Planet X Entered the Solar System — And Its Orbit Is Messing with Our Equilibrium

[00:00:00]Now, if Earth were the size of a nickel, Neptune would be about as big as a baseball. That's impressive, but it's nothing compared to the giant ninth planet [music] that might be hiding out there.

[00:00:12]Now, our Planet Nine's discovery saga might have finally come to an end. Turns out, the problem [music] wasn't where we were looking, but how. And researchers might have just made the biggest solar system discovery in decades.

[00:00:25]You see, the idea of finding a planet beyond Neptune has been around for years now. I know, back in school, you probably learned that the ninth planet was Pluto. But, forget about Pluto. It's been [music] demoted to a less fancy category since 2006. What I'm talking about is the Planet Nine, a hypothetical giant planet that could be our cosmic neighbor. We've never actually [music] seen it, but scientists are pretty sure it's out there somewhere, hiding in the outer solar [music] system.

[00:00:56]To explain why they think that, we need a sheet of paper. Hey, here's one. We place a coin on it, and suddenly, it starts to move. Unless we're talking about some kind of superpower, there's no way this coin is moving on its own, right? So, you figure someone must be on the other side, holding a magnet and moving it around. You can't see the magnet, but it explains why the coin is moving.

[00:01:20]That's kind of what's happening with Planet Nine. We can't see it, we can't prove it, yet, but its existence could explain the strange movements we see out [music] there in space. For example, the planets in our solar system orbit on a flat plane that's tilted about [music] 6° relative to the sun.

[00:01:39]But, why 6°? Well, no one really knows for sure. Some scientists think those orbits might be slightly [music] tilted because of the pull of a ninth planet.

[00:01:49]Its existence could also explain the unusual paths of smaller objects >> [music] >> in the distant Kuiper Belt, a region full of icy debris that stretches far beyond Neptune's orbit.

[00:02:00]Back in 2016, researchers from Caltech [music] published a study about Planet Nine. They suggested it could have a mass about 10 times that of Earth and follow a highly elongated path.

[00:02:12]>> [music] >> That's a scientific way of saying it takes forever to make one trip around the Sun. Because of that, it would be located in the outer solar system. I mean, far, far away. It would orbit the Sun about 20 to 30 times farther out than our most distant planet, Neptune.

[00:02:29]According to scientists, Planet Nine would take up to 20,000 Earth years to complete just one full orbit around the Sun.

[00:02:37]Since it's crazy far out there, it's almost impossible to see it. So, as cool as this hypothesis sounds, we've never found solid evidence that Planet Nine actually exists. But, >> [music] >> we might be pretty close. In May 2025, a team at National Tsing Hua University might have made one of the most exciting solar system discoveries ever.

[00:03:00]All right, so there's a hypothesis that Planet Nine hasn't been discovered yet because we haven't been using the right method.

[00:03:07]>> [music] >> This new study raises an interesting question. What if Planet Nine actually looks [music] brighter in infrared light than it does in visible light?

[00:03:16]Let me explain. Scientists have been trying to spot Planet Nine by its reflected light. [music] But, here's the problem. To spot it in visible wavelengths, sunlight would have to travel all the way out to Planet Nine, bounce off its surface, >> [music] >> and then travel all the way back to Earth. If a Neptune-sized planet were about 10 times farther away than Neptune, it would look about 10,000 times fainter.

[00:03:40]But, a planet's own thermal radiation, I mean, its heat, only has to make a one-way trip.

[00:03:45]>> [music] >> So, in infrared light, Planet Nine would only be about 100 times fainter. That's why it makes more sense to look for it using space-based infrared telescopes.

[00:03:56]And that's the idea behind this new study. [music] The team started digging through archives searching for old infrared sky survey data. And they pulled it from two main sources.

[00:04:06]>> [music] >> First, IRAS, a satellite launched in the '80s that scanned the sky for almost a year. Then, the Japanese satellite Akari, another infrared observatory that operated between 2006 and 2011.

[00:04:20]So, basically, they compared objects that showed up in IRAS database and noticed which ones had moved by the time Akari took its observations. And by doing that, the researchers found something incredible, an object that might just be [music] our long-lost ninth planet. Because if something moves, it could be a planet orbiting the sun, right? And yeah, they did find some celestial objects showing tiny movements.

[00:04:46]But before jumping to conclusions, they had to rule out the parallax effect. And that's something really important when we're talking about solar system discoveries.

[00:04:55]To explain it, I need you to do something. Hold one finger in front of your face. Close one eye, and now switch. Your finger seems to move a tiny bit, right? That's because you're looking at it from a slightly different angle, [clears throat] from one eyeball to the other. The same thing happens when we look out into space from Earth.

[00:05:14]Since our planet orbits the sun, our view of very distant objects shifts just a little.

[00:05:21]That effect is [music] called parallax.

[00:05:23]My point is, because of this effect, Planet Nine would appear to move across the sky as Earth goes around the sun.

[00:05:30]>> [music] >> On any given day, it might seem to be in one spot, but six months later, when Earth is on the opposite side of the sun, >> [music] >> it would look like it shifted. Six months after that, it would seem to move back again.

[00:05:43]Scientists had to account for parallax.

[00:05:45]Actually, they had to remove its effects. So, the team looked at images of the sky taken on the same date every year. Because on that same date, Earth is always in the same spot [music] in its orbit. That means if Planet Nine is real, it would show up in the same place in those images every year. No fake wiggle from parallax, just its real position.

[00:06:08]This careful search led them to a single object, a tiny dot in the infrared data.

[00:06:13]This strange little spot have moved slightly along its orbit around the Sun over the 23 years between IRIS and Akari. Wait, could that be it? Did astronomers just confirm a hidden planet? Well, maybe. But, don't get too excited. The data we have on its motion over that time is not enough to figure out its full orbit. So, for now, we still can't say for sure if this mysterious object is really Planet Nine.

[00:06:42]It's definitely a strong candidate, though. Based on how bright the object appears, the team estimates it could be pretty massive. And that came as a big surprise.

[00:06:52]>> [music] >> You see, previous NASA research ruled out any Jupiter-sized or Saturn-sized planets hiding out there. But, a smaller world would have gone undetected. So, the scientists were looking for something just a bit bigger than Earth.

[00:07:06]But, it turns out this mysterious planet might be more massive than Neptune.

[00:07:11]Now that they've discovered Planet Nine, supposedly at least, the plan is to keep tracking it and collecting new data.

