Alien World Is the New Black
provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet - a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system.
“TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it’s truly an alien world,” said astronomer David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author on the paper reporting the research.
In our solar system, Jupiter is swathed in bright clouds of ammonia that reflect more than a third of the sunlight reaching it. In contrast, TrES-2b (which was discovered in 2006 by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, or TrES) lacks reflective clouds due to its high temperature…
(read more: PhysOrg) (image: David A. Aguilar (CfA))
This is just fascinating, not just astronomy-wise (although it is certainly that), but as a stepping point for some creative sci-fi endeavor or suchlike. Quite the discovery.
(via facelesshorror)
