Theres a substantial amount of range among exoplanets– planets outside our solar system. There are water worlds, lava planets, egg-shaped worlds, worlds with multiple suns, and even worlds with no sun at all! What can we find out from all this weird, marvelous variety? What does it inform us about both the exoplanets themselves and our own house world?
Theres a huge quantity of range amongst exoplanets– planets outside our solar system. There are water worlds, lava planets, egg-shaped worlds, planets with several suns, and even planets with no sun at all!
Video transcript:
[Narrator] Earth is amazing.
What would be even more incredible, if we found another earth, or a bunch of earths.
Thats one of the things were trying to find at NASA as we study exoplanets, planets outside our planetary system.
Possibly browsing for a planet comparable to our own, where conditions might have led to a totally special origin of life, finally informing us that were not alone in the universe, possibly thats not your thing.
Thats cool.
Maybe youre more interested in simply how strange exoplanets can be.
We believe there are entire worlds covered by deep oceans, water worlds.
Not odd enough for you?
Okay. How about planets covered entirely in oceans of lava?
There are egg-shaped worlds, worlds that orbit so near to their stars that theyre pulled by gravity into a lopsided shape.
And there are worlds where conditions may be ideal for it to rain things like glass, and even rubies and sapphires.
There are planets that orbit sets and even groups of stars. Imagine having three or 4 suns in the sky!
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the loners, rogue worlds wandering out in space with no star to call their own.
There are even worlds that orbit dead stars, stars that took off long earlier and left behind a rapidly spinning core called a pulsar. A few of these pulsar worlds could be amongst the oldest in our galaxy, pushing 13 billion years.
Such planets would have witnessed many of the history of the universe. Unfortunately, nearly all of it without tacos.
Now, we believe that we havent discovered one yet, that there most likely are exoplanets quite similar to earth out there.
However in the meantime, there are absolutely lots of strange, wondrous worlds in our galaxy.
( jaunty music).
Earth is amazing.