Forbidden Planet
Posted on 07/30/2016 12:20:21 PM PDT by MtnClimber
2K
6 Forbidden planets: Understanding alien worlds once thought impossible By Daniel CleryJul. 28, 2016 , 2:00 PM When astronomers discovered the first exoplanet around a normal star 2 decades ago, there was joy—and bewilderment. The planet, 51 Pegasi b, was half as massive as Jupiter, but its 4-day orbit was impossibly close to the star, far smaller than the 88-day orbit of Mercury. Theorists who study planet formation could see no way for a planet that big to grow in such tight confines around a newborn star. It could have been a freak, but soon, more “hot Jupiters” turned up in planet searches, and they were joined by other oddities: planets in elongated and highly tilted orbits, even planets orbiting their stars “backward”—counter to the star’s rotation.
The planet hunt accelerated with the launch of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft in 2009, and the 2500 worlds it has discovered added statistical heft to the study of exoplanets—and yet more confusion. Kepler found that the most common type of planet in the galaxy is something between the size of Earth and Neptune—a “super-Earth,” which has no parallel in our solar system and was thought to be almost impossible to make. Now, ground-based telescopes are gathering light directly from exoplanets, rather than detecting their presence indirectly as Kepler does, and they, too, are turning up anomalies. They have found giant planets several times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting their star at more than twice the distance Neptune is from the sun—another region where theorists thought it was impossible to grow large planets. Other planetary systems looked nothing like our orderly solar system, challenging the well-worn theories that had been developed to explain it.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
A post for those tired of politics.
A "Hot Jupiter" sounds like something that would cost extra at a brothel.
LOL.
From what I understand, our solar system was headed for one of these “hot Jupiter” setups if it wast for Saturn pulling back on Jupiter as it was migrating closer to the Sun, and into a stabilized orbit.
Also that our system likely had up to 4 more planets that Jupiter ended up flinging out into space, including another Neptune-sized world.
Among all these exoplanets, are there any terrestrial planets, similar to Earth? Maybe they don’t have a protective atmosphere like Earth; or liquid water like Earth. But are they even terrestrial like Earth? And if not, what’s all the hubbub about. Pardon my impertinence.
When someone brings up “global warming” as being “settled science,” let them know that science is NEVER settled, and send them to this topic for the perfect example.
“They blinded me with Science”
Indeed it does. If only there was a like function on this site, I would upvote this in a heartbeat and call this the quote of the day.
I think that you might have confused this with a "Hot Uranus"...
*ping*
I think all those places should be fine. Except Europa. I would attempt no landing there.
Unless they exit the Europa Union I would not go there either.
The Internet. You win it for the day.
L
No landing but apparently observation would be ok.
This topic was posted , thanks for posting it, thanks for reading it. I'm enjoying my end of the year check for missed topics.
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