and that's winter well actually I don't know that despite dimidium being a gas giant it has a large amount of iron in it which melts and evaporates in the atmosphere creating clouds and when those cool down they fall on the surface in the infernal reign of molten iron that'll test your metal oxygen is usually viewed as an element that might bring life to a planet but this is definitely not the case for Osiris scientists were shocked to find oxygen on this planet or rather around it because it's eight times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun this extreme distance makes Osiris a living Melting Pot where anything that could burn will it's also responsible for a very short orbit of the planet around the star a year on Osiris is just three and a half days on Earth to boot the atmosphere of the planet is constantly blown and melted away by the heat from its Sun vacation nah let's keep looking karate x03b is neither is hot nor as cold as some of the others on this list but it's terrifying in its own more Insidious way it's a gas giant similar in size to Jupiter yet 20 times denser this makes this exoplanet's gravity way down on everything on its surface 50 times more than it would on Earth stepping on it would be your ultimate Doom because you'd be immediately crushed by the density of its atmosphere karate 7B is another oven-like world its day-to-day temperature is over 4000 degrees combined with the rocky surface it presents an infernal landscape the rocks on the ground bubble and boil evaporating in the atmosphere where they cool down and eventually fall back on the surface in a brimstone rain the saddest thing about karate 7B is that it might have once been a gas giant whose atmosphere melted away from the heat leaving only the scorched core you're on a spaceship flying through outer space at a speed of 180 000 miles per second this is almost the speed of light make yourself comfortable because the voyage is going to be long it will last a little more than 90 years it's better to use a cryo capsule to not get bored in short you need to fly for almost a century at the speed of light to get to a mysterious exoplanet that scientists have recently discovered they have found many planets in the last few years but this one can help in the search for extraterrestrial life the planet looks like a dark blue ball and has a complex technical name consisting of letters and numbers it's about the size of Neptune and orbiting around a little star of Class M or in simple words around a red dwarf the planet is eight times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun but this doesn't mean that fiery layers of magma cover the surface of this world the temperature on this exoplanet is pretty low and similar to Earth's that's because the Red Dwarf is not as hot as our sun but the most exciting thing is that the atmosphere of this space object consists of water vapor or helium or helium hydrogen scientists don't know for sure so they actively observe it but if there is water in its atmosphere then life can exist it's unlikely we will discover some big creatures but even microscopic bacteria would be a big sensation another reason why scientists keep their eyes on this planet is its origin if they find out what the planet's atmosphere is made of they'll understand how such objects can form around red dwarfs this will be another little brick of understanding of how the universe works even if they discover Life on this strange Planet it will be impossible to transport it from there for us to study fortunately there's another massive object near Earth where microbes can live and it's located inside our solar system 2020 scientists detected a strange gaseous substance in Venus's atmosphere these were chemical residues of phosphine this is a significant finding because phosphine exists on Earth near some microbes they've recently discovered phosphine in Penguins bodies many people started to put out theories that these animals came to us from Venus but of course this is not true you can also find this substance among swamps and mud so it was a big surprise when they found residual phosphine Parts on another planet it's weird since life on Venus's surface most likely cannot exist the temperature and pressure on the planet are just too high but high up in the sky of Venus the conditions are not so terrible perhaps some microbes live there but scientists also know that volcanoes often erupt there a chemical trace of phosphine may appear as a result of these eruptions if this is the real reason for the appearance of phosphine they probably won't find any life now they're spending a lot of money on the study of this planet but let's go back to deep space over the past 20 years scientists have been finding exoplanets far and not too far from us some of them orbit around dwarfs and big stars but some planets exist entirely alone they don't belong to the orbit of any Star they are abandoned in cold outer space another exciting thing is that scientists haven't found a planetary system similar to our solar one all distant exoplanets are located at different distances from their Stars their sizes and masses are not like those that our planets have we call them exoplanets since they're beyond our solar system some other fascinating space objects are super Earths if some planet weighs from 2 to 10 Earth masses is two times bigger and gets energy from a star it's called a super Earth no more similarities with our home super Earth can consist of Gas Rocks water ice fire acid glass or diamonds scientists haven't yet found a super Earth with ideal conditions for humans not because all planets are bad for life but because body has evolved and adapted to Earth only we don't know much about super Earths they contain a massive amount of energy because of their enormous masses and this energy is released therefore frequent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur on many of these planets thunderstorms happen there almost every day and by the way one day there lasts several times longer than our 24 hour one let's imagine you're on the spaceship again traveling to some super Earth so here it is massive orange Majestic you put on a spacesuit get into a Space Capsule and you change your mind the whole planet resembles a fiery boiling ball if it has any life it must be some invulnerable creatures you're not like that so you fly away to look for another Super Earth a couple light years away that giant ball seems to be a friendly Place wait this world is located far from its star the temperature there is so low that even molecules freeze Antarctica is like a hot desert compared with this super Earth you continue your voyage and finally find a perfect spot it's three times heavier and twice bigger in size than Earth it consists of rocks gases and possibly water you descend to the planet on the transport capsule open the door and take one step your legs are too heavy your whole body has gained weight you feel as if you were carrying a huge box of bricks on your back you can't even walk a few feet and the reason for this is Gravity the greater the weight the super Earth is the greater its gravitational force becomes you're pressed to the ground and your muscles are too weak for this also increased gravity provokes active fluctuations of tectonic plates earthquakes and landslides happen on this planet pretty often the rocky surface here is constantly changing to live on such a planet you would need to develop new technology to build houses you get back into the capsule and fly away but not too far the planet's gravity doesn't allow your ship to rise High into the sky it's like ropes pulling you down you use all the remaining fuel to overcome the gravity and go beyond the atmosphere another problem with such worlds is meteorites gravity attracts not only your ship but also colossal space objects flying by a giant asteroid can get off its route because of the attraction of the super Earth it can hit the planet in the form of a meteor shower but the falling speed is also faster so the destruction will be more massive but the worst thing that can happen to the super Earth is the stoppage of the planet's core caused by high pressure hundreds of billions of tons of solid rock can squeeze the heart of this world and the core should always be in motion to perform its primary function keeping the magnetic field working solar storms and Cosmic radiation can create severe problems for all life on the surface on Earth these storms disrupt the operation of electronics and affect human health this happens even if small holes appear in the magnetic field and what would happen if all the protection disappears the energy of The Closer star and the radiation from distant space would quickly destroy the super Earth and make it impossible for life to develop all these events can happen to a super Earth with ideal conditions for living and such a planet is a rarity most super Earths have terrible surfaces and atmospheres there's a planet where the air is so hot that it can evaporate Metals the fiery wind simply splits any solid substance into molecules such a super Earth is more like a star not an ordinary Planet also there's another Super Earth wholly covered with water you won't find a single piece of land there the ocean floods any Island in a second and under water there are volcanoes they erupt almost every hour releasing billions of tons of magma because of the heavy weight the planet is slightly tilted when it rotates around its axis the water flows from one side to another this creates huge destructive tsunamis bigger than the size of Everest and how about a super Earth where it's raining diamonds or sulfuric acid the surface of another distant world is blown by winds consisting of glass there's a lot of fire and sand when the hot air burns the sand particles they turn into glass among all such planets ours seems to be a paradise but perhaps for some strange organisms living at the distant end of the Galaxy Earth may seem to be a terrible world you take a giant straw and begin to inflate Saturn it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger that's enough now let's add some giant rings that's it this is super Saturn also called Saturn on steroids it's a real object that scientists discovered in 2012 a planet named j1407b and astronomers are still not sure what it really is it could be a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn in our solar system then there would be no solid surface there and if you wanted to set foot on that planet you just fall through it all the way to the Core but it could also be a brown dwarf that's something between a large planet and a full-fledged star such objects have to be heavy enough to start thermonuclear reactions like those going on inside stars but the power of these reactions is too weak for brown dwarfs to glow and emit heat to imagine the size and weight of j1407b let's look at our Earth if you put our planet on a scale it'll show six and another 21 zeros tons our planet is also about 7 900 miles across now that's Jupiter the largest planet in our solar system its diameter is 11 times as great as that of Earth it's also 318 times heavier if Jupiter were a bucket you could put 1 321 Earths in it and this is the hero of the day super Saturn it's almost 20 times as large as Jupiter to balance the scales you need to put 6 360 Earths on the other side the planet's rings are so wide that if they were in the solar system they would take up more than half the space between the Sun and Earth and if super Saturn switched places with the original Saturn you'd see those rings with the unaided eye they would be larger than a full moon presumably these Rings appeared in the same way as the ones around our Saturn one Theory says they're the remains of a moon that was once there its orbit was unstable and over time the moon got torn apart by the tidal forces of the huge Planet it orbited small pieces of the former Moon took their places in the giant orbit they collided with one another like in a blender after some time everything that was left was basically particles of dust and Ice moving around the Colossal planet another theory suggests that the Rings appeared after the moon collided with an asteroid or another Moon then the gravitational blender did its job in turn the moon's debris into the Rings some scientists think the Rings formed at around the same time as the planet itself so they're just the remains of the planetary nebula which is a cloud of gas space debris and dust later it probably shrunk and solidified to form a planet we can only guess where super Saturn got its rings from but scientists say their mass is 80 of that of Earth it may mean that the moon that used to orbit j1407b was about the same size as our planet there's a little Gap in the middle of these Rings scientists think Super Saturn's