The Strangest Exoplanets Discovered by Hubble - 6,000 Alien Worlds and Counting

In 1990, the were zero known exoplanets.  Now, 36 years after the space telescope was launched, we know of 6,000 – and counting.  It has moved beyond simply discovering exoplanets to studying atmospheres, detecting water vapor, sodium, helium, and carbon compounds.  In other words, it’s helping us to detect whether or not there’s life (or the truth) out there and this video gives us a glimpse of some of the stranger planets the space telescope has discovered.

Take for example a "football-shaped" planet called WASP-121b, deformed by intense tidal forces and losing heavy metals like magnesium and iron into space.  Then there is GJ3470b, an evaporating "Neptunized" planet that has lost approximately 35% of its atmosphere.  This is probably not the right thing to spring to mind, but I would love to have less catalogued names for these planets.  Couldn’t The International Astronomical Union (IAU), which sometimes approves public names through international campaigns, organise a cosmic lottery, whereby winners could give these planets a name?  True, we would probably end up with Planet McPlanetface, but I would love to name one Kuriositas, that’s for certain sure!

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center’s new video is a fascinating watch about these fascinating worlds with strange names.