Across the Milky Way lies a violent world suffering through the first "superstorm" ever spotted on an alien planet.
Poisonous carbon monoxide gas is streaming at enormous speeds from the extremely hot day side to the cooler night side of the exoplanet, new observations show. This hot, gaseous Jupiter-like world is dubbed HD209458b, and lies about 150 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Pegasus.
"HD209458b is definitely not a place for the faint-hearted," said lead researcher Ignas Snellen of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. "By studying the poisonous carbon monoxide gas with great accuracy we found evidence for a super wind, blowing at a speed of 5,000 to 10,000 km per hour [3,100 to 6,200 mph]."
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