[00:07:18]But, don't think the road ahead will be easy.

[00:07:21]Because since the Akari satellite spotted it for the first time, that object didn't just sit still. It's been moving slowly through space ever since.

[00:07:29]So now, scientists need to use regular telescopes on Earth to look for it again.

[00:07:34]And here's the tricky part. They're not exactly sure where it moved to. So, they have to to a pretty big patch of the sky. And so far, no matching object has been found.

[00:07:46]Whether this really turns out to be the Planet Nine discovery or not, only time will tell.

[00:07:51]For now, its existence is still up for debate. But with powerful new technology on the way, like NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, astronomers are more determined than ever to uncover the truth. And if Planet Nine really is out there, hiding in the cold, dark edges of our solar system, it's running out of places to hide.

[00:08:13]So, we might be getting closer to finding a massive icy planet beyond Neptune's orbit. Yeah, sorry Pluto, still not you. Recently, some universe mapping using data from a telescope in Hawaii eliminated about 78% of the possible locations for this mysterious Waldo from space.

[00:08:32]Some people call it Planet Nine, while others prefer Planet X. Either way, it's been causing controversy since its existence was first proposed. And that is mainly because no study so far can answer the big question, does it really exist? If discovered, Planet Nine would rank as the fifth largest planet in our solar system with a mass 10 times that of Earth. It's also theorized to be gaseous like Uranus.

[00:09:01]The initial study on Planet Nine, dating back to 2016, [music] suggests that this colossal new planet orbits the sun 29 times farther out than Neptune, which sits at about 2.8 billion miles. As a result, the Planet Nine would take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete a single orbit around the sun.

[00:09:22]If confirmed, this yet-to-be-understood world would dominate a region larger than any other known planet in our cosmic neighborhood.

[00:09:31]These are all intriguing hypotheses, [music] but without a single piece of evidence or observation to back them up.

[00:09:38]>> [music] >> Before dismissing this as a wild guess, it is important to note that these researchers relied on complex mathematical [music] modeling and computer simulations to speculate about the planet's characteristics, cuz that's what they do.

[00:09:53]The hypothetical presence of this planet would explain various mysterious features located beyond Neptune.

[00:10:00]We are specifically talking about the Kuiper Belt, a huge donut-shaped region >> [music] >> filled with icy debris leftover from the formation of the solar system, including comets and dwarf [music] planets like Pluto.

[00:10:13]What happens is that the six farthest objects in the Kuiper [music] Belt exhibit elliptical orbits that are all oriented in a similar direction within physical space and tilted at approximately 30° downward relative [music] to the orbital plane of our eight known planets.

[00:10:29]What's strange here is that despite [music] their distinct orbital velocities around the solar system, they maintain this alignment. The likelihood of such alignment occurring randomly is extremely low, around 0.007%.

[00:10:44]So, here comes Planet Nine, a hypothetical massive celestial body that offers a plausible explanation for this strange phenomenon, potentially exerting gravitational influence to shape these orbits.

[00:10:59]The initial theory didn't hold up for long, facing accusations of observational bias and calculation errors. Then, in 2017, another study popped up, sparking back the idea that maybe Planet Nine is out there after all.

[00:11:15]This time, Spanish astronomers tried a novel approach, [music] focusing on observing extreme trans-Neptunian objects. These celestial bodies orbit the Sun in highly stretched elliptical paths with average distances exceeding 13 billion miles.

[00:11:32]The research suggests that the distances between these objects nodes and the sun might provide clues to planet nine's location.

[00:11:40]You see, these nodes are the points where celestial bodies orbit intersects the solar system's plane. When these objects reach these points, they're more likely to interact with other solar system bodies, potentially causing significant changes in their orbits or even collisions. So, if the trajectory of these extreme trans-Neptunian objects remain stable, everything's fine. But, if it's not, well, that's a sign that something else, something big, is messing with their path.

[00:12:10]And that's exactly what the research found. There is something unseen out there throwing these objects off course, and that something could be a planet chilling at a distance between 300 to 400 times farther from the sun than Earth.

[00:12:26]To this day, the study of the extreme trans-Neptunian objects is the strongest evidence we've got for planet nine's existence. And if you're still not convinced by this theory, know that strange motions like these have led to planetary discoveries before. Neptune, for instance, was spotted because Uranus's motion didn't quite agree with the predictions of Newtonian gravity.

[00:12:49]But, the deflection of its orbit could be explained if it was caused by a pull of an undiscovered planet. And just like that, we discovered Neptune.

[00:13:01]Now, the year is 2021, and there's all this buzz about planet nine again. After correcting some old guesses, studies are now leaning towards the idea that this mystery world follows an epic loop around the sun every 7,000 years. That is massive news because it means this planet might be closer than we ever thought, making it easier for our telescopes to spot it.

[00:13:25]The paper also suggests [music] there is a whopping 99% chance that the funky orbits of these distant objects are all because of this unseen planet, not just some cosmic coincidence. Now, the odds of this whole situation being a fluke are down to a one in 250 chance, which is much better than the one in 10,000 chance back in [music] 2016.

[00:13:50]All these optimistic numbers have brought us to where we are today, keeping our hopes and working on better equipment to continue the mission of spotting Planet Nine. As mentioned earlier, researchers in Hawaii created some kind of treasure map utilizing the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response [music] System to eliminate 78% of its locations. This is great news >> [music] >> considering how challenging it is to find a planet-size needle in a cosmic haystack. But, unfortunately, Planet Nine's presence remains a ghost in the dark [music] outer reaches of our solar system.

[00:14:26]Enthusiasts are still convinced of its [music] existence and believe it is only a matter of time before we celebrate the discovery of Earth's new cosmic cousin.

[00:14:35]They're putting their hopes on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is currently under construction in Chile and is scheduled to begin science operations in late 2025.

[00:14:46]Over the course of 10 years, this observatory will scan the entire southern hemisphere sky every few nights with a [music] 27-ft fast-moving telescope equipped with the largest digital camera in the world.

[00:14:59]>> [music] >> The idea is to catalog everything in the solar system, reaching out to and beyond Neptune, and tracking the movements of millions of celestial objects, including space junk, asteroids, comets, and stars.

[00:15:12]If Planet Nine is indeed out there, this next-generation telescope could be the one to find it.

[00:15:20]The existence of this mysterious planet is far from being universally accepted in the scientific community. That is simply because Planet Nine isn't the only explanation for the strange phenomenon occurring beyond Neptune.

[00:15:34]One theory suggests that a group of distant objects, such as dwarf planets, comets, [music] and moons, might be collectively influencing the orbits of the extreme trans-Neptunian objects.

[00:15:46]Others believe that a black hole is behind all this. These compressed masses are some of the densest objects in the universe, potentially capable [music] of affecting the orbits of other masses, like how this supposed ghost planet nine [music] is believed to be doing.

[00:16:02]Another bold perspective [music] suggests that our current understanding of the laws of gravity is flawed, actually incomplete. This theory, known as modified Newtonian dynamics, proposes that these [music] distant icy objects exhibit strange behavior not due to influence from another planet, but rather because [music] the immense gravitational field of the Milky Way is influencing them.

[00:16:26]>> [music] >> However, even supporters of this theory acknowledge that it is too early to draw firm conclusions, and much more extensive research is still required.

[00:16:38]While we continue our relentless hunt for Planet Nine, some astronomers have taken it a step further, suggesting the existence of a hypothetical Planet Ten.

[00:16:48]This world has a mass and size like that of Mars or Earth, and is located on the edges of the Kuiper Belt.

[00:16:55]But, the thing is, if this alleged Planet Ten is indeed as small as scientists believe, it might not have enough gravity to clear its orbit of debris.

[00:17:04]>> [music] >> And that is pretty similar to what happens with Pluto, being one of the reasons why it got into trouble back in 2006.

[00:17:12]So, yeah, it's better not to get too excited. This supposed Planet Ten might end up classified [music] as another dwarf planet.

[00:17:21]All right, dear viewer. Let's lay it out on the table. The case is cold, just like the rock we're looking for. It's that hypothetical planet again, a real slippery character, warping orbits [music] from the shadows.

[00:17:35]I've been following its gravitational rap sheet for years. It has left a trail of math miscalculations and confused astronomers.

[00:17:43]But it can't hide forever. This solar system [music] ain't that big. If it's there, we will find planet Y.

[00:17:51]Yep, another day, another quest to solve the solar system's riddles.

[00:17:57]New research [music] points to another hidden world. I have to say, we shouldn't dismiss these theories until they're disproven.

[00:18:04]Scientists these [music] days are overloaded with a vast amount of data.

[00:18:08]Thankfully, they have supercomputers going through mountains of equations bound to give a headache to someone like me.

[00:18:15]But it's how these theories come to exist.

[00:18:18]At one point, even Neptune seemed like [music] a far-fetched theory.

[00:18:22]When Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel, for decades, [music] it looked like the solar system's final stop. But Uranus didn't quite follow [music] the rules. Something was off.

[00:18:35]Either the laws were wrong or there was an invisible hand out there.

[00:18:39]Two math nerds, [music] Adams in England and Le Verrier in France, picked up the abacus. And there it was. Neptune appeared [music] exactly where predicted.

[00:18:50]That's a cool point for math.

[00:18:52]That triumph inspired the next [music] hunt.

[00:18:55]In the early 1900s, Percival Lowell became hooked on the planet X theory.

[00:19:00]He was sure Uranus and Neptune were still wobbling [music] funny. So, he pictured a giant mystery world yanking their strings.

[00:19:08]His team hunted for years.

[00:19:11]And in 1930, >> [music] >> Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto.

[00:19:14]Pluto is Planet X? Nope. Not so fast.

[00:19:19]Pluto was too [music] small. It didn't fit.

[00:19:22]The hype faded, and decades later, Voyager 2 showed that weird orbits made sense all along.

[00:19:28]Planet X, [music] at least Lowell's version, had never existed.

[00:19:33]Then came Planet Nine.

[00:19:36]In 2016, researchers noticed that distant Kuiper Belt objects [music] weren't scattered randomly. Their orbits clustered strangely, as if something was tugging them into line.

[00:19:47]They proposed a super Earth, five to 10 times Earth's mass, orbiting hundreds of AU away.

[00:19:53]Simulations made it look convincing, [music] but no one has seen it yet.

[00:19:58]A later discovery, a dwarf planet called 2017 [music] OF201, made things even weirder.

[00:20:05]Some say [music] it weakens the case for Planet Nine. Others say it's more evidence. For now, Planet [music] Nine is still a maybe.

[00:20:14]However, latest research points to another possible candidate, for now called Planet Y.

[00:20:21]Unlike the others, it's thought to be smaller, closer in size to Earth or Mercury, and hiding just past the Kuiper Belt.

[00:20:29]Here's the big clue.

[00:20:30]Way past Neptune, some icy objects are all tilted, like a bunch of marbles moving to the same side while on a flat surface.

[00:20:38]That shouldn't happen.

[00:20:40]Gravity [music] should have straightened them out ages ago.

[00:20:44]The simplest explanation, a hidden planet quietly warping the outer solar system like a mischievous babysitter.

[00:20:51]Astronomers check those Kuiper Belt orbits against the solar system's invariable plane.

[00:20:56]Basically, the balance point of all the planets combined.

[00:21:00]If things were normal, the orbits should line up, but they don't.

[00:21:05]They're all slanted the same way, like a bunch of pencils dropped on the floor.

[00:21:09]And somehow every single one points toward the same corner.

[00:21:14]According to researchers, the odds of that happening by chance are only 2 to 4%.

[00:21:20]That's similar to flipping a coin five times in a row and it landing on the same side each time.

[00:21:27]Astrophysicists ran their fancy calculations and came up with the simplest explanation. You guessed it, another object with strong gravity.

[00:21:36]The math shows that a world somewhere between the size of Mercury and Earth orbiting 100 to 200 AU from the Sun could maintain that tilt. Not too big, not too small, [music] not too far, just the right size and distance to warp the Kuiper Belt without throwing everything else into chaos.

[00:21:55]And here is where it gets fun.

[00:21:57]In theory, Planet Y could coexist with Planet Nine.

[00:22:02]Planet Nine is supposed to pull icy orbits into clusters, [music] kind of like a sheep dog rounding up sheep.

[00:22:09]Planet Y doesn't cluster anything. It tilts the whole playing field instead, which means if both turn out to be real, we might have two hidden [music] planets shaping the edges of our solar system in different ways.

[00:22:22]So, why haven't we seen this mysterious neighbor yet?

[00:22:26]Simple, it's faint.

