Eyeball Planets: They Are As Eerie As They Sound

the hunt for interesting exoplanets and life forms somewhere out there in the vast expanse of the universe keeps going no stopping here we're basically searching for a second Earth a planet that's similar to our home and where we could finally find some space friends hey we're not picky any form of life is fine even some bacteria-sized organisms and this search has mostly been going on in the habitable zone around other stars we call this the Goldilocks zone that's a region where conditions are barely just right for liquid water to exist whether we're talking about the surface .of a planet or a moon

the hotter the star the more space we get to explore because its habitable zone spreads far away and in terms of endless space that we yet know so little about that's a lot of work that's why we're fans of red dwarfs there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and probably around 80 percent of them are red dwarfs these tiny stars are much cooler than our sun it means that their habitable zones are much smaller and closer to the star so we know better where to look for planets they're around their Central Star and at some point Bingo there it is they pass in front of it and block out some of its light

the Kepler space telescope has already helped us find thousands of planets using this method and most of them are orbiting around red dwarfs some of these planets are similar in size to Earth and many of them could have nearly 25 times more water than our entire planet let's move to these planets scientists discovered though I want to show you something special so you've heard of super Earth's right more massive than Earth lighter than Neptune can be made of rock gas or a mix of both some of them have thick atmospheres While others have thin or no atmospheres at all you may also have stumbled upon many Neptunes by now too they're almost as big as Neptune and unlike normal gas giants they have solid cores that way they can support a dense atmosphere with water and some other chemicals necessary for life

there's also hot Jupiters those are pretty cool but only if they're far away from us you know that one annoying and unpredictable neighbor you can never get rid of or figure out what they're going to do yeah that would be a hot Jupiter with strong gravity that can destabilize the orbits of smaller planets or other space bodies in the system if we had such a neighbor there would be more comets and asteroids hitting our surface luckily our Jupiter's a good and peaceful neighbor that Minds his own business at least for now

but let's leave all these and many other planets out there alone now imagine traveling around in your spaceship and coming across a giant eyeball just floating there in the darkness of space and staring at the central star of that solar system it's not a monster hopefully space friends will make in the future won't look that big and scary so it won't blink or turn towards you as you come closer it's actually a planet a little bit bizarre but still very cool and yup you guessed it right we call such eyeball planets now eyeball planets are surprisingly common plus some normal planets can potentially turn into them too

eyeballn planets form when matter and dust accumulates around a star and gradually turns into a solid object it starts spinning and over time the gravity of the star pulls on the planet and slows its rotation until it becomes tidally locked that means one hemisphere always faces the star while the other is in darkness all the time now we have a good example of this phenomenon near us too our moon makes a circle around earth once a month it takes the same amount of time to turn a single time on its axis that way we actually always see the same face of the Moon who knows maybe the other side is even prettier if you know you like craters and stuff

so one of the most interesting things about eyeball planets is their appearance if they had water on their surface the side facing the star would have clear bright blue oceans the ones we'd want to visit if we ever got a chance to go on an Interstellar vacation and the other side would be more for adventurers who like harsh and challenging surroundings since it's in constant Darkness it would most likely be very cold and covered in ice you know we've discovered so many planets outside of our solar system in the last 30 years

super Earths are of course especially interesting it seems that many of them are not that Pleasant since they're pretty hazy and cloudy it means it's harder to spot any life there but some scientists still think they're promising spots when it comes to finding life beyond our solar system

eyeball super earths would be a good start these planets are probably covered in large oceans on the cold half where the Eternal Night rains you'd experience Arctic conditions I feel cold just looking at this but the day side Is My Jam Plus it sounds promising when it comes to finding life you know with all that sunlight oceans and stuff one of the good examples where scientists are looking for life is an eyeball super Earth that lies in a habitable zone of the closest star to our solar system called Proxima B its Desai could even have conditions and an atmosphere to support some form of life there could be a large deep ocean covering its surface it could be really salty but some forms of life could still survive there check out the Dead Sea on Earth it's extremely salty but some bacteria have still evolved to live there and they're probably doing well having their own world and all that I mean it's not crowded because there are no animals there fish that accidentally end up in the Dead Sea won't survive there for long so similarly it's possible that bacteria or some other forms of life could exist in this potentially very salty ocean on Proxima b as well

but the open ocean on Proxima B could be tricky on the dark side of the planet the ocean could freeze and sea ice could drift into warmer Waters that way the ocean would cool and more and more of it would freeze even On the Sunny Side the only way to prevent This Global freeze over would be an atmosphere with a lot of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide this kind of atmosphere would trap the heat from the planet's surface and wouldn't allow it to escape into space like what happens with Venus the hottest planet in our solar system without an atmosphere with greenhouse gases the surface of Proxima B would be much colder so it's possible that the planet would completely freeze over

the opposite scenario could also be possible warmer Waters could serve as a transporter of heat from warm to cold regions we don't know much about the conditions on the planet yet so Proxima B could range from a frozen Wasteland to a hot hazy World depending on many factors so yeah an eyeball Planet within the habitable zone sounds promising but its surface can still wildly range from a frozen desert to an endless ocean some experts believe that drifting sea ice my cool mini exoplanets out there and they can't turn into eyeball worlds instead many just become sad dark snowballs completely covered in ice a cool spot to spend your Interstellar Winter holidays but not a place where you'd hope to find life unfortunately some studies show that even Earth may have gone through some snowball stages many times in history one of those happened around 2.2 billion years ago I wasn't around while the other one hit the planet 630 million years ago during these phases all of our beautiful oceans were covered with snow and sea odds perhaps even the continents were just thick ice sheets at least on the surface that all.