Produced by: Manoj Kumar
On the planet’s nightside, vaporized iron and titanium condense and fall as liquid metal droplets, creating an alien storm unlike anything on Earth.
Astronomers detected jet streams spanning half the planet, moving at thousands of miles per hour, reshaping its extreme atmosphere.
WASP-121 b is tidally locked, meaning one side boils in eternal daylight, while the other faces the cold void of space forever.
Its atmosphere behaves in ways that challenge our understanding of planetary weather, exhibiting wind patterns unseen anywhere in the universe.
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At the boundary between its scorching dayside and cooler nightside, the air churns violently, shifting metals between gas and liquid states.
As a superheated gas giant, WASP-121 b reaches temperatures high enough to vaporize metals, creating an entirely alien climate.
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The planet orbits its star in just 30 Earth hours, meaning a "year" here is barely more than a single Earth day.
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Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope to create the first-ever 3D atmospheric map of an exoplanet, revealing its violent climate.
Lead researcher Julia Victoria Seidel called WASP-121 b’s weather "something out of science fiction"—but it’s all terrifyingly real.