Giant Iron Bar Found in the Ring Nebula May Be a Vaporized Planet

Have you ever seen a cloud made of iron? You may not believe it, but deep inside a nebula that astronomers have studied for centuries, researchers have uncovered a massive bar-shaped cloud made almost entirely of iron atoms. 

This glowing shell of gas left behind by a dying star had gone unnoticed despite hundreds of years of observation. Stretching across a distance roughly 500 times the size of Pluto’s orbit and containing as much iron as the planet Mars, the newly found “iron bar” raises deep questions about how stars die, how nebulae form, and what happens to planets caught in the chaos. 

Interestingly, even scientists have no clue how this iron bar came into existence. “At present, there seem to be no obvious explanations that can account for the presence of the narrow bar,” the researchers note. 

This discovery shows that even well-known cosmic objects can still surprise us.