Planet Radius:0.338 x Earth (estimate) Planet Type:Terrestrial Discovery Method:Pulsar Timing Planet Mass:0.02 Earths Discovery Date:1994 Orbital Radius:0.19 AU Orbital Period:25.3 days Eccentricity:0.0
Important Knowledge: PSR B1257+12 b, along with fellow doomed worlds, were among the first and creepiest to be discovered as they orbit an undead star known as a pulsar. Pulsar planets like Poltergeist and its neighboring worlds, Phobetor and Draugr, are consumed with constant radiation from the star’s core.
Pulsars are born when a massive star (usually 8-25 times the mass of our Sun) explodes in a supernova event. These are extremely energetic events that blast most of the progenitor star apart. But just as most of the star gets flung out into space, the inner part of the star falls in on itself under the force of gravity.
This creates some rather fascinating, and equally terrifying, outcomes. Firstly, about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun is crushed down into a diameter no bigger than a regional town (~20 kilometres across), so the density is off the charts. So dense, that a teaspoon full of this material would weigh as much as all of humanity combined into a big ball of mush.
Over four times as massive as the Earth, it circles the primary at a distance of 0.36 AU with an orbital period of approximately 66 days.
