10 Craziest Planets In The Universe
What wonderfully weird and outright bizarre planets await us amongst the stars?
Ever since our ancestors first gazed into the heavens above, mankind has shared a stark fascination with what wonders await us in the cosmos.
The universe is filled with the weird, the wonderful, and the downright wacky ready to amaze us with their sheer bizarreness; you just need to know where to look. Everything, from planets that eat stars, to those that rain valuable jewels and even those that do not abide by conventional laws of physics can be found out in space. Even the most learned astronomers would be surprised by these.
As of July 2020, 4183 exoplanets (planets that orbit other stars and are not in our solar system) have been found, with an additional 2418 potential exoplanets waiting for confirmation. This, alongside an abundance of rogue planets (planets not orbiting in a star system), leaves us no shortage of potential worlds for us to examine and explore. However, some of these on our list you might want to avoid if given the chance.
These are the 10 most bizarre planets that we know exist in our universe.
10. The Planet That Is Pink
Discovered in 2013, Gliese 504 b is a Jupiter-like (Jovian) planet orbiting the star 59 Virginis in the Virgo constellation, around 57 light years from Earth.
Jovian planets, sometimes called brown dwarfs, are relatively common in the universe. What makes this planet stand out above many others, is the very special circumstances in which we can observe it today.
Orbiting nine times further away from its star than Jupiter does to the Sun, it receives very little starlight. However, this gas giant creates its own light to compensate. The light emitted stems from the heat still radiating out from its formation. This emission gives the planet a delightful, pink hue (or to be more technical, magenta). Therefore, it has been affectionately nicknamed “The Pink Planet”.