[00:22:28]At 100 to 200 AU, sunlight [music] is thousands of times weaker than here on Earth.

[00:22:34]Planet that far away could only reflect a tiny trickle of light.

[00:22:38]>> [music] >> To our telescopes, it would look like a barely visible speck drifting across a crowded star field. Kind of like trying to spot a sleeping [music] gray cat in a dark cellar with only faint moonlight coming through the window.

[00:22:52]It doesn't help that Planet Y would move at a snail's pace across the sky.

[00:22:57]Snap a photo one year and another a few months later and it might not even look like it moved.

[00:23:04]Older sky surveys weren't designed to catch something that faint and [music] slow.

[00:23:09]They're great for spotting fast-moving asteroids near Earth, but hopeless for a dim tortoise crawling at the edge of the solar system.

[00:23:17]But the hunt isn't over. Astronomers are putting their hopes on the Vera Rubin Observatory.

[00:23:23]This massive [music] new telescope will take pictures of the night sky in unprecedented detail.

[00:23:30]If Planet Nine is out there, Rubin could be the one to find it. [music] And if it isn't, well, Rubin will give us the best proof yet that it doesn't exist.

[00:23:40]Who knows? Maybe it spots [music] something entirely different.

[00:23:44]But what if Planet Nine is real?

[00:23:46]Where did it come from?

[00:23:48]Perhaps it's a leftover [music] chunk from the solar system's wild early years.

[00:23:53]Billions of years ago, [music] when Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were still migrating, massive chunks of rock and ice were flung around like cosmic bumper cars.

[00:24:03]Some merged [music] to become the planets we know today.

[00:24:07]Others were kicked out entirely, ejected into [music] interstellar space.

[00:24:11]Planet Nine might be one of the lucky survivors, massive enough to hang on in a stable orbit [music] at the fringes.

[00:24:19]Another possibility is way cooler. Maybe it's a rogue planet.

[00:24:24]Planet Nine [music] might just be the cosmic equivalent of an adopted kid or a wandering stray that found a home.

[00:24:31]So, what [music] would it mean if Planet Nine was real?

[00:24:34]First, it would mean a lot of textbooks [music] getting another edition.

[00:24:38]New picture books as well.

[00:24:40]It would also challenge how we think planets form.

[00:24:44]A Mercury-to-Earth mass that [music] far doesn't fit the standard model of planets forming near the sun and staying put.

[00:24:52]Either the early solar system was wild enough to fling it outward [music] and still keep it bound, or it didn't start here at all and was captured [music] later, stolen from another star.

[00:25:03]There's another angle.

[00:25:05]Comets.

[00:25:06]A planet out there could tug on icy bodies at the edge of the solar system, nudging some inward.

[00:25:13]Over time, that might even have helped deliver water and building blocks for life to Earth, but that's just speculation at this point.

[00:25:21]However, the biggest question of all would be, what else is out there?

[00:25:26]If a planet the size of Earth can still slip under our radar, then smaller worlds, icy dwarfs, and other mysteries could be waiting farther out.

[00:25:36]The Oort Cloud might be home to things we haven't even [music] dreamed of yet.

[00:25:40]Finding Planet Y wouldn't just add a planet, it would open a new chapter in exploring the solar system.

[00:25:48]So, here we are at the edge of the map, where the street lights of our solar system flicker out.

[00:25:54]It's just another theory on top of a dusty desk. [music] Another clue to chase down a dark universe.

[00:26:00]Some leads have gone cold and turned out to be ghosts.

[00:26:04]Others, still out there, waiting to be found.

[00:26:08]Planet Y? The case is still wide open, but one thing's for sure in our solar system, as long as the orbits keep wobbling and the cosmic rug stays wrinkled, astronomers, they'll keep looking.

[00:26:21]They'll never stop searching for the last planet hiding in the endless dark.

[00:26:26]Maybe it's just a matter of time.

[00:26:28]>> [music] >> We will see.

[00:26:33]>> Hey, scientists may have just found a new planet that looks a lot like Earth with a big icy catch. [music] This world is about 150 light-years away, rocky, and circles a sun-like star on a schedule pretty close to ours. At first sight, it sounds promising, right? Well, slow down. There's a catch here. It might be insanely cold, as cold as Mars in the deep freeze.

[00:26:57]You see, [music] HD 137010b, that's a mouthful, doesn't seem to be a gas ball, so we [music] would probably be able to stand on its surface. It's a little bigger than Earth and goes around a star that's pretty similar to our sun.

[00:27:12]This star is about 146 light-years away from our planet, which, in space terms, [music] is close enough for scientists to study it instead of just, you know, squinting at it. But what made people excited is the fact [music] that this planet takes about one Earth year to go around its star. Now, that's a big deal because most exoplanets [music] dash around their stars in days or weeks. Even better, this newly discovered one might sit right on the outer edge of the habitable zone, also called the Goldilocks zone. This region is not too hot and not too cold, which means [music] that liquid water might exist on the planet if it has the right atmosphere. A big if, but still cool.

[00:27:53]Another thing that makes this planet extra special [music] is how we see it.

[00:27:58]From Earth, it actually passes in front of its star. Imagine a tiny [music] bug crawling across a flashlight beam. You got it. That makes it way easier for scientists to study things like its size, orbit, and maybe even what its atmosphere is made of. And if all of this checks out, it could be one of the best Earth-like planet candidates [music] we've ever found. And now, the bad news. This planet does not get much sunlight. HD 137010b gets less [music] than 1/3 of the heat and light Earth gets from the sun.

[00:28:31]Even though its star is similar to our sun, >> [music] >> it's basically the sun's quieter, dimmer cousin. You know, same type, [music] lower wattage. What does that mean for the planet? It could be insanely cold.

[00:28:43]Scientists think the surface temperature might max out at around minus 90° F, and that's not a grab-a-jacket cold, that's your face freezes right away cold. For comparison, Mars has an average temperature of around minus 85° F.

[00:29:00]So, this planet could actually [music] be colder than Mars, a frozen desert, not to be confused with a frozen dessert, that looks like it gave up on life a long time ago.

[00:29:11]Another plot twist, this planet isn't officially a planet yet. At the moment, it's still labeled a candidate.

[00:29:18]Scientists usually confirm planets by watching them pass in front of their star over and over again. Every time that happens, the star dims just a little bit. But, with this new space body, we've only seen one transit, a single 10-hour-long mini eclipse >> [music] >> spotted during Kepler's second mission called K2.

[00:29:38]Even with that one pass, astronomers could still learn a lot. They [music] measured how long the planet's shadow took to cross the star, about 10 hours.

[00:29:47]For comparison, Earth takes about 13 hours to cross the Sun. [music] Then, they plugged that into orbital models and estimated that the planet probably takes about a year to go around its star.

[00:29:59]That's impressive, but it's still not enough. Astronomers need to see that dip in starlight repeat on schedule to be sure it's really a planet and not some weird stellar wanderer. Unfortunately, this planet orbits far out, and [music] those transits are rare. You don't get one every few days or weeks. You might have to wait a year or more for the next one. That's one of the big reasons Earth-like planets are so hard to find in the first place.

[00:30:25]>> [music] >> So now, scientists are just hoping that other space telescopes can help out.

[00:30:30]NASA's [music] TESS might catch another transit, or Europe's CHEOPS telescope could help pin it down. [music] If neither of those catches it, we might have to wait for the the generation of space telescopes to get better data because even though this planet sounds like an ice cube in [music] space, it's not totally doomed. If it has a thick atmosphere, especially if it's rich in carbon dioxide, it could trap heat really well, like a planet-sized winter [music] coat. In that case, the planet might actually have a mild climate or even liquid water on its surface.

[00:31:04]Well, based on computer models, scientists say there's about a 40% chance this distant world sits in the safe, conservative habitable zone. A chance that is located in a more relaxed, optimistic habitable zone reaches [music] 51%.

[00:31:19]But there's also a 50/50 chance that the planet is actually outside the habitable zone altogether. In [music] other words, this planet is basically a cosmic coin toss. It could be a frozen wasteland worse than Mars, [music] a chilly, barely survivable world, or a watery planet hiding under a thick atmosphere.

[00:31:38]HD 137010b isn't the only place that has the potential to host human civilization in the future. In recent [music] years, astronomers have been spotting new super-Earth planets orbiting remote stars. Now, checking our space vocabulary, super-Earth means a planet beyond the solar system with a mass higher than that of Earth but below those of the ice giants of the solar system, Uranus and Neptune.

[00:32:04]One of those planets is Gliese 667 CC.

[00:32:08]It's just 22 light-years [music] from Earth. But even though it seems pretty close, it's still around 129 trillion miles away from us. That's around 1.4 [music] million times the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. So, very, very far.

[00:32:24]>> [music] >> The planet itself is around 3.8 times as massive as Earth and completes [music] one orbit around its host star within 28 days. In other words, a year on that Earth-like planet is 13 [music] times shorter than a year on our planet.

[00:32:38]Luckily, the star is a cool red dwarf, so the exoplanet most likely lies in its habitable zone. But, there's still [music] a chance that this world might be regularly baked by the flares from its parent [music] star.

[00:32:53]Then, there's Kepler-22b.

[00:32:56]This world is way farther away than the previous world, [music] more like 600 light-years away from our planet. It's larger than Earth and is about 2 and 1/2 times our planet's size. Sadly, we still don't know whether this planet [music] is rocky, liquid, or gaseous. The orbit of Kepler-22b is pretty similar to Earth's. It takes the planet [music] 290 days to orbit its G-class star, which is kind of similar to our sun. But, this star is [music] smaller and colder than ours.

[00:33:25]Now, don't confuse this world with [music] Kepler-69c.

[00:33:29]It lies a whopping 2,700 light-years away from us and is almost 70% larger than [music] Earth. Researchers know nothing about its composition, but they found out that the planet needs 242 days to complete one orbit.

[00:33:43]>> [music] >> This makes its position in its system similar to that of Venus in our solar system. At the same time, this world might be more hospitable than Venus, since its host star is a bit less luminous, >> [music] >> 80% of our sun.

[00:33:57]As for our Venus, it's an extremely hostile place. You don't want to go there. A runaway greenhouse effect caused by an atmosphere that's about 96% carbon dioxide traps the heat. That pushes surface temperatures up to around 878° Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt lead. On top of that, the air pressure is about 90 times stronger than that of Earth, and the whole planet is covered in thick clouds of corrosive sulfuric acid. Oh, boy.

[00:34:26]Compared to our neighbor, TOI-733b [music] seems like a pretty friendly world. This planet was found in 2023.

[00:34:35]>> [music] >> It's floating 245 light-years away from Earth. The coolest thing about this planet is that it might have a massive ocean. According to scientists, this planet is likely to be completely covered with water.

[00:34:48]Does it mean there could be life on this super-Earth? Well, time will show. And who knows? Maybe soon we'll find even more planets that could become [music] a new home for people looking to explore the universe. As for HD 137010b, the fact that it checks so many Earth-style boxes >> [music] >> makes it a really interesting find. It's not a backup Earth yet, but it makes scientists [music] stop and say, "Okay, this one's worth a closer look." Or something similar.

[00:35:17]>> For thousands of years, people knew only about the planets Mercury, [music] Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, which they could see using simple telescopes or even by the naked eye if conditions were good. But, in the late 18th [music] century, a famous astronomer named Sir William Herschel discovered a new planet that was icy [music] blue in color. At first, people thought it was a star, but later they realized it was a planet.

[00:35:44]Today, we know it as Uranus, a planet that's more than 19 [music] times farther away from the Sun than Earth.

[00:35:51]It's so far away that it takes Uranus [music] 84 years to complete one trip around the Sun.

[00:35:59]This astronomer also discovered [music] many other interesting things in space, like double stars and nebulae. In the mid-1800s, [music] scientists noticed something pulled Uranus and strangely tugged its orbit.

[00:36:12]They thought there must [music] be another planet out there, and they used math to predict where it would be.

[00:36:18]Finally, in 1846, [music] they found Neptune using a telescope. It was too faint to see with the naked eye because it was [music] too far away from the sun.

[00:36:30]It was all so exciting. Who knows how many [music] other planets could be there lurking in the darkness of our solar system?

[00:36:37]Back in the mid-1800s, [music] astronomers noticed something unusual was happening in the sky. A small rocky planet named Mercury [music] was behaving strangely. It didn't follow the predictable orbits that was expected of it. One of the astronomers [music] was a brilliant French scientist named Urbain Le Verrier. He came up with a theory that there could be another planet [music] in our solar system no one had yet discovered. It would be located somewhere between Mercury and the sun.

