This Exoplanet Pours Down Iron When It Gets Rainy

Metal materials play a vital role in industrial developments throughout human history. While these natural resources are not something limitless on Earth, scientists recently discovered an amazing, distant planet that is said to pour down iron.

Orbiting in the Pisces constellation, the exoplanet is 640 light-years away and is named WASP-76b.

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On the surface of the planet mentioned above, one side is covered with permanent daylight as the entire planet gets hit by an average temperature of about 2400 degrees Celsius. At such super-hot conditions, metals turn out to evaporate instead of staying deep down the surface.

In fact, the vaporized metals are then blown away into strong winds. On the other side of this exoplanet, it’s much cooler and permanently night. That leads the iron vapor to be cooled before it condenses into iron droplets and spread the surface with iron.

Truth to be told, the unique-yet-extreme environment on WASP-76b is caused by its different sides, including “dayside” and “night side”. While one always has to face towards the parent star, the rest part of WASP-76b only sees perpetual darkness because of the rotation axis similar to our own Moon.

The temperature gap between the two sides isn’t the only thing making it exotic as the heat and radiation also end up formulating different chemistries.

Astronomers are making use of cutting-edge astronomic telescopes and other equipment for further study. David Ehrenreich, the chief researcher in this project, said:

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