# Pulsar Planets: The Universe's Most Extreme Worlds

About this episode

This episode discusses the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a pulsar and its implications for planetary formation.

# Astronomy Tonight Podcast This is your Astronomy Tonight podcast. Good evening, stargazers! Today we're celebrating one of the most romantically timed astronomical events in modern history: **June 7th, 1992 – the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a pulsar.** Now, you might be thinking, "Wait, a pulsar? Those cosmic lighthouses made of neutron star stuff?" Yes! And that's what makes this absolutely wild. Astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail discovered not one, but TWO planets orbiting PSR B1257+12, a pulsar located about 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Picture this: these aren't your typical, life-harboring Earth-like worlds basking in the warm glow of a sun. No, no, no. These planets are orbiting a rapidly spinning neutron star – a stellar corpse so dense that a teaspoon of its material would weigh as much as Mount Everest! The pulsar is blasting these planets with intense radiation and spinning 160 times per second. It's like living next to a cosmic strobe light that's also trying to obliterate everything around it. What's even more incredible? These discoveries proved that planets could form in the most extreme, violent environments…

People in this episode

Host: Inception Point Ai

Topics covered

• pulsar planets
• exoplanets
• astronomical discoveries
• planetary formation
• neutron stars

Keywords

• pulsar
• exoplanet
• PSR B1257+12
• neutron star
• astronomy
• planetary formation
• cosmic discoveries

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Astronomy Tonight Podcast

Places: Virgo

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