Iron winds and molten metal rains ravage a hellish hot Jupiter exoplanet

Lower those finger horns. "Iron Winds and Metal Rain" may be an awesome title for an album by a heavy metal band, but it's also a fairly accurate weather prediction for a hellish exoplanet called WASP-76b. The discovery of iron winds on this world demonstrate just how truly "alien" some planets beyond our solar system are.

Located around 634 light-years away from Earth in the Pisces constellation, the strange and hostile extrasolar planet or "exoplanet" has temperatures of around 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius), hot enough to vaporize iron and cause iron rains to pummel the planet's surface.

These intimidating temperatures arise from WASP-76b's proximity to its star, which classifies it as a "hot Jupiter" planet. This proximity also causes the planet to be tidally locked to its star, meaning one side always faces its sun, blasting it with radiation in perpetuity.

Recently, a team of scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the PlanetS National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR PlanetS) has discovered the presence of high-speed winds carrying vaporized iron from the permanent "dayside" of the planet to its relatively cooler "nightside," which perpetually faces out into space.

Once at the nightside of WASP-76b, the iron condenses and falls as molten metal droplets due to the cooler temperatures on the planet's permanent dark side.

"This is the first time that such detailed optical observations have been made on the day side of this exoplanet, providing key data on its atmospheric structure," research lead author Ana Rita Costa Silva, a doctoral student at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço said in a statement. "Our observations indicate the presence of powerful iron winds, probably fueled by a hot spot in the atmosphere."

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