WASP-12b is an exoplanet orbiting around a yellow dwarf star WASP-12 located 1410 light years away in the constellation Auriga.
WASP-12b is an ultra hot Jupiter that orbits very close to its star than Mercury orbits the Sun. It orbits at around 3.4 Million Kilometres from its star. That’s why the year on this exoplanet is just 26 Earth hours. WASP-12b is 1.8 times the radius of Jupiter and 1.4 times the mass of Jupiter. Due to its close proximity to its star, this exoplanet is tidally locked, meaning one side of it always faces towards the star.
The dayside temperature reaches 2200 degree Celsius. As hot Jupiters are tidally locked, there’s a large flow of heat from the highly irradiated dayside to the cooler night side. This is thought to result in very strong winds rushing around the planet’s atmosphere.
The planet is so close to its parent star that it is being torn apart. The tidal forces from the star’s immense gravity have stretched it into an egg shape and the scorching heat from the star is stripping away the atmosphere of the WASP-12b at a rate of 189 quadrillion tons per year. NASA estimates that it will be consumed by its host star in about 10 million years. And I think that doesn’t sound cool.
In September 2017, researchers working on the Hubble Space Telescope announced that instead of reflecting light, this exoplanet absorbs 94% of the light that shines on its surface because being so close to its star it is unable to make clouds that should reflect the light that falls on it.
Now, let me tell you how much time it would take for a trip to WASP-12b. Using the current technology say by the fastest thing made by humans is Voyager-1 spacecraft which is moving at the speed of 38 thousand miles per hour, it would take us 25 million years to visit there. I know that’s too long and by then the planet will be consumed by its host star. So let’s increase the speed. What do you think about the speed of light; which is the fastest speed in our universe. Travelling at the speed of light, it would take us 1 thousand years. Happy, if not yet then I’m sorry nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Sorry to disappoint you, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, a body which has mass cannot travel with the speed of light. You will probably need a Warp Drive or something like that to travel faster than light.