moon might be there if this is the case it should be about the size of Mars if scientists are right in super Saturn is actually a brown dwarf then this is an incredible Discovery scientists will be able to watch it age supposedly round dwarfs lose their energy and Shrink fading in the process and when a brown dwarf exhausts all its energy it turns into a black dwarf it's easy to confuse it with a black hole people haven't discovered black dwarfs anywhere in the universe yet because they take trillions in quadrillions of years to form our universe is too young and none of the Stars even those that appeared when the universe was born have had time to become black Dwarfs one of the oldest objects in the universe is the white dwarf with a pretty long name wd-0346 plus 246 it's about 11 to 12 billion years old and half as cold as our sun and it's still cooling it would need around 10 plus another 15 zeros years to turn into a black dwarf for comparison the universe is 1.4 in 10 zeros years old scientists believe that a black dwarf will exist for about 10 plus 25 zeros years feeding on Dark Matter after that its protons the smallest particles of matter will begin to Decay and then the black dwarf will simply evaporate that will take another 10 plus 49 zeros years but if the protons remain intact a much more interesting scenario will await the black dwarf in another 10 in 1500 zeros years the black dwarf will become an iron star it's essentially just a cannonball in Space the iron sphere will exist billions of times longer than our entire universe has existed until it suddenly turns into a black hole so the process of the formation of a black dwarf is extremely long it'd take a regular star an insane amount of time to age that much but super Saturn if it is a brown dwarf maybe much closer to this state Saturn on steroids is not the only strange planet in our universe this is gliese 436b It's been detected using the transit method a Transit happens when a planet moves between its host star and an observer it looks similar to a lunar eclipse this planet is four times the size of Earth and 22 times as heavy that's almost like Neptune it's an exotic Water World the water there is solid but it's not ice it has a temperature of about 520 degrees Fahrenheit the water in your pot turns into steam at 212 degrees Fahrenheit but on gliese 436b the liquid remains solid because of the extreme pressure on the planet scientists have also discovered that the planet's atmosphere is evaporating into outer space that's why there's a giant circular Cloud around it it's constantly moving in its orbit giving the planet a long tail that looks like that of a comet can pre-e holds incredible riches worth more than all the money on Earth there are diamonds scattered all over the planet can create e is about twice as wide and eight times as heavy as Earth this planet doesn't rotate only one of its sides always faces its host star the surface temperature there is almost twice as high as the temperature of a burning fire and since the host star is rich in carbon the planet contains plenty of this element too the intense pressure in temperatures help turn carbon into graphite and diamonds unfortunately this planet is 40 light years away from our home so it'd take about 730 000 years to get there on a regular rocket another planet rich in gems is hat p7b it's about 1 000 light years away from Earth it's 60 percent as large and nearly twice as heavy as Jupiter the planet is so close to its host star that it makes one revolution around it in just two Earth days because of such close proximity to the saw at p7b is almost as hot as a white dwarf if you look at the night side of this planet you'll see unusual clouds scientists believe that these clouds may be rich in corundum material this is the very substance that forms rubies and sapphires so it's likely to rain very expensive in beautiful gems there wasp 12b is one of the darkest planets ever discovered only one of its signs faces its host star the planet's surface is so dark that it eats up about 94 of all visible light so it looks a lot like a black hole the host star heats up the planet so much that the material there continuously evaporates then the star's strong gravity pulls This Cloud toward itself forming a disc but t-r-e-s-2b is the champion it's the darkest planet known to people it absorbs 99 of the light coming from its star which means it consumes more light than a piece of coal one percent of the remaining light looks red as it gets reflected by this gas giant from afar this planet looks very evil one of the oldest planets in the universe is PSR b1620 26b it's about 12.7 billion years old this means that it Formed about 1 billion years after the big bang the planet is so old that its two host stars have had time to evolve one is a white dwarf the other is a pulsar that makes almost 100 revolutions per second sunrises on this planet must be stunning right now this star system is moving toward a dense cluster of stars this is likely to lead to a stellar Collision so the fate of this planet is unknown kepler-438b is one of the most earth-like planets it's only 12 percent larger and is in the habitable zone of its host star not too close and not too far away it's a sweet spot where water doesn't evaporate because of the heat it doesn't turn into ice because of the cold this planet might host life on its surface in the future it may also become a new home for Humanity but it would take people about 470 years to get to this planet even if we traveled at a speed of light which is impossible due to the laws of physics an exoplanet is any Planet inside our solar system some of them are free-floating those are called rogue planets they move around the galactic center others orbit their host star or two for the first time astronomers discovered exoplanets in the 1990s since then scientists have found thousands of them and now you can sneak a peek too spoiler alert some exoplanets are pretty bizarre other resemble our home planet and could probably support life the closest to Earth exoplanet is Proxima Centauri B it's a mere 4.2 light years away from Earth recently astronomers have found out that this world might resemble Earth even more than previously thought it's only 17 percent more massive than our home planet it orbits a star that is dimmer and less massive than the sun Proxima Centauri B is in the middle of the star's habitable zone this means that chances are liquid water and life might exist on the planet it looks like the exoplanet is tidally locked with its parent star this means one of its sides faces the star at all times and the other is always in the Darkness scientists haven't figured out yet whether the planet has an atmosphere it's traveling too close to its star and completes one orbit within 11 Earth days the radiation from the Star might be pulling the planet's air away if this is the case Proxima Centauri B isn't likely to have liquid water on its surface glice 832c is 16 light years away from Earth in the cosmic scheme of things it's a stone's throw away this exoplanet is five times as massive as Earth and travels much closer to its parent star that's why a year on this planet lasts a mere 36 days but since this star is a red dwarf much cooler and dimmer than the sun gliese 832c gets as much light and heat as our planet does at the same time it's still unclear if gliese 832c is similar to Earth it probably has a much thicker atmosphere that creates a runaway greenhouse effect this phenomenon occurs when a planet absorbs more heat from its host star then it can release back into space this means that gliese 832c is more likely to resemble scorching hot Venus rather than relatively cool Earth another Earth-like planet toi 700d is 100 light years away from us in the constellation Dorado it orbits a small and rather cool dwarf star that is about 40 percent of the mass and size of the sun its surface temperature is half as high as that of our star the outermost Planet which is the very toi 700d is almost the size of Earth it also sits in the habitable zone of its parent star no flares from toi 700 reach the planet this increases the chances of the exoplanet being habitable this means it can potentially develop and maintain life scientists don't know for sure the exact conditions on the surface of the planet but one of the computer simulations they have created shows a planet covered with an ocean it has a very dense atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide astronomers think a similar atmosphere surrounded Mars when it was a young Planet but another 3D model shows toi 700d as an all land cloudless world that's what our Earth would probably look like if it wasn't covered with oceans winds on toi 700d move away from the night side of the planet and meet in the area that directly faces the star there is an exoplanet that stands Out Among the rest because of its awesome magenta color you can find this world in the Virgo constellation the planet is called gliese 504 B the distance between this planet and its parent star is nine times the distance between the Sun and Jupiter the planet formed relatively recently and is still glowing with heat that's why its surface looks pinkish just 20 light years away from the sun which isn't such a great distance when we talk about space a bizarre Rogue planet is roaming our home Milky Way galaxy but even though this planet doesn't orbit any Star it still has an incredibly powerful magnetic field it's 4 million times stronger than Earth's magnetic field the exoplanet also produces amazing auroras when it was discovered in 2016 astronomers were almost sure they had detected a brown dwarf which is an object too large to be a planet and too small to be a star but later scientists received proof that the space object wasn't big enough to be a brown dwarf the planet sure is a mammoth among its peers it's 1.2 times as wide as the largest planet of the Solar System Jupiter and more than 12 times as heavy astronomers think the exceptional strong magnetic field helps the planet produce the auroras but the most curious thing is that they're generated in a different way than auroras on Earth it might be because the exoplanet's moon helps the planet create these light shows [Music] if you travel 20 000 light years away from Earth you'd come close to a red dwarf in the Sagittarius constellation stars are very cool and small quite far away from this cold star there's a planet the distance between this world and its host star is so great that the planet receives very little heat it's one of the coldest planets ever detected the average surface temperature on the planet is lower than negative 360 degrees Fahrenheit that's why the entire planet is covered with a thick layer of ice if you stepped onto its surface you'd see nothing but glaciers Plains and mountains of ice and still astronomers claim life might exist deep beneath the Frozen surface all because the core of the planet is likely to generate enough heat to melt some of its inner ice in this case there would be an enormous subsurface ocean maybe even swarming with bizarre life forms on the planet one of the oldest exoplanets we know about is PCR b162026b it's about 12.7 billion years old it's almost three times as old as Earth which appeared 4.5 billion years ago this also means that the Genesis planet formed only about 1 billion years after the big bang the planet is so old that its two parent stars have had enough time to evolve into a white dwarf and a pulsar making almost 100 revolutions per second sun rises on this planet must look awesome I bet the next exoplanet isn't like any other you might have seen before it's often called super Saturn or Saturn on steroids that's because j1407b has a colossal system of rings their 640 times as large as those of Saturn the bizarre world is 434 light years away from Earth it's the only planet we know about that has rings similar to Saturn's if you moved j1407b to our solar system and replace Saturn with it its rings would look many times larger than a full moon astronomers have noticed a gap halfway through the planet's rings the chances are high that an exomoon the size of Mars orbits the planet somewhere within this Gap if you lived on this Moon you'd have an awesome view every time you looked up into the sky this exoplanet called wasp 12b munches on the light coming from its star it's one of the darkest worlds people know about all because its dayside consumes light rather than reflects it back into space the planet is giant twice the size of Jupiter and it traps more than 94 of the light that reaches its atmosphere this is likely to be the main reason for the insane temperatures on the surface of the planet they can rise up to 4 600 degrees Fahrenheit it's almost half as hot as the surface of the Sun wasp 12b travels so close to its host star that it needs