{"id":179193,"date":"2023-12-26T13:26:09","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T19:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/eyeball-planets-may-actually-exist-and-theyre-as-creepy-as-they-sound"},"modified":"2023-12-26T13:26:09","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T19:26:09","slug":"eyeball-planets-may-actually-exist-and-theyre-as-creepy-as-they-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/eyeball-planets-may-actually-exist-and-theyre-as-creepy-as-they-sound","title":{"rendered":"Eyeball Planets May Actually Exist, And They\u2019re as Creepy as They Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/eyeball-planets-may-actually-exist-and-theyre-as-creepy-as-they-sound2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve heard of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/eyeball-planets-may-actually-exist-and-theyre-as-creepy-as-they-sound\/hot-jupiter-wasp-104b-one-of-the-darkest-planets-ever\">hot Jupiters<\/a>. You\u2019ve heard of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/eyeball-planets-may-actually-exist-and-theyre-as-creepy-as-they-sound\/uranus-weird-tilt-explained-glancing-giant-impact-magnetic-field-moons\">mini-Neptunes<\/a>. You\u2019ve heard of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/eyeball-planets-may-actually-exist-and-theyre-as-creepy-as-they-sound\/a-super-earth-may-be-orbiting-a-star-surprisingly-close-to-us\">super-Earths<\/a>. But have you heard of Eyeball Planets? Yep \u2014 planetary scientists think there might be a type of exoplanet out there that looks disturbingly like a giant eyeball. Just sitting there. Staring.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s actually not as weird as it sounds \u2014 the appearance of these bodies has to do with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tidal_locking\">tidal locking<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Tidal locking is when an orbiting body rotates at the same rate that it orbits. That means it always has one side facing the body it is orbiting, and the other side always facing away. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/moon\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">The Moon<\/a>, for instance, is tidally locked to Earth, that\u2019s why we never see its far side from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019ve heard of hot Jupiters. You\u2019ve heard of mini-Neptunes. You\u2019ve heard of super-Earths. But have you heard of Eyeball Planets? Yep \u2014 planetary scientists think there might be a type of exoplanet out there that looks disturbingly like a giant eyeball. Just sitting there. Staring. But it\u2019s actually not as weird as it sounds \u2014 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}