Terrifying planet with ice so hot it would ‘melt your face off’

Imagine a mysterious planet out in space that burns up at nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and is covered in a thick layer of... ice?

It's rather confusing, because a basic knowledge of science suggests that water freezes at 32°F (0°C) - how could that work at such a scorching temperature?

Well, life on Gliese 436b is nothing like here on Earth, so the rules are different there.

MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty

It's an absolute monster - the size of Neptune, which is already around four times wider than Earth. Its mass is 22.1 times the size of our puny planet.

According to NASA, it's an exoplanet that orbits an M-type star - and it hurtles around its star, taking 2.6 Earth days to complete one orbit.

It was discovered in 2004, and is so different to our planet because it's 33 light-years away. To put that in perspective, one ligh-second is the equivalent of 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers).

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope picked up that this unusual planet lacks methane - so what lurks on its surface?

'The planet is too compact to be made mostly of hydrogen gas, like Jupiter, but may not be compact enough to be a rocky super-Earth,' NASA says.

NASA, ESA

'Researchers think it may be made mostly of an exotic form of water, an 'ice' hardened by pressure rather than temperature.'

So there you have it - intense gravity compresses the water to what is pretty much ice.

And that's not the only eye-catching thing about this planet. As it races through space, it produces a 'long, comet-like tail', the European Space Agency (ESA) says, 'Resulting from the atmosphere getting ripped off it'.

And a planet with scorching hot ice isn't the only terrifying thing lurking out in space.

There's also nerve-wracking asteroids like 101955 Bennu - one of the biggest we know of, with a whopping mass of 74 million tons.

It's no tiddler flying through space - and NASA scientists say Bennu passes by Earth approximately every six years.

Bennu will next fly by Earth on September 24, 2182, but don't worry too much - apparently there's only a 0.037% chance of it crashing into us.