Not everything that comes down from the sky is bird-shit or rain. Millions of miles away in a faraway planet, iron downpours are a common phenomenon.
Swiss and other European astronomers, as per a Hindustan Times report, have detected clouds full of iron droplets on a planet named Wasp-76b. As per the astronomers, the planet is so hot (2,400 degrees Celsius) that the iron found on the same melts and evaporates only to condense at nights and then fall as iron rain.
Similiar to earth’s water cycle but more complicated and dangerous.
“Like droplets of metal falling from the sky,” said Christophe Lovis of the University of Geneva who took part in the study.
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The study, which was published in the journal named Nature, adds that the iron rain is really dense and will hit anyone hard enough.
“It’s like in the heavy steel industry on Earth where they melt iron, and so you see this melting, flowing metal. That’s pretty much what we are talking about here,” Lovis told The Associated Press.
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Wasp-76b was recently discovered by the scientists and is twice the size of Jupiter. Despite being one of the biggest planets, it just takes two days to orbit its star. Because the planet’s rotation matches the time it takes to complete one orbit, the same side always faces the star.
This means it’s always daytime on the star-facing side, with clear skies and night time on the other. The night side of the planet is frequented by iron rain when temperatures fall to about 1,500 Celcius.
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The iron is blown from the dayside of the planet to the night side as winds on the planet blow at a pace of 18,000 kph.“Surprisingly, however, we do not see the iron vapor in the morning” as night transitions back into day, lead scientist David Ehrenreich of the University of Geneva said, adding that it only means one thing that ii’s most likely that it rains only on the night side.