[00:37:07]This hypothetical planet, which he named Vulcan after the Roman [music] god of fire, would have an incredibly hot surface. And it could be a potential explanation for Mercury's [music] strange behavior.

[00:37:19]He never surely claimed Vulcan was really the one thing disturbing the orbit of Mercury.

[00:37:25]But, excited by the possibility of discovering a new planet, astronomers [music] all over the world took the idea of Vulcan. For a planet that didn't exist, people committed to developing ideas and getting information about it.

[00:37:40]Some scientists didn't think it was likely that they had missed another planet as big as Mercury. It would have been hard not to see it by then.

[00:37:48]But, there was a tiny chance of a smaller planet existing inside Mercury's orbit that [music] was too close to the sun, so no one could see it. One theory said it was about 13 million miles away from the sun.

[00:38:02]Mercury is the planet with the most eccentric [music] orbit in our solar system. But, the closest point it gets to the sun is about 28.5 million miles.

[00:38:12]This means Vulcan would be under half of that distance. The theory moved on saying that if Vulcan existed, it would orbit the sun every 19 days and 18 hours, and its path would be tilted about 12° relative [music] to the path of other planets in our solar system.

[00:38:30]Vulcan's position at its furthest point from the sun would still be too close to the sun to be seen with the naked eye, even during twilight. [music] The only chance of seeing Vulcan would be during a solar eclipse, or [music] when it passed in front of the sun, which, as the theory said, would be two to four times a year.

[00:38:50]They had a theory that this mysterious planet was so close to the sun that it could only be seen during a total solar eclipse when the moon blocked out the sun's blinding glare. So, every time there was an eclipse, scientists would peer at the sun hoping to catch a glimpse of Vulcan. They were trying really hard, but no matter what, they couldn't find this mysterious [music] planet. Some astronomers claimed to have spotted it during eclipses, but no one could ever confirm or find evidence for that. The theory of Vulcan was left waiting for some better times.

[00:39:24]Einstein had a different idea. You know about his theory of general relativity, right? That's where he claimed gravity wasn't some sort of natural force, [music] but a result of space-time curved because of the presence of giant space objects like planets and stars.

[00:39:42]Planets circle around the sun in their usual orbit because space-time is curved. That means the planets are kind of falling [music] towards the central star of our solar system.

[00:39:55]And Einstein tried to explain Mercury's unusual orbit [music] using his own theory of relativity.

[00:40:01]Unlike the other planets in our solar system, Mercury's orbit wasn't that circular. Instead, it seemed to wobble slightly, as if there was an invisible force pulling it away.

[00:40:15]Einstein said this could be happening because the massive gravity of our sun was actually curving the fabric of space-time around it. He claimed it's possible this changed Mercury's orbit a [music] little bit. It took the scientific community a while to test this theory, but it eventually seemed like the most plausible explanation.

[00:40:36]Even though [music] Einstein's theory gave us a more elegant explanation for Mercury's strange orbit, some scientists were still holding out hope for Vulcan.

[00:40:45]It was especially hard to let go of the idea of Vulcan because Mercury is also the planet that's really hard to see from where we're standing. But later, more and more scientists started accepting Einstein's theory above their imagination. And they would observe [music] a total solar eclipse specifically to test Einstein's theory of relativity, not because of Vulcan.

[00:41:08]And Vulcan [music] is not the only hypothetical planet everyone was talking about. In the newer age, some believe there could be a mysterious planet lurking in the outer part of our solar system, but this one is more likely to exist. No one has seen it directly yet, but computer simulations show this so-called Planet Nine or Planet X is probably somewhere there beyond Neptune.

[00:41:33]Neptune and Planet X could be similar in size. Planet X could be 10 times more massive than Earth and circles around our sun in an elongated shape, which is on average 20 times farther [music] from the sun than Neptune. A year there may last between 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years. By comparison, a year on Neptune lasts 165 Earth years.

[00:41:59]Something this big moving out there [music] beyond Neptune could explain the unusual orbits of smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt >> [music] >> is the area of our solar system beyond Neptune and where it orbits. And there are most likely many asteroids, comets, and some other smaller bodies there, mostly made of ice.

[00:42:21]There was another hypothetical planet [music] called Nibiru. Remember those rumors that the world could end back in 2012? One of the popular [music] scenarios was Nibiru, which some claimed would hit our home planet at the end of the year. Of course, nothing happened.

[00:42:38]We're still here, all set and good. But the idea of Nibiru seemed interesting.

[00:42:43]Stories started in the 1970s when a man [music] named Zecharia Sitchin mentioned Nibiru in his book The 12th Planet, claiming it orbits the Sun every 3,600 years. But there's no chance a planet with such an eccentric orbit wouldn't disrupt [music] other planets in our solar system with its gravity. And if it was really coming that close to [music] Earth in 2012, we were supposed to be able to see it with the naked eye.

[00:43:11]Some simple calculations showed Nibiru [music] would have been nearly as bright as Mars at its dimmest and brighter than the faintest stars you see from a city.

[00:43:20]Oh, well. Maybe we'll have more luck in the next 3,500 and something [music] years.

[00:43:26]In 2011, a comet named Elenin appeared that many people thought could be Nibiru. But when you're looking at comets and planets through a telescope, [music] you see they appear differently. A comet has a coma, which is a gas atmosphere, together with a tail, >> [music] >> something a planet doesn't have.

[00:43:47]Plus, this comet didn't slam [music] into the Earth. It came too close to our Sun and fell apart. The leftover [music] pieces will continue moving on their way to the outer solar system for the next 12,000 years.

[00:44:04]In a star system far, [music] far away, to be more precise, 2,600 light-years away, there's an exoplanet called Kepler-1658b.

[00:44:14]It's a gas giant that resembles our Jupiter. [music] But, what differentiates it from Jupiter is that this poor planet is doomed. It's spiraling toward its parent star, which will eventually end in a fiery collision.

[00:44:28]But, the most [music] interesting thing?

[00:44:30]Astronomers would have remained totally ignorant of this fact if not for [music] a tiny clue. It was a really minuscule change in the planet's orbit. It wouldn't have been noticed [music] if astronomers hadn't compared more than a decade of data received by different telescopes. More precisely, scientists have been [music] watching the exojupiter pass between our planet and its parent star once every 2 weeks for the last 13 [music] years. And, they've noticed that the orbit of the planet is getting smaller and smaller. Every year, Kepler-1658b needs 131 [music] milliseconds less to complete a lap around its star. If this tendency continues, [music] the planet is bound to collide with its star in 2.5 million years. Even before this discovery, computer models predicted that some planets could meet their end by crashing into their stars.