just one day to complete one orbit its Nightside isn't as hot as the day side a mere 2200 degrees Fahrenheit because of this difference in temperature water vapor and clouds gather above the surface of the planet from time to time swirls of material from the planet's superheated atmosphere spill onto its star about 4 000 light years away from Earth there's an exoplanet that might be one enormous diamond it's five times the size of our planet but needs only two hours and 10 minutes to orbit its parent star it's a pulsar rotating at a rate of 10 000 times a minute the planet is denser than any other we've discovered so far it consists mostly of carbon which is so dense that astronomers think it might be crystalline if it was true it could mean that at least some part of the planet is diamond [Music] on wasp 76b it rains iron on the night side of the planet and the temperature on the daytime side Rises up to 4 300 degrees Fahrenheit that's hot enough to vaporize most metals this exoplanet is a bit smaller than Jupiter and located 640 light years away from Earth such terrifying weather conditions in this world are caused by its unusual orbit the distance between wasp 76b and its parent star is 10 times shorter than the distance between Mercury and the Sun that's why the star and the huge Planet are tidally locked one side of wasp 76b always faces the star and the other side is always Pitch Black this bright blue exoplanet sits 62 years away from Earth a bit larger than Jupiter it looks calm and peaceful its blue color might remind you of our home planet but this familiar appearance conceals the planet's horrifying nature the beautiful Hue comes from silicate atoms and particles that make up the atmosphere but the wind speed on the planet can reach 5400 miles per hour that's seven times the speed of sound the temperature there can rise up to 1 600 degrees Fahrenheit but this isn't the worst in this bizarre world it rains glass sideways so it's probably not the place where you'd like to spend your vacation ah Earth home the third Blue Rock From the Sun the only known planet where life can Thrive we have around 78 nitrogen 21 oxygen and one percent argon water vapor and carbon dioxide give or take the perfect balance to support our respiration the troposphere is the lowest and densest part of Earth's atmosphere five to nine miles thick it's the part of the atmosphere that keeps changing our weather for any life to exist we would need this atmosphere and the same combination of gas as debris if all the planets in our solar system were combined to become a mega Earth then humans wouldn't have evolved the way we are today and we'd have a very different planet if we take the landscape of Mars we'll only have solid land without large bodies of water Earth is the only planet in our solar system with bodies of water one of the first wonders to see will be Olympus mods the largest volcano in the solar system it Towers Mount Everest by a long shot at 78 000 feet above the ground velas marineris is a group of canyons that make the Grand Canyon in the U.S feel like a average one this Wonder stretches for almost 2500 miles and goes more than four miles deep on top of these epic terrains there's plenty of other Grand scale locations on Mars that are way bigger than the ones on Earth the planet might be as large as Jupiter if the Earth were the size of a grape then Jupiter would be the size of a basketball we'd have the size of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn floating around us the Rings may seem like some large chunks of rock in the air but they're actually ice particles and chunks of iced rocks they range from the size of Pebbles to car-sized ones Saturn's rings are supported by the unique gravity in the region with a lot of these ice rocks floating in the sky there won't be much sunlight entering the planet which means the planet will always be colder than usual not to mention the many moons it has our Mega Planet could also have many moons circling above us contributing to the tidal waves Jupiter is known for the red spot a place twice the size of Earth that has hurricane-like storms that have been going on for hundreds of years the people of Mega Earth will settle far away from it Mercury is a planet but looks like the moon due to all the craters lying around as because of many asteroids and comets striking it over billions of years but the landscape here mainly consists of mountains Islands Cliffs and valleys the caloris Basin is almost 1 000 miles wide they believe it was formed by a comet the deserts on Earth are mainly hot and consist of Dunes of sand but they also have flat Plains and small hills the largest desert in the world is the whole Antarctic continent mercury has no atmosphere to trap any heat so it gets really hot when the sun is facing it and freezing cold when the planet turns away from it on this combined Mega Earth the deserts will most likely have a similar landscape to that of Mercury the animals living here will probably be something like giant scorpions and desert snakes that soak in some sun during the day and go out hunting at night but the soaring day temperatures would melt anyone walking and even though Mercury is the closest planet to the sun it's not the hottest Venus has temperatures of nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit scientists believe that the lands here are flat because of the extreme temperatures but it's not all flat with some volcanoes and Highland areas we can probably find this terrain and climate near the equator since it's always hot there humans can't live there unless they build Special domes to sustain life but since the planet is now huge not all its territory needs to be populated some areas will have the proper atmosphere for breathing but some places might not have such luxuries over at the polls the climate will most likely mimic Pluto's even though it's not technically a planet anymore in 2006 they officially declared it a dwarf planet and it's even smaller than the moon there's not much known about this little mini floating Rock except that it's composed of around 70 percent Rock and 30 ice scientists believe that a part of its surface is covered in Frozen nitrogen solid methane and carbon dioxide since the mega planet is huge gravity might be quite strong here Jupiter's gravity is enough to double your weight humans will most likely be really tall and mega size to match the Big Planet even the oceans will be huge our oceans will look like little Lakes compared to what Mega Earth has in store for us humans need something close to 24 hours in a single day our bodies adjusted to it quite well but it wouldn't affect us too much if the day had a few extra hours or a few hours less we can't live on any other planet without wearing the proper gear we wouldn't last more than a few seconds in places like Jupiter Neptune and Saturn it's possible to last as long as you can hold your breath on Mars the atmosphere is thin and the gravity is similar to ours but you might freeze even though it's a red planet it's actually very cold and has ice caps in the poles covered with carbon dioxide the same is true for mercury you can only last there as long as you can hold your breath and be in The Sweet Spot between the sunrise and the sunset ancient civilizations wouldn't have been as diverse as they were on Earth since the extreme terrains and conditions wouldn't have allowed for Discovery and training but eventually as humans develop special Technologies for certain areas different cultures would emerge many animals would also evolve in specific and unique ways but because of the planet's enormous size isolation and being on top of the food chain would let certain animals be around since the beginning of the planet without evolving so it's possible that this Mega Earth might have ancient dinosaurs roaming around and they'd be even bigger than the ones on Earth and even though there's a high chance that some humans might be physically different than each other there might even be more than one species of humans living on opposite ends of the planet because of the isolation they evolved in their own ways according to their surroundings over the centuries technological advancements would spread different cultures around and we'd be more open to each other neanderthals and Homo sapiens once lived side by side and were considered as the two species of humans neanderthals were intelligent and used tools for hunting and drawing Homo sapiens were survivors and wandered around to discover new land there could be two dominant human species and other minor ones that live in certain areas on Mega Earth they'd be bigger tougher and faster than us the ones who live by the trees would have elongated limbs to stretch out and swing from tree to tree the ones that live in savannas will probably run really fast and have long legs for that countries and cities will be bigger than what we have on regular Earth a country can be as big as Earth itself the human population can reach tens of billions special transportation technology might be invented for people to travel from one continent to another covering those distances can take months or even years if using regular aircraft high-speed trains that travel so fast over land and rocket-like planes going through the sky traveling through oceans will require extremely sturdy ships traveling through the Atlantic Ocean is already scary for many so imagine going on a voyage across a body of water that's potentially eight times the size of Earth we're gonna need a bigger boat there'll be areas to avoid like the red spot with its Perpetual storms raging on but the tourist industry might have some room for anyone who wants to see it living on such a huge planet is unlikely going to become a reality for most of us anytime soon but scientists are already discussing moving to other planets to find a new home for humans gazing up at the night sky wow for much of our history we've been looking for life among these stars and the planets near them base has eyes too and there's someone out there looking at us maybe scientists claim that at least 29 distant planets may be watching us right now so comb your hair and smile we've so far identified at least 1715 neighboring star systems in the Milky Way that can detect our planet with conventional telescopes these stars are located in our galaxy so if they were to point their telescopes at our sun sooner or later they would see a small dot that passes between our home star and the Observer this is called a Transit it's a method of detecting planets in astronomy for example you can observe Transit phenomenon right at home with a telescope you have to point it at the Sun and wait then you'll see Mercury that's the closest planet to the Sun and now you see it as a small dot Mercury Transit process can last about five hours and this phenomenon happens about 14 times in a century you'll be able to observe the next transit on November 13 2032 mark your calendar likewise you can observe Venus the second planet from the Sun but because it's farther away its transits are less frequent the last one was in 2004 and 2012. the next pair of transits is expected in 2117 and 2125. hey I won't be around then so these star systems have the opportunity to observe our planet but long-range telescopes work a little differently actually The Observer will not see a black dot with the sun in the background the telescope will measure the brightness of our star when Earth begins its Transit between the Sun and the Observer the telescope will record a slight drop in the brightness of the star because our planet is blocking the path of the sun's rays those far away scientists of extraterrestrial civilizations will be able to calculate this drop in brightness and determine the size of our planet but not all 1700 plus star systems may have extraterrestrial life scientists have narrowed it down to 29 planets near some of these Stars they're potentially habitable that means these planets are roughly Earth-like in size and within the habitable zone of their host star that means they're not too close to the star so it's not too hot for a potential life the water doesn't evaporate there like in a Boiling Pot and they're not too far away so it's not too cold and the water doesn't freeze into thick sheets of ice and since water is the basis of life we can assume that Civilization might exist there theoretically these planets could have seen Earth transits in the last five thousand years so while we were building the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge an extraterrestrial civilization may have been watching us one of these planets is only 11 light years from our home near the Ross 128 star a red dwarf in the constellation Virgo there's an exoplanet about twice the size of Earth and right in the habitable zone of its host star