Fear Of A Black Planet

Oh come on, the headlines write themselves, people.

A planet orbiting a distant star is darker than coal, reflecting less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, according to a paper published on Thursday.


The strange world, TrES-2b, is a gas giant the size of Jupiter, rather than a solid, rocky body like Earth or Mars, astronomers said.

It closely orbits the star GSC 03549-02811, located about 750 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Draco the Dragon.

"TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world," David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a press release issued by Britain's Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

Considering its distance from its star is just three million miles, I'm impressed the planet's not actually on fire.  It does however appear to be pretty crispy.

Signatures from its atmosphere point to the presence of light-absorbing chemicals like vaporised sodium and potassium or titanium oxide.

But none of these substances can explain the planet's darkness, which is more extreme than any planet or moon in our own Solar System.

"It's not clear what is responsible for making this planet so extraordinarily dark," said David Spiegel of Princeton University.

Maybe it's covered in high-temperature ninja.  Billions of them.  Or maybe it's just nothing.