9 Weirdest Alien Worlds We've Already Found

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you tried to land on a gas giant such as Jupiter, then the Chthonian planets could help answer your question.

These planets began life just like our own gas giants but, over time, the strong solar winds streaming out of their host stars stripped them of their gaseous outer layers, leaving just the rocky core behind.

The thing is, large gas giants with tight orbits around their star are a pretty common occurrence in the universe, but there's no way they could have formed there in the first place. 

Their proximity to a star emitting huge amounts of radiation would never have allowed them to form their thick, gaseous atmospheres in the first place. It is thought that planets such as this will have formed further out in the solar system and migrated inwards - the upshot of which being that their days are numbered as solar winds strip them naked, leaving just a rocky core behind.

There are some who think that WASP-12b, our favourite egg-shaped planet from before, is currently in the grips of this process. The part that interests astrobiologists is that, once the thick clouds of swirling gas are blown away, the core they leave behind could well be habitable and there are some that think this could well be the history of the Earth itself.