theoretically the inhabitants of this planet could see Earth Transit the sun on a regular basis for two thousand years but about 900 years ago the planet lost its position and can no longer continue observation the other planet where Earth can be seen transiting is 12.5 light years away near the star called Tea Garden the window for observing our planet will open there in about 29 years we're betting heavily on the Trappist one star system it hosts at least seven exoplanets almost like our solar system and four of them are in the habitable zone of the star but they won't be able to start observing Earth until 16 centuries from now but we can try to make contact with these planets right now they're all close enough to us to pick up our radio signals radio waves can travel through space at the speed of light and our planet has been emitting radio signals continuously since 1895. so we're like noisy neighbors in the radio spectrum if there's a planet somewhere with an intelligent civilization within 125 light years of us our radio noise would have already reached them the only problem is it would take about the same time to get a response from that Civilization the other problem with radio is that any civilization uses it for a relatively short period even now on Earth we use Bluetooth and fiber optics more than radio except for maybe traffic reports and over time all the radio noise we create will simply disappear also radio communication assumes that an extraterrestrial civilization is Advanced enough to use this technology but who knows maybe there are life forms in space that are really different from ours our radio signals already could have reached that planet but its inhabitants simply aren't capable of receiving them and the moment these life forms build antennas to receive the signal will no longer emit them but we don't lose hope and we even send encrypted radio signals into space to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations in 1974 we sent the Arecibo message into Interstellar space if some civilization can decipher it they'll get a rectangle like this it has all the information about Humanity at the top is our number system then the atomic numbers and then our DNA which is pictured below then a human being itself of course below is a diagram of our solar system earth the third planet from the Sun is slightly elevated this is how the Extraterrestrial civilization will understand which planet this message came from below is a diagram of the Arecibo radio telescope itself another option how to deliver a message to a distant planet is to literally send a mail delivery there it could be a space Pro and we've already done that these are voyagers one and two they were launched in 1977 and are still operational in 2012 Voyager 1 became the first ever human-made object in interstellar space it travels to distant stars and carries a message written on a golden record the disc contains greetings in 55 Earth languages a lot of music from different parts of our planet different sounds like ocean noise human voices and animal sounds in addition there are 116 images on the record these are pictures of people and Earthly landscapes in these pictures there's information about the Sun and our DNA the record case contains instructions and a needle to play the record there's also a map of our Galaxy's pulsars so that astronomers from an extraterrestrial civilization can find our solar system the main disadvantage of sending a message this way is time Voyager 1 will reach its first stop the galise 445 star in 40 000 years Voyager 2 will reach the Ross 248 star in 42 000 years and in about 296 000 Years it'll pass Sirius the brightest star in the night sky I can't wait also an extraterrestrial civilization can detect us with calculations and formulas all it takes is a little observation of the Sun in Star systems with planets the host star doesn't stand still it rotates around a small orbit this is because the heavy star attracts the planet but the planet also has its own gravity and resists this shifts the star a little and causes it to orbit around an extraterrestrial civilization can calculate this shift of the Sun and determine the mass of the planets near the star using such a method astronomers were able to find 548 exoplanets now suppose we made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization near the closest star Proxima Centauri there's indeed an exoplanet there but radiation from the host star would destroy any life forms but imagine we still got a return signal it would be the slowest chat in history because our message would take 4.2 years to reach the planet and we'd have to wait another 4.2 years to get a response and so we arranged to meet this civilization doesn't know how to fly into space so we have to take the first step although Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system it takes about 73 000 years to travel there by conventional rocket so we have to learn to travel at the speed of light but even then it would take 4.2 years to travel there imagine if we found extraterrestrial life on the other side of the Milky Way our galaxy is one hundred thousand light years wide so the journey from edge to edge would take 100 millennia so we either have to cheat the laws of physics or transfer all of human civilization to a giant spaceship that will travel from star to star for thousands of years and when it launches from Earth only the great great great great and many more greats of the first crew will be able to see another star system from the spaceship portal hey can you move your head I'm trying to see out the window as scientists continue to explore the vast expanse of the universe they've made some incredible discoveries that have left them with more questions and answers from a scorching super Earth to a football-shaped world the exoplanet discoveries of 2022 are truly out of this world so hold on tight the future of exoplanet discoveries is looking brighter than ever number one new type of exoplanets red dwarfs make up over 70 percent of all stars in space so in September of 2022 scientists decided to take a closer look at the small worlds orbiting them what they found was amazing new type of exoplanets that were made of half Rock and half water either in liquid or ice form the researchers suggested that these planets likely arose from Icy material and were born far away from their Stars past the ice line where surface temperatures are freezing but they later migrated closer in to where the astronomers detected them this discovery could have huge implications in the search for life in the cosmos though these planets are loaded with water they might not be covered in oceans who knows maybe one of them will be the next Earth 2.0 number two Jupiter size world a planet so massive and mysterious it's like a hidden Jupiter in our galaxy well we just discovered one of those orbiting a star just 379 light years away just we've named it the toi 2180b and it's got everyone talking why well for starters this planet takes a whopping 261 days to orbit its star which is much longer than most distant gas giants we've come across so far but that's not all the temperature on this world is surprisingly mild averaging at a balmy 170 degrees Fahrenheit for comparison the temperature on Jupiter and Saturn is around minus 280 degrees it's like a bridge between the giant exoplanets we've found and are Jupiter but the question remains how did this planet get to be so different scientists are still trying to figure that out let's hope that we get some answers soon number three the Hulk Planet this world is a place where the surface is covered in molten magma and the year lasts just half a day welcome to toy 1075b an exoplanet that's been dubbed the planet Hulk by scientists located 200 light years away this super Earth is one of the most massive ever discovered its proximity to its parent stock causes its surface to reach scorching temperatures of 1922 degrees it's so hot that any form of water would evaporate instantly and the air would be filled with vaporized rocks but it's not just the heat that's impressive it's also its size toy 1075b is nearly 10 times the mass of Earth making it one of the most massive super Earths ever discovered but the mystery doesn't stop there the planet's orbit takes just 14 and a half hours making it one of the shortest orbital periods ever recorded for a planet of its size an exciting addition to our catalog number four three doomed planets astronomers made a shocking discovery of three planets that are circling in a dangerous dance next to the slowly fading Stars just a decade ago scientists never even imagined such planets could exist these gas giant planets similar in size to Jupiter orbit way too close to their slowly fading Stars they're basically Walking On The Edge take one of them for example dub toi 2337b its orbit will likely send it hurtling straight into the fiery arms of its host star in less than a million years well I won't be around then as these Stars enter their final days they're pulling in nearby planets like a black hole altering their orbits and potentially causing catastrophic collisions and as these planets get closer to their Stars their atmospheres heat up and swell leading to some mind-boggling differences in density 5. despite the Doom and Gloom studying these worlds could give us valuable insights into the evolution of our own solar system number five planet with a barium's atmosphere these are two hot blazing planets each with an atmosphere made of the heaviest element ever found in an exoplanet barium these planets known as waaf's 76b and was 121b our Ultra hot gas giants called super Jupiters that orbit incredibly close to their Stars these planets are basically like giant balls of fire with one side facing the star cooking at temperatures hot enough to vaporize iron and other metals but as the hot iron vapor is blown into the planet's cooler Nightside it turns into liquid and Falls as iron rain and these planets held a special surprise for us barium is a heavy metal about two and a half times as heavy as iron and yet scientists were able to detect it in the upper layers of these planets atmospheres this is truly a mystery and a puzzle we're still trying to solve imagine landing on a planet like this and looking at this rain of iron and the heavy barium in its Skies that would be awesomely horrifying number six the football planet get ready to have your mind blown space enthusiasts because we've just discovered the ultimate football shaped planet and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before meet wasp 103b the ultra hot exoplanet that's more than a thousand light years away from Earth this gas giant is so close to its parent star that its shape is being stretched by the intense gravitational forces but this isn't just a fun Shape Shifter it's also a valuable scientific discovery by studying the planet's passes across its star we were able to measure its deformation for the first time ever it's like taking a snapshot of a planet in motion and it's giving us insights into the extreme conditions that these planets can endure this is truly a great discovery number seven a zodiacal light are you ready for a cosmic ghost story scientists and high school students in China have uncovered a spooky phenomenon on three distant exoplanets it's called zodiacal life a glow that's similar to the one seen here on Earth during sunset this isn't just some Eerie light show it could hold clues about the makeup of these potentially habitable worlds imagine watching the sunset from a dark spot on earth and instead of Darkness a triangle of light appears that's zodiacal line it's caused by sunlight reflecting off dust particles that fill the solar system the remains of asteroids and comets a team of researchers analyzed 47 potential habitable exoplanets named kepler-69c Kepler 1229b and Kepler 395c all super Earths had signs of this life this discovery is more than just a spooky phenomenon it could reveal information about the presence of asteroids and comets in these exoplanet systems which could be difficult to detect otherwise so that's pretty neat number eight a planet with silicate clouds introducing VHS 1259b not a home video recording system but a strange and exotic World shrouded in mystery and wonder a place where the clouds are made of sand and the sky is forever red this isn't the stuff of Science Fiction but a real life discovery made by the Brilliant Minds at Nasa this is a brown dwarf exoplanet that's making waves in the astronomical Community it's way too massive for a planet nearly 20 times the size of Jupiter but it's not quite a star it's something in between a cosmic Enigma that defies definition but what's really crazy about BHS 1256b is its atmosphere scientists have discovered that this strange world is cloaked in thick