WASHINGTON—It is a planet astronomers say probably should not even exist.
Researchers said on Monday they have spotted a truly extreme planet beyond our solar system, a blazingly hot world a bit bigger than Neptune that orbits a sun-like star every 19 hours and appears to be wrapped in metallic clouds made of titanium and silicates that reflect most incoming light back into space.
“It’s a giant mirror in space,” said astronomer James Jenkins of Diego Portales University and the Center for Excellence in Astrophysics and Associated Technologies (CATA) in Chile, a co-author of the research published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics….