Scorching 6,800C alien world is ‘hotter than the Sun’ as Nasa says it ‘could be another circle of hell’
A ROCKY alien world is so toasty that Nasa says it "could be another circle of hell".
The scorching 6,800C planet is called Kepler-70b (or KOI-55b), and it's just over 4,000 light-years from Earth.
It's described as a "terrestrial" planet – a rocky world with a similar structure to Earth.
The planet is orbiting the star Kepler-70 in the constellation Cygnus.
This star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye – but can be spied with a telescope.
Nasa says it's "one of the hottest planets discovered", and warned that "the planet itself is evaporating, soon to be another victim".
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Scientists think that the planet started out as a gas giant that spiraled toward Kepler-70.
The star became a red giant, which evaporated most of it – except for a solid core.
Now Nasa says that the planet is a "a rocky world hotter than the Sun".
"Kepler-70b (a.k.a. KOI-55 b) could well be another circle of hell," Nasa explained.
"With an average temperature of about 12,000 degrees F (6,800 C).
"It used to be Jupiter-sized until it spent time inside its now-dead star.
The alien world would be toastier than the hottest confirmed exoplanet KELT-9b, which has a measured temperature of 4,326C.
What is an exoplanet?
Here's what you need to know...
- An exoplanet is a planet that is located outside of our Solar System and one that is orbiting its own star, as Earth orbits the Sun
- They are very hard to see with telescopes because they are often hidden by the brightness of their star
- Nasa sent the Kepler space telescope into orbit with the purpose of finding Earth-sized exoplanets that might support life
- More than 5,500 exoplanets have been discovered so far and more missions to find even more exoplanets are planned
- A good way to spot an exoplanet is to look for "wobbly" stars because a disruption to starlight can indicate that a planet is orbiting it and blocking its light intermittently
- Expoplanets are very common in the universe and the more we find that look like Earth, the closer we get to knowing whether Earth is the only life-bearing planet
Scientists think that the host star Kepler-70 stopped being a red giant around 18.4 million years ago.
Eventually it will run out of helium and turn into a white dwarf.
This is an extremely dense star that isn't very luminous – and is typically the last stage of a star that isn't massive enough to become a neutron star or black hole.
Sadly it's unlikely that we'll ever be able to visit Kepler-70b.
At a distance of 4,015 light-years from Earth, it would take an extraordinary amount of time to reach.
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Later Apollo spaceships reached speeds of around 24,500mph.
At that speed, it would take around 965 million years to reach the planet.