Top 10 Most Mysterious Planets (That We Know About)

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Well, these planets certainly are different from Earth. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Strangest Planets in Space. For this list, we’ll be looking at planets that have us constantly scratching our heads in bewilderment, making us question what we know or what we think we know.

#10: HD 209458 b

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An extrasolar, or exoplanet is defined as a planet that orbits a star and is part of a solar system other than our own. HD 209458 b - otherwise known as Osiris - is an extrasolar planet located in the Pegasus system, and it’s pretty close to its star - and by pretty close, we mean very close. So close, in fact, that it’s literally wasting away. Only about 4.3 million miles away from the star, hydrogen is evaporating the planet. Gasses are believed to be trailing thousands of miles behind it. Of course, days with 1,800°F temperatures will do that.

Referred to as a “super Saturn”, this substellar companion to the star called 1SWASP J140747 has rings just like Saturn does. However, J1407 b’s rings are much larger in diameter. There are over thirty of them, and they’re six hundred and forty times as vast, with a radius of approximately 55 million miles, and this phenomenon still continues to baffle scientists worldwide. The exoplanet or brown dwarf is about 420 light years away, but if it were in Saturn’s place, we’d see the rings from Earth, and they’d cover a pretty large portion of the sky, while the planet itself would not visible at all.

A super-Earth is an exoplanet with a mass much higher than Earth’s, and this planet was the first one discovered in the habitable zone of its system... at least on paper. Being in the habitable zone means there may be a chance for liquid water to be found on the planet, but it’s dependent on the distance from the star it orbits, energy output, and the planet’s atmosphere. Although Gliese 581 c happens to be in that zone, it orbits a Red Dwarf star, which is prone to unleash violent solar flares. That means the likelihood of it being habitable is remote. Additionally, the planet seems to be tidally locked, which means one side of it is scorching hot, and the other is freezing, with only a small habitable section in between.

#7: PSR B1620-26 b

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Aptly nicknamed after the oldest person mentioned in the Bible, Methuselah - or PSR B1620-26 b - is one of the oldest known exoplanets in the universe at roughly 12.7 billion years old, which is only one billion years after the Big Bang. A billion years is still a billion years… though it's a really short time in the grand scheme of things. Found in the center of a globular cluster of stars—that is, a spherical formation of stars bound together by gravity—this planet perplexes scientists, as it’s believed that planets didn’t have the necessary materials to form that soon after the Big Bang, yet there Methuselah is, upsetting the apple cart of knowledge. #6: TrES-2b [aka Kepler-1b] Found in the Draco Constellation, this is the darkest planet in the known universe. This exoplanet is a gas giant, and is classified as “Hot Jupiter”. It reflects at most 1% of light, making it darker than coal. Scientists aren’t sure exactly why it’s so dark, though one unconfirmed reason could be due to an absence of reflective clouds. But not only is it dark, the planet is also scorching. In fact,it’s so hot it has a faint red glow, which only adds to its ominous and eerie composition.

To put it into a pop-cultural perspective, this planet resembles Gallifrey, the home of a certain two-hearted time traveling doctor. So many people seem to think so, that a petition was signed by tens of thousands to officially change the name to Gallifrey. While it hasn’t been done yet, hope hasn’t been lost that it’ll happen eventually. Sci-fi aside, by all accounts, this planet shouldn’t even exist. It orbits its star roughly 60 billion miles away, which has scientists scratching their heads as this shouldn’t be possible. To put things into perspective, that’s about 650 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Even if we had the means to travel these extreme distances, this is one planet you might want to leave off your itinerary. It’s dubbed the ‘Hell planet’ for a reason. Its parent star looms so close that it covers the majority of the sky. It’s theorized to have been a Gas Giant before its migration and has since had its gasses vaporized by the sun, with only the rocky core of the planet left. Like Gliese 581 c, it’s believed to be tidally locked, with one side reaching up 4700 degrees Fahrenheit, and the other side hundreds of degrees below 0.

Located around 30 light years away from Earth towards the Leo constellation is an ice planet with a temperature of around eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Wait, what? Yep, you heard right. Roughly the size of Neptune, the surface of the planet is covered entirely in ice (as well as probably helium and hydrogen), yet it’s constantly on fire. Astronomers predict, due to the nature of the hot ice, that it’s able to remain solid due to the planet’s high gravity, which allows the ice to stayin its solid state. Still, an image of burning ice is a tough thing to wrap your head around.

When this planet’s discovery was announced in 2015, it had generated a lot of excitement, as it was dubbed a ‘second Earth’. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we can just pack up and leave, as it is still 470 light years away, located in the constellation Lyra. In simpler terms, with our current technology and fastest spacecraft, it would take some two million years to get there. So yeah… not going to happen anytime soon, despite it having the highest confirmed Earth Similarity Index as of early 2017. We guess we’ll just have to settle for Mars.

A planet that’s one-third diamond, you say? Count us in. Although its surface temperature can reach around 3100 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s still awesome to picture a planet with a surface of solid diamond. Although this isn’t 100% confirmed, it’s been theorized that the planet is composed mostly of carbon, and due to the pressure and heat from its parent star and the planet’s interior, its mass has been compressed into diamond. Twice the size of Earth, the total value of the planet is worth $26.9 nonillion, which is 384 quadrillion times more than Earth’s GDP. Sign us up when they crack the whole “light-speed travel and not burning to death in extreme heat” thing.