In the constellation Leo, 33 light-years from Earth, there is a planet the size of Neptune orbiting a red dwarf 4.3 million kilometers, 15 times closer than Mercury from the Sun.
Unsurprisingly, this planet, Gliese 436b, has an incredibly hot surface with an estimated temperature of 439 degrees Celsius, but the fact that the planet is covered with ice is amazing. Since the boiling point of water is about 100 degrees Celsius, the existence of ice on the surface of Gliese 436b seems impossible, but the ice on the surface of this planet is not exactly what we know on Earth. This phenomenon is called 'hot ice' – a kind of hot, solid water. It is very similar to ordinary ice, but if you touch it, then most likely it will simply melt your skin. It is not stored solid due to the low temperature; the reason is the planet's extremely high gravity, which pulls water vapor towards the planet's core, causing it to collapse into a very dense, hard, hot layer. Even incredibly high temperatures can neither vaporize nor melt it. Since a planet of this size cannot be composed of ice alone, it is believed that the top of the ice is covered with an outer layer of hydrogen and helium. And this confuses scientists, since planets with a hydrogen-based atmosphere supposedly have significant amounts of methane and no carbon monoxide (carbon monoxide), but on Gliese 436b, the opposite is true, and scientists have no idea why.
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