clouds of silicate grains similar to sand it's the first time this kind of cloud has ever been detected on an exoplanet and it's a discovery that sure to change the way we think about the universe and the possibilities of life beyond our world and there you have it folks the year 2022 was filled with Incredible discoveries and groundbreaking findings in the world of exoplanets but this is just the beginning as scientists and researchers continue to explore the vast expanse of space we can only imagine what other wonders await us so let's keep looking who knows what Secrets the stars hold for us next our universe is full of both amazing and terrifying things you already know about quasars black holes dark matter and so on but how about the horrors of space that you haven't even heard of would you like to visit the most bizarre worlds in the universe and it's not me who made this list but NASA themselves welcome to the Galaxy of Horrors NASA's awesome Halloween collection please join me on a journey to some planets and tell me which ones you would consider the most horrible buckle up our first destination is a gas giant called tress 2B it's located 750 light years away from us if we used a regular spaceship it would take us about 10 million years to get there trash 2B orbits a yellow dwarf a star similar to our sun it also weighs about 1.5 times more than Jupiter so what's so special about it well if you're afraid of the dark you definitely don't want to visit this place it's the planet of Eternal Night the darkest one of all the planets known to us but it's not that far from its star so why is that the thing is the surface of tress 2B reflects light even worse than coal does because of this it seems that there's no light at all if you were flying across the surface of this planet it would be like walking with a blindfold on your eyes oh wait actually there is some light an eerie deep red glow surrounds the surface of the planet this glow is created by the burning atmosphere which makes tress 2B a scorching Planet the air there is even hotter than lava oh but if you think that was bad let me show you the next place of our horror Journey NASA wasn't beating about the bush while nicknaming this one now we're not just talking about one planet but three at once they're also located quite far away 2300 light years from the sun we would have reached them by ship in about 35 million years all the planets are in the constellation Virgo and each is extremely light much lighter than the earth these three exoplanets are called Poltergeist dragger and fobator cool names huh it's because each of these planets is about to become a ghost soon the thing is they don't revolve around a star but around a pulsar pulsars are rotating neutron stars with an extremely powerful magnetic field in simple words these are the stars that exploded one day after the explosion they usually emit such a powerful pulse that it causes the star to rotate at an unimaginable speed several thousand rotations per second at the same time they constantly emit electromagnetic pulses that affect everything around them so you've probably already guessed what's happening with our zombie planets they're slowly gradually being destroyed under the gigantic influence of radiation one day they'll disappear Without a Trace ghost-like planets orbiting an undead star yeah Zombie World Is A fitting name it's also not surprising that scientists nicknamed this Pulsar Lich despite the Long official name well at least these guys stick together on their final dance this planet has a long name so bear with me hd189733b this gas giant is 65 light years away from us it would have taken around 1 million years to get there on a spaceship HD well this planet is slightly more massive than Jupiter and orbits its star an orange dwarf all alone at first glance it may seem friendly a pleasant blue color and curls on the surface kinda resembles a summer sky or foam on sea waves right oh looks are very deceptive my friend this planet has a pleasant cobalt blue color due to the hazy blow torched atmosphere this atmosphere contains silicates that condense when heated in other words the clouds on this planet have rain made of glass yes it rains hot glass shards here oh and if that's not enough there's a raging wind on the surface which is moving at a speed of 5400 miles per hour just to compare the fastest wind on Earth had a speed of 254 miles per hour about 20 times weaker and because of this hundreds of thousands of glass shards Rush horizontally across the planet's surface at Breakneck speed you really don't envy anyone who would want to try to land there by the way this isn't the only example of strange Reigns in our universe for example it rains molten iron on the planet dimidium or let's take so-called carbon planets their existence hasn't yet been proven but if they do exist there would be tons of black poisonous clouds and it would rain pure gasoline and hot liquid asphalt oh and also raindrops would explode upon touching the surface nothing special the next planet though is actually really strange it didn't just revolve around its star it lived inside the star this Cosmic Miracle is called koi 55b or kepler-70b this planet is very far away from us 4 000 light years it would take about 70 million years on a spaceship it's twice as light as Earth and fully rotates around its star in just a couple of hours a long time ago it was an ordinary Earth-like planet about the size of Jupiter it was peacefully and calmly orbiting its red dwarf star koi 55 but everything changed about 700 million years ago perhaps you've heard that in a couple billion years our sun will begin to expand into a huge star absorbing everything in its path well this is the fate of red dwarfs sooner or later they increase turning into incredibly hot blue giants the same thing happened with koi 55 this star began to increase in size and heat up in temperature gradually turning into a blue white giant it was ready to devour its nearest planets but koi 55b didn't care about it when the star reached it this planet just settled inside and moreover after some time it left its star simply returning to the new orbit how is that even possible life inside its star turned koi 55b into a red hot round Stone it's one of the hottest planets we've discovered so far the temperature on it reaches 12 000 degrees Fahrenheit it's hotter than the sun which is let me remind you an actual star and for some reason it's still alive and lives as if nothing happened unfortunately sooner or later the planet will disappear anyway it's slowly evaporating itself due to the incandescent atmosphere but still it somehow managed to survive the journey through the star which isn't typical for regular planets to put it mildly I envy this willpower however not all planets are so lucky some are gradually being destroyed by their stars and there is even an entire system among them this last planet is a sad loner it's located 870 light years away from us the journey by ship to it would take about 25 million years this planet is about 1.5 times more massive than Jupiter this is a very sad dark planet a doomed gas giant which is very similar to hot Jupiter orbits its star all along at the same time it's located so close to its star that its orbital period takes just one day of course because of this proximity the star gradually absorbs wasp 12b the scorching heat of the star is slowly destroying and devouring the planet's atmosphere the planet has only around 10 million years left but what's more interesting because of this stretching lost 12b acquired the shape of an egg it doesn't even resemble an actual planet anymore it's also very hot the surface temperature of the gas giant reaches 4 000 degrees Fahrenheit also a spectrograph of cosmic origin or cos for short found that the planet exchanges matter with its star they're located so close that they give each other part of their chemical elements this is a common phenomenon in closely spaced binary star systems but this is the first time scientists have seen this in a star planet relationship what a unique system to be honest if I was guaranteed complete Security I'd be excited to visit at least some of them what about you please let me know in the comments hey ready to test your knowledge of course you are you'll get one point for each correct answer so without further Ado the sun is yellow do you think this is a myth ask someone to draw a picture of the Sun and chances are you'll get a yellow or orange circle in the sky surprise the sun is not really yellow if you see it somewhere outside the Earth's atmosphere it'll look white how come according to NASA the Sun's temperature is the reason why it's white the sun consists of all colors mixed together so it appears to our eyes as wide then why do you think we see it as yellow or orange from Earth colored wavelengths which are yellow and orange are longer and they are the only ones that make it to our eyes the other short wavelength colors sprawl in the atmosphere and the sky looks blue to US during the day for the same reason meteorites are hot as fire when they land on Earth what do you think myth or fact when people see a fireball around a meteorite they think it's super hot well this is a myth meteorites don't immediately land on Earth most of them have been in space for billions of years space has a cold environment just a few degrees above absolute zero cold you know but don't meteorites fall into the Earth in Flames how come the fireball is actually the air in front of the meteorite it is compressed by the super high speed of the meteorite the outside catches fire but that layer is burned off on impact as a result of landing on Earth as you would probably guess when they land the meteorites are a lukewarm at most but not as hot as lava one side of the moon is permanently in the dark do you think this is a myth or a fact this is a myth oh come on first the Sun and now the moon am I living a lie so people look at this guy and see only the bright side of the moon the reality is the earth shines equally on all sides of the Moon as it rotates and orbits the earth half of the moon is in Shadow and half gets Sunshine similar to Earth that's not true similar to Earth it doesn't have a permanent Dark Side the logic is simple the moon orbits Earth but it also rotates on its own axis when think about it we're always looking at the same side of the mode black holes take in everything that comes their way what is it myth or fact black holes don't have infinite mass and gravitational force but still no one really knows for sure what happens to the things pulled into them experts do know black holes do not have super gravity though let's imagine this if there was a black hole as big as the sun it wouldn't immediately eat the whole planet imagine black holes as vacuum cleaners it does draw in a cloud of dust near its range but other specks of dust remain where they are so even if there was a black hole replacing the sun all the planets would continue to orbit similarly they wouldn't go into the black hole if a star or something else got into the rain to the black hole only then would its gravity affect the star someone the signal bounces off a satellite is this a myth or a fact yep it's a myth or rather an urban legend or misconception you name it I mean there are some satellite phones but we you know regular people don't use those every day although your mobile phone works in a much different way when you call someone the nearest Tower connects you to the other person online this is why there are Tower connections huge networks of tower to Tower connections and hidden cables the moon has no gravity any guesses myth or fact this is an urban legend ask any astronaut you know if you don't know any just trust me there is footage proving that the moon has gravity when I say the moon has gravity don't think it's similar to the gravity on Earth that makes the apple fall the moon's gravity is only about 1 6 of Earth's how does it feel to walk on the surface of the Moon the second man on the moon Buzz Aldrin mentioned it's like moving in slow motion and quote perhaps not too far from a trampoline but without the springiness and instability end quote the sunset on Mars appears blue do you think this is a myth or a fact this is a fact magnificent sunsets the sky is filled with different shades of yellow now imagine this in blue according to NASA sunsets on Mars would look bluish watching them with bare eyes it's because of dust dust particles closer to the sun appear in blue tones there is something called Moon quigs does it sound like a myth or a fact it's a fact Quakes happen on the Moon too and they're called moonquakes they have different features not really similar to the Quakes on Earth though planet can be hot enough to vaporize rocks any guesses is this a myth or a fact this is a fact