The tango of two strange planets

The Kepler space telescope found that the two planets moved so closely that their rotation was like a tango dance.

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The pair of "dancers" - consisting of a rocky planet and a planetary planet - revolve around a star about 1,200 light-years from Earth. Their star is quite similar to the sun but is older than several billion years. The distance between planets and stars is relatively small, AFP reported.

Kepler-36b, the name of the rock planet, is about 1.5 times larger than the earth. It spins around the star for two weeks. The distance between it and the star is less than 11 million kilometers, so small compared to the average distance of 150 million kilometers from the sun to the globe.

The planetarium, called Kepler-36c, is nearly four times the size of the earth. Hydrogen and helium gas make up the majority of Kepler-36c's atmosphere and most likely have a rock core. The planet revolves around the star for 16 days. The distance between it and the star is 19 million km.

Kepler-36b and Kepler-36c move almost on a flat surface but never collide because even when they come closest, the distance between them is still 1.2 million km, equivalent to 5 times the average distance vase from the moon to the globe.

"These are the two closest planets that humans have ever discovered ," said Eric Agol, a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in the US.

Humans will not be able to stand on the planet Kepler-36b because it moves too close to the star so its surface melts like lava. But if humans can stand on that planet, we will see a refined planet appearing in the sky three times the size of the moon.