Planets outside our solar system can be wild, weird places. Astronomers have discovered exoplanets shaped like a rugby ball, or where it rains gems, or which have one hemisphere covered in lava.

Rugby ball-shaped exoplanet discovered Date: January 12, 2022 Source: University of Bern Summary: With the help of the CHEOPS space telescope, an international team was able to detect the ...

WASP-103b is deformed into its rugby ball shape by strong tidal forces between the planet and its host star. And by measuring how much the planet is deformed the scientists were able to tell how ...

The rugby ball-shaped WASP-103b is the first non-spherical exoplanet observed. WASP-103b got its odd shape due to tidal forces acted upon it by its star, the researchers report.

Exoplanet WAP-103b is shaped more like a rugby ball than a beach ball. The tidal forces of its host star pull it out of round. ESA.

Due to strong tidal forces, the appearance of the planet WASP-103b resembles a rugby ball rather than a sphere. On coasts, the tides determine the rhythm of events.

Perhaps you've heard of the buckyball. That molecule is roughly soccer-ball-shaped, made of sixty carbon atoms, and its proper name- buckminsterfullerene- honors architecture visionary Buckminster ...

Nuclear lab: the IRIS spectroscopy station in TRIUMF’s ISAC-II facility. (Courtesy: TRIUMF) An unexpected deformation has been discovered in the helium-8 nucleus by an international team led by ...

Shape shift: adding just one neutron can transform a mercury nucleus from a sphere to a rugby ball. (Courtesy: Krystof Dockx) A 40-year-old mystery of why mercury nuclei change shape dramatically has ...