Scientists discover giant planet with super speedy winds

An artist's impression of how exoplanet WASP-127b could look like

Scientists have discovered a huge planet with supersonic high wind speeds.

WASP-127b is located in our Milky Way galaxy, around 500 light years from Earth.

At just over 20,000 mph, experts say the winds are the fastest of their kind on any known planet.

That's more than 80 times speedier than the maximum wind gust ever recorded on Earth!

What did scientists find on WASP-127b?

WASP-127b's diameter is about 30% larger than Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet

WASP-127b is an exoplanet - meaning it's a planet outside the Solar System.

It is located approximately 520 light years from Earth and is thought to orbit very close to its host star.

WASP-127b's diameter is nearly a third larger than Jupiter, our own solar system's largest planet.

However its mass is only about 16% of Jupiter, making it one of the least dense - or puffiest - planets ever observed.

David Cont from Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, who worked on the study explained: "WASP-127b is a gas giant planet, which means that it has no rocky or solid surface beneath its atmospheric layers.

"Instead, below the observed atmosphere lies gas that becomes denser and more pressurized the deeper one goes into the planet."

The 'Very Large Telescope' facility is located in Chile's Atacama Desert

To calculate the wind speed on WASP-127b, the team tracked how fast molecules in the planet's atmosphere moved using the 'Very Large Telescope' (VLT) located in the south American country of Chile.

They detected supersonic jet stream winds at its equator howling at around 20,500mph - the fastest of their kind on any known planet.

Lisa Nortmann from the University of Göttingen, Germany, said that the super fast speeds surprised the team.

"There is an extremely fast circumplanetary jet wind found on the planet.

"The velocity of the winds is surprisingly high," she added.