the temperature in this universe is indeed very high there's a planet the temperature of which is enough to melt and even vaporize rocks it's two times bigger than the earth this super Earth is similar to our planet but it is way too hot experts believe that it possibly has oceans of lava and clouds that rain molten rock one million Earths can fit inside the sun do you think this is a myth or a fact this is a fact although the sun is one of more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way which is at the heart of our solar system it can fit one million Earths yeah it looks small when we see it from here but it's only because it's so far away from Earth all comets have tails myth or fat it's true some comets simply don't show their Tales they look like someone threw a snowball into space space is completely silent what do you say I knew it was too easy this is a fact space doesn't have an atmosphere so there's no way to hear any sound there Mercury is the hottest planet myth or fact Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun so this should be a fact huh no not really Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system and the second planet from the Sun but the distance from the sun isn't what defines the temperature the heat depends on the atmosphere so Venus's atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide and some nitrogen this combination makes the atmosphere very thin when I say thick I mean it throughout the year the surface of Venus maintains a temperature of around 860 degrees Fahrenheit Mercury surface resembles the temperature of a desert but is much higher in terms of temperature variations Venus spins clockwise what do you say this is a fact Venus spins in the opposite direction compared to many other planets the sun rises in the west and its rotation is very slow Venus needs 225 Earth days to complete its spinning around the Sun the planet's distance from the Sun affects the duration of one rotation it's too close to the Sun and the sun has a strong noticeable pull on the planets footprints on the moon can stay there for millions of years do you think this is a fact or a myth fact checked the moon has no atmosphere so there's no wind blowing and without the wind there's no way to erase the footprints without any intervention so how many points did you get let me know in the comments so check this out astronomers have discovered an exoplanet they're calling super Saturn it's got Rings over in auy an au is the astronomical unit the distance between the Sun to the Earth that's an incredibly huge ring system hence its name supersatured is being called mamajex object after the astronomer who led the team to whom we owe the discovery Professor Eric mamajac of Rochester University in New York found super Saturn while scouring through data downloaded from wide-angle Transit observations wasp is the acronym for wide angle search for exoplanets it's an ingenious project developed in the year 2000 by astronomers at Queen's University in Belfast Northern Ireland and Saint Andrews University in Scotland using four telescopes the CCD video cameras on the Scopes record the slight dimming of Starlight caused by objects passing in front of stars is called the transit method of exoplanet detection so for example the planet Venus transits across our view of the Sun every couple hundred years a black dot the silhouette of Venus is visible Crossing in front of the Sun as Venus passes between our line of sight and the sun this tiny Eclipse causes the amount of sunlight coming to Earth to be reduced by a minuscule amount also known as teeny tiny the same is true for all the stars in the Milky Way that have planets going around them exoplanetary transits in front of stars must be in direct line of sight with Earth for the Starlight to be dim such transits do not occur very often that's why thousands of stars must be looked at simultaneously for as long of a duration as possible between four and eight hours a night wasp was created to stare continuously at as wide of a range of stars as possible maybe one of them would show an exoplanet Transit that translates into a lot of data being produced about 40 gigabytes per viewing session computer scientists at Leicester university in England developed a computer program to store the data and generate photometric graphs of the light intensity of each star open University also in England joined the WASP project took this data and made it available for research by astronomers worldwide the graphs of the intensity of Starlight show that changes in its brightness are called light curves these graphs have two axes one is in the timeline axis the other one is the intensity of light as the object considered an exoplanet though it could also be a brown dwarf star crosses in front of the star the timeline axis keeps track of how swiftly it is moving it tells us how close the object is to the star while the brightness axis keeps track of how much the Starlight dims this way we can find out how large the object is now obviously big objects will dim the light more and be easier to detect at present earth-based equipment is not sensitive enough to measure the dimming caused by planets as small as Earth Neptune's size and larger ones are the limit for wasp however the James Webb Space Telescope which is now in operation has a much greater sensitivity and will be able to resolve the transits of earth-sized exoplanets now I know you want me to get to Super Saturn but there's something else you should be familiar with before we get there if the exoplanet has an atmosphere or in the case of super Saturn a ring system The Starlight from the Star the planet is transiting will shine through the atmosphere or ring system and that can be detected too the light Curve will show less dimming in the photometric data because not all the Starlight is being blocked some light is still getting through the atmosphere or rings this is important because it gives astronomers a reading of the atmosphere the James Webb Space Telescope is fitted with spectroscopes that can determine the gas content of the transiting exoplanet atmospheres oxygen methane carbon Etc the wash project has been really catching on there's a super wasp project now consisting of wasp North and a wasp South one looks at the sky above the northern hemisphere the other looks at the sky above the southern hemisphere there's also a Next Generation Transit survey ngts based on the WASP project it's automated so astronomers don't have to stay up all night sipping coffee but they can if they want to located at the European Southern observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile the ngts scans millions of stars and has discovered over a hundred exoplanets down to a size as small as three times the size of Earth ngts has started a Planet Hunters Club on social media citizen scientists can search the online database of light curves and perhaps discover your very own exoplanet what had been a strictly British effort started by one or two astronomers is now a worldwide phenomenon with the ability to read the spectroscopic signatures of atmospheric gases during exoplanet transits a new idea emerged techno signatures that is specifically identifying gases in exoplanet atmospheres that are produced by civilizations the James Webb Space Telescope can do this gases from pollution such as chlorofluorocarbon CFCs can be seen spectroscopically if present tritium from Fusion reactions if they have them can also be detected along with heat patterns from cities on the planet surfaces techno signatures is a recent concept that originated after the WASP project started who knows what it will turn up now let's get back to Super Saturn the star that supersaturn orbits is j1407 a small dim sun-like pre-mane sequence star of the 13th magnitude huh well the human eye can only see stars to about the sixth magnitude and each magnitude is two and a half times dimmer than the previous one so it's not an exceptional star just another telescopic star out there in the Scorpius Centaur region of the night sky j1407 is a young star that hasn't yet settled into its stable long duration phase this is important because super Saturn officially j1407b is showing size of having a ring system in an early stage of development super Saturn's light curve was tucked away in the mountain of data from the super wasp project Professor Eric mamijak and his associate Matthew Kenworthy of Leicester University studied the data thoroughly and produced a detailed report on it knowledge depends on good data the horizontal axis of j1407b's light curve the time axis is what's causing all the hubbub it took supersaturn weeks to Transit across in front of its parent star 56 days to be exact planetary ring systems that we are familiar with in our solar system orbit right around the equators of the gas giant planets and are very thin from only a few meters thick down to a few centimeters in a telescope Saturn's rings will seem to disappear when the planet is at zero inclination toward Earth Saturn must be inclined at an angle in relation to Earth to see Saturn's beautiful ring system it's something everyone should make a point of seeing Saturn in a telescope if super Saturn's rings block most of the light from j1407 for 56 days it means that the planet had to be orbiting at a steep inclination to its start if it were at zero inclination we wouldn't see the Rings blocking any line therefore the orbital time could be determined 10 years minimum to 200 years if the orbit is highly elliptical the super Planet itself is calculated to be 24 times the mass of Jupiter which means that if it is gaseous it could be a brown dwarf star supersaturn appears to have a mars-sized object orbiting around it because there is a huge gap in the rings that was most probably cleared out by a large object the Cassini division in the rings of Saturn is where the moon mimus has cleared out a path through Saturn's rings the light curve of super Saturn has only been observed once all the exoplanet detection systems are keeping an eye out for it to come back around j1407 no one knows when that will occur some astronomers have suggested that j1407b is a brown dwarf star system in itself merely passing in front of but not connected to Star j1407 an orbital reappearance of super Saturn would disprove that conjecture the center region of super Saturn blocked out all the light from its primary star this is what indicates that the ring system is new and in an early developmental phase over time the very dense ring Mass close to the planet is expected to thin as all this matter gets absorbed into the planet or ejected into space this is what has happened with our Solar System's gas giant planets the mamajek object is a shocker never before or since has a light curve been detected like super Saturns supersaturn has added a new chapter to our understanding of the formation of ring systems so here's to you super Saturn hope to see you again soon now Mercury is the planet that's usually closest to Earth does that surprise you did me Venus certainly gets closer to us than Mercury it can be as close as 25 million miles after all Venus is the second planet from the Sun and Earth is the third even Mars gets closer to Earth and Mercury the red planet can come as close to our home as 35 million miles as it will in the year 2287. I won't be around for that the average distance from Earth to Mercury is 48 million miles but Mercury is still usually the closest planet to Earth that's because Venus is usually somewhere on the other side of the Sun for 112 days and Mars is usually far away in its highly elliptical almost two-year long orbit that leaves Mercury zipping between the Earth and the Sun every 44 days and thus usually closer to Earth than either Venus or Mars hey good trivia question to pull on your friends isn't it 22 spacecraft have successfully flown to Venus and over 30 spacecraft have flown to Mars but only two have ever gone to Mercury so what's so hard about going there well it has to do with the Sun Mercury is not only the planet that is usually closest to Earth it is also the planet that is always closest to the Sun 28.6 million miles close to be precise being that close to the Sun creates navigational challenges to put it mildly any spacecraft going to Mercury gets accelerated by the tremendous gravitational pull of the Sun the spacecraft will be moving too fast to go into orbit around Mercury that's why the first spacecraft that went to Mercury the USA's Mariner 10 merely flew by mercury three times but made no attempt to achieve orbit around Mercury the only other ship to go to Mercury the USA's messenger spacecraft took six and a half years to get there now that's a trip messenger did achieve orbit for a period of four years before finally running out of fuel and crashing onto the surface of