[00:45:24]But, this is [music] the first time when astronomers have some real proof of such an outcome by measuring almost imperceptible changes in a planet's orbit. [music] They now know for sure what happens when a planet is going to crash into its star, even though we probably won't be around to witness it.

[00:45:41]But, let me tell you a bit more about the doomed planet. It was discovered by NASA's now retired Kepler space telescope. It was launched in 2009, and its mission was to find planets orbiting other stars, aka [music] exoplanets. And, the very first exoplanet the telescope spotted was the very gas [music] giant we've been talking about. But, it took astronomers about a decade to confirm that this space object was indeed an exoplanet.

[00:46:08]This world is like a denser version of Jupiter. I mean, take six Jupiters worth of material, roll it into a ball about 1.1 times as wide, and voila, the planet is tidally locked to its parent star, which means that it makes one complete turn every time it finishes [music] a lap around the star. As a result, the same side of the gas giant is always facing the star. It's the same as what happens to the moon. Our natural satellite is tidally locked to Earth.

[00:46:38]That's why we only [music] see half its surface.

[00:46:40]Now, what is making the exojupiter fall into its star? The same process that is pushing the moon away from Earth. When a moon orbits [music] a planet or a planet orbits a star, their gravity forces interact and tug on the other's mass.

[00:46:56]That's what causes [music] tides on Earth. This tugging releases some energy. It can make an object [music] speed up and slow down. In the first case, a space body will move higher. In the second, it will start moving [music] lower. And this is exactly what's happening to the gas giant. Its parent star is 1.5 times the mass [music] of the sun. So, no wonder its tidal forces are gradually slowing down the planet's movement, making it fall inward.

[00:47:25]This all sounds [music] kind of tragic, but this potential collision is by far not the weirdest thing happening in space. [music] Let's look at some others.

[00:47:34]For example, Betelgeuse, a red giant in the Orion constellation, started [music] to dim in 2019.

[00:47:41]This confused astronomers. By that time, the star had already swollen to enormous proportions. [music] If it was to replace our sun, its outer surface would spread far beyond [music] Jupiter's orbit.

[00:47:53]And then, Betelgeuse became dimmer in the fall of 2019. [music] This process continued through February 2020. The changes could be seen with the unaided eye. No wonder, >> [music] >> the star's brightness had dipped by 2/3.

[00:48:09]At that time, astronomers were sure Betelgeuse was about to explode into a supernova.

[00:48:14]>> [music] >> They continued to observe the star, but unexpectedly, it returned to its regular brightness. Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, [music] scientists figured out that the star had ejected some of its material, and this partially blocked its light. [music] How about cotton candy exoplanets?

[00:48:34]Those are particular planets outside of our solar system. Also called superpuffs, they have the lowest density ever discovered.

[00:48:42]>> [music] >> This gives them an airy, fluffy appearance, but despite looking like the most popular amusement park treat, such planets are enormous.

[00:48:51]Come to think of it, [music] scientists often discover strange things in space.

[00:48:55]Some of them look like blurry blobs, but there's [music] one type of these blobs that doesn't look like any other known space body. The odd radio circles are only visible in radio telescopes. They might be the remains of supernovae, [music] but some astronomers go as far as to claim that they might be the throats of wormholes. Those are hypothetical tunnels between two very [music] distant points in space.

[00:49:21]The Juno mission noticed something weird in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter.

[00:49:25]The unusual phenomenon [music] was blue sprites and elves twirling above the planet's surface.

[00:49:31]These are two kinds of bright flashes [music] of light that appear for short periods of time, mere milliseconds. They extend up [music] and down toward the surface of the planet. On Earth, such flashes usually happen at the height of 60 mi above massive thunderstorms.

[00:49:47]Rogue planets [music] don't orbit their stars. Maybe because they don't have any. These free-floating [music] space bodies travel across the universe and can end up literally anywhere. They're also pretty hard [music] to find. Rogue planets produce only weak emissions, but not so long ago, astronomers spotted the smallest [music] rogue planet in the Milky Way. It's smaller than Earth, but a bit bigger than Mars. [music] Fast radio bursts are blindingly bright bursts of radio waves. They pack as much [music] energy as our sun produces in days, but last mere milliseconds. Most of these fast radio bursts come from far, far beyond the Milky [music] Way.

[00:50:27]But recently, astronomers have detected some originating in our home galaxy.

[00:50:32][music] And their source is a magnetar just 30,000 light-years away from our [music] planet.

[00:50:38]If it does exist, nuclear pasta is the strongest material in the entire universe.

[00:50:45]Formed from the leftovers [music] of extinguished stars, this substance gets squeezed into spaghetti-like tangles of material. It can break, but only if you apply 10 [music] billion times the pressure needed to shatter steel.

[00:50:59]Not so long ago, scientists discovered [music] that one of the most massive stars in the neighborhood had just disappeared. It was a star 75 million light-years away from Earth. Normally, [music] it'd be too far away for astronomers to clearly see individual stars, but only unless they're huge.

[00:51:17][music] And the star we're talking about was enormous. It was shining 2.5 million times brighter than the sun. For the last time, astronomers saw the star in 2011.

[00:51:30]They decided [music] to examine it more closely several years later, but it was already too late. The star had vanished.

[00:51:37]Such massive stars usually go out in extremely bright supernovae, but astronomers noticed nothing like that in this case. [music] There's a theory that the star collapsed into a black hole without triggering a supernova first. It does occur among stars approaching the end of their lives, but very very rarely.

[00:51:57]There are black holes, and there might be mini black holes, even though their existence hasn't been proven yet. Unlike their massive siblings, hypothetical mini black [music] holes could be really tiny, not bigger than an atom. Their mass can vary, but just [music] one minuscule thing might have the mass of a thousand sedans.

[00:52:19]One theory claims that [music] tons of micro black holes could have been created right after the Big Bang and the beginning of the universe. Some scientists even go as far as to say that a couple of mini black holes pass through our [music] planet every day.

[00:52:35]More than 7,000 light-years away from Earth, [music] there is the Eagle Nebula, a young cluster of stars just 5.5 million years old. The Hubble Space Telescope managed to take [music] an image of several dark silhouettes near the nebula's center. Those are the so-called Pillars of Creation, an active star-forming region. Look, how cool [music] is that?

