Strangest Planets That Exist - 3

March 15, 2020

By: Haris Ahmad

I have written multiple blogs on this topic and in this blog, just like the previous blogs, I’ll share some of the strangest planets that exist in our universe.

The first planet that I’ll talk about is CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. This planet was discovered in 2012 by a group of French and Canadian Astronomers. This planet is a rogue planet that is intriguing. This planet orbits no star at all and wanders in the emptiness of space all alone. It has a mass of 4-5 times the mass of Jupiter, which is too much and is 130 light-years away. Some say that this planet was kicked out of its system by the gravitational force of other planets that were its neighbors. Moreover, this planet consists of a lot of heavy elements and shines bright. This planet also emits infrared radiations into space directly which means that it emits heat into space. It has an average temperature of about 400 Degree Celsius which is due to the nuclear fusion that it does. This planet may also contain methane as well as water in it. 

Image Source: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/107/the-free-floating-planet-cfbdsir-j2149472-0403089/

The next planet I’ll talk about is Psr J1719–1483 B which is a very strange planet due to the fact that it orbits a Pulsar. Now, Pulsars are some of the densest objects in the universe. They are so dense that one spoon of the matter of a Pulsar has a mass equal to Mount Everest.

A Pulsar: 

Image Source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-continues-to-study-pulsars-50-years-after-their-chance-discovery/

This Pulsar in specific has a diameter of 19 km but still has a mass of 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. Pulsars also spin violently fast and some can spin up to 700 times a second. The planet PSR J1719–1483 B orbits this Pulsar in 2 hours.

Another Planet that I’ll talk about is TrEs-4b which is one of the largest known planets in the universe. 

Image Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrES-4b

It is located 1400 light-years away from us in the Hercules Constellation. Even though this planet has a size, which is 1.7 bigger than that of Jupiter, it has a very low density and hence it is categorized as a ‘Puffy Planet’. The shocking thing is that the density of this planet is the same as cork which has shocked Astronomers. However, astronomers say that this phenomenon is due to the extremely high temperatures on the planet (1260 Celsius) because it orbits only at a distance of 7.2 million light-years away from its Star.

The last planet I’ll talk about is known as the Genesis Planet. This planet will shock you because it is extremely old. It is 12.7 billion years old and thus, it is also called Methuselah who was the oldest man according to the bible. The real astronomical name of the planet is PSR-B162028B. Another great thing about the planet is that it is the first one to orbit a star in a cluster of almost 100 thousand stars. Surprisingly, it orbits two stars with one being a neutron star that spins at the rate of 100 times per second.