mercury on April 20th 2015. many other spacecraft have flown to Jupiter in about the same time or less than it took Messenger to go to Mercury the hang up is the deceleration of the spacecraft quite simply it takes too much onboard fuel supply to fire the engines in the reverse Direction and break the speed of the ship against the sun's great gravity slowing down sufficiently to get into orbit around Mercury is a no-go using rocket power some other way had to be found to slow messenger down a way that didn't use much or any fuel messenger was a hefty 2400 pounds or so loaded with nine pieces of state-of-the-art scientific equipment now 55 percent of the total weight or about thirteen hundred pounds was fuel but this fuel would not be used to slow the spacecraft down the fuel would be used for five engine Burns associated with gravity assists and also for orbital adjustments once messenger got to Mercury now gravity assists uses the gravity of a planet and the planet's orbital velocity to either speed up or slow down a spacecraft if the ship approaches a planet at a forward moving angle that is an angle in the direction the planet is revolving around the Sun then both the planet's gravity and the orbital velocity of the planet give the spacecraft a slingshot boost greatly increasing the speed of the craft and sending it off in a different direction this boost in speed can be added to by the spacecraft firing its rocket engines at just the right time both of America's Voyager probes use Jupiter's massive gravity to slingshot them to the outer gas giant planets and eventually out of the solar system assists can also be used to slow down a spacecraft as in the case of messenger by entering a planet's orbital path ahead of the planet the planet's gravity pulls back on the spacecraft and slows it down an engine burn is necessary at this time to escape the orbital path of the planet messenger performed one gravity assist flyby of Earth two gravity assist flybys of Venus and three gravity flybys of mercury only then had messenger been slowed enough to enter into orbit around Mercury the probe traveled an astounding 5 billion miles to get to Mercury from Earth that's farther than Pluto is away from Earth at its most distant the name messenger is an acronym almost as clever as its intricate flight path to Mercury because Mercury is the fastest moving Planet the ancient Greeks appointed Mercury as the messenger of Olympus news traveled fast even back then messenger really stands for mercury surface space environment geochemistry and ranging what do you think do they have a contest to come up with that now the good news is there's another mission to Mercury underway right now it is a combined Essa jaxa space mission that is bringing two orbiting satellites to Mercury the mission doesn't use an acronym for its spacecraft it has a real name Pepe Colombo no it's not a cartoon character Dr Giuseppe Colombo after whom the spacecraft is named was an Italian mathematician and professor of Applied mechanics he worked with NASA on the Mariner 10 mission to Mercury beppy is Giuseppe's childhood nickname which everyone knew and loved him by NASA had been content with one flyby of mercury the first ever but Professor beppy calculated that with a slight adjustment of the flight path to enable a gravity assist at Venus Mariner 10 could fly by Mercury again and again on different orbits around the Sun thanks to beppy NASA got three flybys of mercury for the price of one Bevy Colombo the spacecraft is scheduled to perform nine gravity assist flybys one at Earth two in Venus and six at Mercury itself each planetary deceleration slows beppi Colombo relative to the speed Mercury is moving around the Sun this will allow for orbital insertion otherwise beppi Colombo would head off into the sun now what's an orbit around Mercury Betty Colombo's Mercury transfer module or MTM for short will release two satellites one European the mpo Mercury planetary Orbiter and one Japanese the Mio Mercury magnetospheric Orbiter both are expected to orbit Mercury for one year altogether the MCS Mercury composite spacecraft consists of the mpo the Mio the MTM and mosif which protects the spacecraft from the Sun and houses the electronics for Mio this alphabet soup of mission components highlights the other reason it is difficult to get to Mercury after six gravity assist slowdowns six engine Burns 18 orbits around the Sun six and a half years of travel time and 9 billion miles of distance you have to bring a tailored complex of equipment it's like that mountain picnic you'd like to go on you can't just drive there you have to hike a long way up a tricky Mountain Trail and bring along insect repellent sunscreen and your hat oh and lunch and beverages it's not easy bippo Colombo has packed it all including lunch yeah not really the design is incredibly complex nothing can face the Sun not even the solar panels the solar panels must be kept turned almost to a right angle to the Sun or the heat in particle flux will corrode the solar cells and without electricity you have nothing therefore at right angles to the Sun the solar panels must be extra long as if there were only a little bit of sunshine Pepe's solar panels are 50 feet long the sun shield must remain gyroscopically aligned towards the Sun so that all instruments are always in the shade but still have a line of sight to what each is meant to Monitor and there are a lot of instruments five in the jaxa Orbiter and 11 in the Essa Orbiter it's one amazing picnic anyway the science objectives are meant to add to what we have learned from the previous two missions to Mercury the data collected by Becky Colombo will enable scientists to study the planet's interior and composition along with Mercury's geology and surface morphology Mercury's magnetic fields formation and evolutionary history the planet's solar wind interactions and overall environment as a metal Rich planet Mercury May hold a vast wealth of minerals that messenger failed to detect Bebe Colombo launched in October 2018 and still has a long way to go before it goes into orbit around Mercury however Betty has already flown past Mercury and returned new photographs the European Space Agency is excited about its first hot Mission all of the s's previous missions have been cold missions to objects further out into space such as Mars the asteroid belt Comet Rendezvous and elsewhere far out in the solar system well all I can say is best wishes to beppy Colombo let's hope all goes well on its 800 degrees Fahrenheit mission to Mercury let's hope that Mercury's long tail of exosphere gases sodium magnesium and potassium blown off the planet's surface by the solar wind don't fog up the lenses or coat the solar panels have a nice time Ciao Baby you take off from Earth and park your spacecraft somewhere near the moon you're now almost 240 000 miles away from your home planet that's almost 100 widths of the United States now you take out a giant hammer and an enormous chisel using the robotic arms of your spaceship you place the Chisel at the Earth's north pole and strike its head with the hammer Earth splits open like an eggshell and you see it another planet it's there and it's hiding inside our planet like a yolk in an egg you'd need to go back in time 4.5 billion years to find out how it got there this beautiful nebula will soon become our solar system color dust and various space debris are slowly coming closer toward the Common Center soon this jigsaw puzzle of debris becomes too heavy and dense the temperature inside the giant is rising soon it gets so high that it triggers a nuclear chain reaction Another Second and Bam there's an explosion so powerful that the shock waves travel far into dark space and the blinding Flash from this blast can be seen from the other side of the Milky Way galaxy when the dust clears a little you can see that a bright light is still shining at the very center of the explosion this newborn star is the sun it weighs as much as 333 000 Earths if the sun was a bucket you'd need 1.3 million earth-sized planets to fill it you are interested in a small object over there 93 million miles away from the Sun this pile of rocks and hot lava is Earth right now the planet is busy forming its core while the oceans of lava are gradually cooling down but a few tens of million years after the sun's birth you notice a strange object hurtling toward Earth it's Thea this small planet was born at about the same time as Earth and now it's following a crazy spiral trajectory at enormous speed scientists believe Thea was kind of a ball Jupiter and Venus played with Venus was pulling Thea in One Direction then Big Brother Jupiter pulled it back but the sun makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system that's why the star sets its own rules it makes Thea move in almost the same orbit as Earth so they inevitably come closer and closer to each other until they become next door neighbors we see that Thea is the size of Mars and as wide as the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Portugal [Music] a collision can't be avoided Thea is traveling toward Earth at nearly 9 000 miles per hour that's 11 times faster than the speed of sound if the smaller Planet crashes into Earth at a particular angle Earth will most likely be torn apart as well as Thea itself the Collision will cause a huge blast visible on other planets even on a bright day nothing will be left but some burning dust and debris even if Thea touches Earth only lightly it'll still knock out a chunk of our planet the size of Australia but the collision with Thea happens at a perfect 45 degree angle it strikes the Earth at tremendous speed the explosion literally vaporizes huge amounts of rock and the shock wave sends the remaining debris into Earth's orbit a huge crater is formed at the impact site soon it gets filled with boiling lava the remnants of Thea and the ejected fragments of earth begin to orbit our planet according to one version these fragments form Two Moons at first they travel together but one day they get too close to each other and Collide forming one large space body the other Theory claims that all the shards start being pulled by the remnants of Thea some time later they form the moon as we now know it at that point in the past though it's just Red Hot Rock and lava the collision at this angle slightly tilts our planet and accelerates its rotation it's because of Thea that we have different seasons and 24 hours in a day Earth has lithospheric plates these are enormous solid pieces that make up the crust of our planet after the collision with Thea they start to break and crack it causes carbon a primary component of all known life on Earth to start moving all over our planet so Earth gets some kind of metabolism after a few hundred million years the first living creatures start to appear on our planet over nearly 4 billion years simple single-celled organisms have been evolving into the life you see today according to scientists such a collision is a very rare event the probability that somewhere out there there's a planet like ours that has survived the same catastrophe is extremely small this may be the reason why we are yet to find traces of other civilizations out there in space meanwhile the remains of Thea are still here on Earth of course it doesn't look like an entire planet stuck inside our own most of the fragments have melted and blended into the Earth's crust if you take the top layer off our planet you'll see two huge lava blobs the size of entire continents they're right below Africa and the Pacific Ocean presumably these are the remains of Thea they didn't mix with Earth's mantle because of different densities it's like mixing water and oil in a glass the oil will always float up over the water and create an even layer on top of it but if you raise those lava patches up to the surface they'd be 100 times higher than Mount Everest other remains of Thea might be on the moon the Apollo space missions brought back many soil samples for analysis scientists have concluded that the Moon is very similar to Earth and structure people could drill deep down and take samples there then they'd analyze the blobs from Earth if they're structure matched it'd be 100 proof that Thea did hit Earth 4.5 billion years ago and that's how he got the Moon but for the time being Thea remains somewhat mysterious scientists are still not sure that the planet actually existed the whole idea perfectly fits the model of the moon's creation but in fact this incredible Collision may have never happened hop on the bright side of life together with our brand new teas hoodies and more click the link to pick your choice now you travel 41 light years away from Earth to the Planet 55 cancri e it's about twice the size of Earth and eight times heavier you take out your giant hammer again and