Extraterrestrial planet reflects like a 'cosmic mirror' by its metallic clouds

Outer space is a box of surprises, isn't it? There are countless planets outside our Solar System, with the most varied characteristics. This Monday, July 10th, scientists discovered one more: a planet that is basically a “giant mirror” in space.

Just imagine. This star is about the size of our Neptune, is extremely hot and orbits a star very similar to our Sun.

Its reflection comes from its metallic clouds, basically composed of titanium and silicates. This causes it to reflect most of the light that hits it.

Twinkle, twinkle

Co-author of the research published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, astronomer James Jenkins, from Diego Portales University and the Center of Excellence in Astrophysics and Associated Technologies (Cata), in Chile, explained better how this new planet works alien.

He stated that this celestial body reflects approximately 80% of the light that falls on it. This makes it the most reflective star in the entire universe, or at least the part we know of.

But this is nothing new, you know? Venus is also super bright. Our “planet of Aphrodite” reflects about 75% of the light that reaches it. We ourselves reflect something around 30%.

And we have the Moon too, isn't it? Our natural satellite does not have its own light. What we see in the sky is a reflection of what is emitted in it.

What do we know about this “giant mirror”… I mean, the new planet?

Are we going to “name the oxen”? The alien planet is called LTT9779b. It's weird, we know. But we work with what we have, don't we?

The newcomer and its star, similar to the Sun, are our neighbors and are located in the Milky Way, according to an article published by CNN. They are located at an approximate distance of 264 light years from us.

By way of comparison, just one light-year equals 9.5 trillion kilometers. Since we only have people from the humanities here, we won't do that math – but know that it's a long way from here.

Returning…

The planet is approximately 4.7 times larger than Earth and, according to scientists, it orbits very close to its star. It is estimated that the distance is smaller than that which exists between our sun and mercury.

This makes the planet hot, hotter than the summer in Rio de Janeiro: around 1,800ºC. In fact, it's much hotter than molten lava!

This caught the attention of researchers, who found it strange that the “giant mirror” had an atmosphere. This is because, if it were an atmosphere similar to Earth's, based on water, it would not have a chance to exist and would already have broken down.

Some astronomers, in fact, claim that, with these characteristics, this planet should not even exist. Curious, isn't it?

As we said earlier, outer space really is a box of surprises.

Graduated in Social Communication at the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.