You Think Our Weather Is Bad
While you are blown around by the wind, lashed by hailstones the size of golf balls and chilled to the bone, remember that we are having mild weather compared with that of one of our neighbours.
There is a planet 63 light-years from Earth, not far at all, where the rain is made of molten glass, the winds blow at 4,349.59 miles per hour and the daytime temperature is over 1,000 degrees Celsius. The planet itself, viewed from space, is the same deep blue as Earth. Itās not known if it has discarded shopping trolleys in its canals.
The planet has been named HD 189733b. Because calling āBobā seemed too trivial, but going for something more substantial, like Marmaduke, seemed over the top. Scientists couldnāt agree, so they used the password for one of the lab computers.
Now, It is one of the closest extrasolar planets to Earth. Its star, brilliantly named HD 189733 (the lab supervisorās password), sits in the constellation Vulpecula, the Little Fox, north of the celestial equator.
The star itself is faintly visible to a small telescope from any dark backyard in the northern hemisphere on a clear summer night. The planet is not. The planet has never been directly photographed and probably never will be by any current generation of telescope. It is in fact, camera shy. But also, because the need for a clear summer night is tricky on account of the weather here on Earth being permanently set to November.
But while you complain about summer behaving a lot like winter, bear this in mind. On HD 189733b, the temperature difference on the side that gets any light, and the other side that prefers the shadows, is 260 degrees Celsius.
That differential drives atmospheric winds at speeds that, in the upper atmosphere on the day side, reach that 4,349.59 miles per hour speed. Wind speeds that are roughly seven times the speed of sound. Or as my Grandfather from Grimsby would have said: āBlowing a bit.ā
So while you are bent double in the high winds and hail here on Earth, think yourself lucky you are not on HD 189733b where it is hot enough to melt your face, and windy enough to permanently alter your hairstyle.