use it to hit the Chisel the planet cracks and you see it's a giant diamond the temperature on this planet is tens of times higher than that of earth and its soil is rich in carbon the heat puts a lot of pressure on this carbon its structure changes first it turns into graphite some more pressure and graphite turns into diamond on Earth diamonds form at depths below 60 miles where the pressure is 50 000 times greater than on the surface the temperatures there rise over a thousand degrees which is as hot as fire diamonds are rejected closer to the surface in volcanic eruptions still people have to dig mines 1500 feet deep to find these beautiful gems the golden jubilee diamond is the biggest cut and faceted diamond on Earth it weighs as much as a chocolate bar and is the size of a hamster its price is about 12 million dollars now imagine a diamond the size of an entire planet you decide to fly back to the solar system your destination is Jupiter's moon Europa it's as wide as the distance between Seattle and Houston and its mass is less than one percent the mass of Earth its surface is enclosed in an icy crust it's about 19 miles thick but what if you crack this crust with your giant hammer wow Europa is completely covered in water it's freezing here three times colder than at the North Pole on Earth the water turns into ice almost instantly but the ocean beneath the surface is still liquid Europa interacts with Jupiter gravitationally just like the moon with Earth this creates tidal forces and heats europa's core the core melts the ice around it the result is a huge ocean two to three times larger than all of Earth's oceans combined scientists believe that water is the basis of life it may mean that life may exist on Europa there could be thermal Springs just like at the bottom of our oceans the water there is probably much warmer and even though the pressure and temperature in such places are likely to be extreme simple bacteria may live there Europa is almost the same age as Earth this means there's been enough time for living organisms to appear and evolve who knows maybe some Advanced civilization is already blooming under this Cross of ice they may be building big cities and dreaming of conquering space right now but the only thing people can do at the moment is send a probe to Europa and find out if life is possible there [Music] t-r-e-s-2b or not to be is a planet where night never ends and it's not your regular night with stars shining in the beautiful Skies here it's pitch dark and scorching hot t-re-s-2b is a gas giant roughly one and a half times more massive than Jupiter and its surface absorbs light better than charcoal it might also have a faint dark red glow because of its burning air which is as hot as fresh lava lovely in the star system of 55 cancri there are five planets four of which are gas giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn but the fifth one or rather the first because it's closest to the star is different in a most horrible way 55 cancri e is so close to its Sun that half the planet's surface is a literal ocean of molten lava the other half is an eternal Darkness because it never sees the sun the planet is always turned to its star on one side and between the scorching and the dark there's the Twilight Zone a thin strip of gloomy nothingness that's a getaway spot hd189377 B well I'm not going to say that again is the only exoplanet in the orbit of its star and at first glance it looks quite pretty blue and white swirls making up wondrous patterns on the surface but these Pleasant colors actually come from hard silicate particles in the planet's atmosphere which means it rains glass here but the worst is that winds reach the speed of 5400 miles per hour or almost Mach 7. well for comparison the fastest wind speed on Earth was 254 miles per hour over 20 times less thus the glass falling from the sky travels horizontally at Hypersonic speeds shredding everything in its path better duck the next system whose name I won't even try to pronounce um this one has three exoplanets which are all being slowly destroyed by their own star it happens because that star is not a regular it's a pulsar a rapidly spinning core of an exploded star it creates powerful electromagnetic pulses in several directions while rotating at several thousand times per second as a result the planets orbiting this deceased star are slowly being eaten away and will eventually disappear entirely Kepler 70. hey I can say that one is a hot blue dwarf star that exploded into a red giant some 18 million years ago at the time it was orbited by at least two planets the closer of which was a jupiter-like gas giant its name was kepler-70b and it still exists but the overgrown star consumed it and transformed it into a blazing hot Rocky world right now it's one of the hottest planets ever discovered its temperature is higher than the surface of our sun it was lucky to survive spending time inside the star but it's evaporating now and will probably be no more in the near future wasp 12b is one of the weirdest and saddest planets out there the enormous gravity of its star combined with the planets consisting mostly of gas result in the star slowly devouring its Protege uh so pal like what's eating you my mother wasp 12b has already taken the form of an egg stretched toward its merciless sun and it's unable to do anything with its condition in another 10 million years the planet will inevitably succumb to the voracious star's appetite hey you asked if you ever wondered what it's like to walk on eyes and hot coals at the same time policy 436b is a planet that would give you a vivid example being extremely close to its Sun the Neptune size exoplanet boasts temperatures hotter than a blazing oven and yet it's covered in eyes which burns incessantly this ice is much denser due to the enormous gravity of the planet staying solid even under extreme conditions and not melting away no list of frightening worlds could do without mentioning Venus the Earth's evil twin the second planet from the sun has an atmosphere so thick and full of clouds that its surface is much hotter than that of mercury volcanic eruptions constantly thrash Venus its gravity is almost a hundred times stronger than ours and those clouds I mentioned are not made of water but of sulfuric acid which condenses and rains down on the ground adding to The Inferno but even if you were Brave or crazy enough to try to pass through these clouds you probably couldn't the winds up there are as strong as some of the most powerful hurricanes back on Earth here we have a very long name for a very very cold Planet although the host star is not too far away it's a small and rather cool Red Dwarf whose light in heat barely even reached the planet the temperatures out there fall as low as minus 370 degrees which is only marginally warmer than absolute zero the exoplanet is thus dark gloomy and covered in Eternal eyes that never thaws I thought I saw that thumbworth still if it has a rocky core it might generate some heat so there's a chance that deep below the Frozen surface some unknown alien things might lurk dominium located roughly 50 light years away from our solar system is a planet hostile to any living thing on many accounts it's tidally locked to its sun which means one of its sides is always facing the star while the other is always turned away the hot side is heated to over 1800 degrees perpetually blown over with winds reaching 600 miles per hour and that's winter well actually I don't know that despite dimidium being a gas giant it has a large amount of iron in it which melts and evaporates in the atmosphere creating clouds and when those cool down they fall on the surface in the infernal reign of molten iron that'll test your metal oxygen is usually viewed as an element that might bring life to a planet but this is definitely not the case for Osiris scientists were shocked to find oxygen on this planet or rather around it because it's eight times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun this extreme distance makes Osiris a living Melting Pot where anything that could burn will it's also responsible for a very short orbit of the planet around the star a year on Osiris is just three and a half days on Earth to boot the atmosphere of the planet is constantly blown and melted away by the heat from its Sun vacation nah let's keep looking karate x03b is neither is hot nor as cold as some of the others on this list but it's terrifying in its own more Insidious way it's a gas giant similar in size to Jupiter yet 20 times denser this makes this exoplanet's gravity weigh down on everything on its surface 50 times more than it would on Earth stepping on it would be your ultimate Doom because you'd be immediately crushed by the density of its atmosphere karate 7B is another oven-like world its day-to-day temperature is over four thousand degrees combined with the rocky surface it presents an infernal landscape the rocks on the ground bubble and boil evaporating in the atmosphere where they cool down and eventually fall back on the surface in a brimstone rain the saddest thing about karate 7B is that it might have once been a gas giant whose atmosphere melted away from the heat leaving only the scorched core you're on a spaceship flying through outer space at a speed of 180 000 miles per second this is almost the speed of light make yourself comfortable because the voyage is going to be long it will last a little more than 90 years it's better to use a cryo capsule to not get bored in short you need to fly for almost a century at the speed of light to get to a mysterious exoplanet that scientists have recently discovered they have found many planets in the last few years but this one can help in the search for extraterrestrial life the planet looks like a dark blue ball and has a complex technical name consisting of letters and numbers it's about the size of Neptune and orbiting around a little star of Class M or in simple words around a red dwarf the planet is eight times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun but this doesn't mean that fiery layers of magma cover the surface of this world the temperature on this exoplanet is pretty low and similar to Earth's that's because the Red Dwarf is not as hot as our sun but the most exciting thing is that the atmosphere of this space object consists of water vapor or helium or helium hydrogen scientists don't know for sure so they actively observe it but if there is water in its atmosphere then life can exist it's unlikely we will discover some big creatures but even microscopic bacteria would be a big sensation another reason why scientists keep their eyes on this planet is its origin if they find out what the planet's atmosphere is made of they'll understand how such objects can form around red dwarfs this will be another little brick of understanding of how the universe works even if they discover Life on this strange Planet it will be impossible to transport it from there for us to study fortunately there's another massive object near Earth where microbes can live and it's located inside our solar system 2020 scientists detected a strange gaseous substance in Venus's atmosphere these were chemical residues of phosphine this is a significant finding because phosphine exists on Earth near some microbes they've recently discovered phosphine in Penguins bodies many people started to put out theories that these animals came to us from Venus but of course this is not true you can also find this substance among swamps and mud so it was a big surprise when they found residual phosphine Parts on another planet it's weird since life on Venus's surface most likely cannot exist the temperature and pressure on the planet are just too high but high up in the sky of Venus the conditions are not so terrible perhaps some microbes live there but scientists also know that volcanoes often erupt there a chemical trace of phosphine may appear as a result of these eruptions if this is the real reason for the appearance of phosphine they probably won't find any life now they're spending a lot of money on the study of this planet but let's go back to deep space over the past 20 years scientists have been fine

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE Series

Views: 1,125,799

Keywords: analytical skills, astrology, astronomer, astronomy, beautiful facts about space, black hole, bright side, bright side space facts, bright side videos, brightside, creative thinking, critical thinking, education, facts about solar system, facts about space, facts of life, improve your memory, interesting videos, intriguing videos, mysteries, recent space discoveries, space, strangest planets in space, what if, what other planets look like

Id: HcV35g7KEpM

Length: 180min 11sec (10811 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023