[00:53:03]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?

[00:53:16]Would you like to visit the most bizarre worlds in the universe? And it's not me who made this list, but NASA themselves.

[00:53:24]Welcome to the Galaxy of Horrors, [music] NASA's awesome Halloween collection.

[00:53:29]Please join me on a journey to some planets, and tell me which ones you would consider the most horrible.

[00:53:34]>> [music] >> Buckle up.

[00:53:37]Our first destination is a gas giant called [music] TrES-2b.

[00:53:42]It's located 750 light-years away from [music] us. If we used a regular spaceship, it would take us about 10 million years to get there. TrES-2b orbits a yellow dwarf, a star similar to our sun. It also weighs about 1.5 [music] 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 [music] eternal night, the darkest one of all the planets known to us. But, it's not that far from its star, [music] so why is that? The thing is, the surface of TrES-2b reflects light even worse than coal does. Because of this, it seems that there's no light at all.

[00:54:25]If you were flying [music] across the surface of this planet, it would be like walking with a blindfold on your eyes.

[00:54:31]Oh, wait. Actually, there is some light.

[00:54:34]An [music] eerie deep red glow surrounds the surface of the planet. This glow is created by the [music] burning atmosphere, which makes TrES-2b a scorching planet. The air there is even hotter than lava.

[00:54:47]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.

[00:54:57]Now, we're not just talking about one planet, but three at once. They're also located quite far away, >> [music] >> 2,300 light-years from the sun. We would have reached them by ship in about 35 million years. All the planets are [music] in the constellation Virgo, and each is extremely light, much lighter than the Earth. These three exoplanets [music] are called Poltergeist, Draugr, and Phobetor. Huh, cool names, huh? It's because each of these [music] planets is about to become a ghost soon.

[00:55:28]The thing is, they don't revolve around a star, but around a pulsar. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars with an extremely powerful magnetic [music] field. In simple words, these are the stars that exploded one day. After [music] 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.

[00:55:52]>> [music] >> At the same time, they constantly emit electromagnetic pulses that affect everything around them.

[00:55:59]So, you've probably [music] 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 [music] disappear without a trace. Ghost-like planets orbiting an undead star? Yeah, zombie world is a fitting name. It's also not surprising [music] that scientists nicknamed this pulsar Lich, despite the long official name.

[00:56:24]Well, at least these guys stick together on their final dance.

[00:56:29]This planet has a long name, so bear with me. HD 189733b.

[00:56:36]This gas giant is 65 light-years away from us. It would have taken around 1 million years [music] to get there on a spaceship.

[00:56:44]HD, um, well, this planet is slightly more massive than Jupiter [music] 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. Kind of resembles a summer sky or palm on sea waves, [music] right? Oh, looks are very deceptive, my friend. This planet has a pleasant cobalt blue color >> [music] >> due to the hazy blowtorched atmosphere.

[00:57:11]This atmosphere contains silicates that condense [music] when heated. In other words, the clouds on this planet have rain made of glass. Yes, it rains hot glass [music] shards here. Oh, and if that's not enough, there's a raging wind on the surface, which is moving at a speed of 5,400 mph. Just to compare, [music] the fastest wind on Earth had a speed of 254 mph, about 20 times weaker.

[00:57:38]And because of this, hundreds of thousands of glass shards rush horizontally [music] across the planet's surface at breakneck speed. I really don't envy anyone [music] who would want to try to land there.

[00:57:49]By the way, this isn't the only example of strange rains [music] in our universe. For example, it rains molten iron on the planet Demidion. [music] Or let's take so-called carbon planets.

[00:58:01]Their existence [music] 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.

[00:58:15]Eh, nothing special.

[00:58:17]The next planet, though, is actually really strange. It didn't just revolve around its star, it lived inside the star.

[00:58:27]This cosmic miracle is called KOI-55b, or Kepler-70b. [music] This planet is very far away from us, 4,000 light-years.

[00:58:37]>> [music] >> 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.

[00:58:46]A long time [music] ago, it was an ordinary Earth-like planet about the size of Jupiter. It was peacefully [music] and calmly orbiting its red dwarf star, KOI-55.

[00:58:55]But, everything changed about 700 million years ago. Perhaps you've heard that in a couple [music] billion years, our sun will begin to expand into a huge star, absorbing everything in its path.

[00:59:07]Well, this is the fate of red dwarfs.

[00:59:09]Sooner or later, they increase, turning into incredibly hot blue giants. [music] The same thing happened with KOI-55.

[00:59:17]This star began to increase in size and heat up in temperature, >> [music] >> gradually turning into a blue-white giant. It was ready to devour its nearest planets, but KOI-55b didn't care about it. When [music] the star reached it, this planet just settled inside. And moreover, after some time, it left its star, [music] simply returning to the new orbit. How was that even possible?

[00:59:41]Life inside [music] its star turned KOI-55b into a red-hot round stone.

[00:59:46]>> [music] >> It's one of the hottest planets we've discovered so far. The temperature on it reaches 12,000° F.

[00:59:53]It's hotter than the sun, which is, let me remind you, an actual star. And for some reason, it's [music] still alive and lives as if nothing happened.

[01:00:03]Unfortunately, sooner or later, >> [music] >> 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, [music] to put it mildly. I envy this willpower.

[01:00:22]However, not all planets are so lucky.

[01:00:25]Some are gradually being destroyed by their stars, [music] and there is even an entire system among them.

[01:00:32]This last planet is a sad loner. It's located 870 light-years away from us.

[01:00:37]The journey by ship to it would take about [music] 25 million years. This planet is about 1.5 times more massive than Jupiter.

[01:00:45]This is a very sad, dark planet, a doomed gas giant, which is very similar to hot Jupiter, orbits its star all alone. At the same time, it's located so close to its star that its orbital period takes just 1 day. Of course, because [music] of this proximity, the star gradually absorbs WASP-12b.

[01:01:06]The scorching heat of the star is slowly destroying and devouring the planet's atmosphere. The planet has only around 10 million years left.

[01:01:14]But what's more interesting, [music] because of this stretching, WASP-12b acquired the shape of an egg. It doesn't even resemble an actual planet anymore.

[01:01:25]It's also very hot. The surface temperature of the gas giant reaches 4,000° [music] Fahrenheit. Also, a spectrograph of cosmic origin, or COS for short, >> [music] >> 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.

[01:01:54]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.