
An alien planet is being battered by winds traveling at 1.2 miles per second as it is scorched by the star it orbits.
Scientists have just discovered an exoplanet that has winds traveling a stunning 5,400 miles per hour over its surface.
That’s 20 times faster than the fastest wind speed ever recorded on Earth: a gust of 253 miles per hour that a weather station recorded during Cyclone Olivia near Australia back in 2006, according to a Daily Mail report.
It’s the first time scientists have measured and mapped a weather system on an exoplanet, which is a planet outside of our solar system. It has been dubbed exoplanet HD 189733b.
Researchers at the University of Warwick were the ones who estimated its wind speed, with lead researcher Tom Loudon of the astrophysics group at the university calling it the first ever weather map outside of our solar system. He said scientists have previously known of wind on exoplanets, they had never actually mapped it out, according to the report.
They used the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher telescope in Chile to make the measurements.
The planet can be found in the constellation Vulpecula, and it’s 370 trillion miles from Earth, or 63 light years.
The planet is a gas giant a little bit larger than Jupiter. It is likely tidally locked in with its star, and would probably appear to be glowing a bright blue on its day side and a red color on its night side. It is traveling very close to the star, explaining its extreme condition.
In fact, it is 180 times closer to its star than Jupiter is, meaning its average temperature is about 1800 degrees Celsius.
Scientists hope to use this technique to create weather maps of other, smaller planets, potentially locating one that could even be hospitable to life.
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