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To: Nachum
I don't understand why people get so hopeful that there will be life on hot Jupiters, Saturns and Neptunes. How will life survive when the planet has crushing gravity, is tidally-locked to the star (one side is hotter'n'hell and the other is frozen), and any moons of the planet will be pounded with solar flares and coronal mass ejections?

HD 10180 is a good star for a Sol-type system, though. Nearly the same spectral class as our sun (orange-yellow instead of yellow), nearly the same mass, nearly the same amount of metals, and about the same temperature. But it is closer to the galactic plane than we are (galactic latitude 22.75 vs. -76.29 for the sun), so I wonder whether its "neighborhood" is as clear as ours.

The fact that HD 10180's metallicity is about 20% higher than the Sun's indicates it's a younger star. Perhaps in a few millions years all these hot Jupiters and such will spiral into their sun or clear the inner system out, and then there will be room for a planetary collision or two to make some terrestrial planets. But that's too long to wait.

66 posted on 08/26/2010 9:40:12 AM PDT by backwoods-engineer (There is no "common good" which minimizes or sacrifices the individual. --Walter Scott Hudson)
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To: backwoods-engineer
I don't understand why people get so hopeful that there will be life on hot Jupiters, Saturns and Neptunes.

There is more to the universe than just hot planets. I think the earth, and planets such as Mars would clearly substantiate that.

Did you know during nuclear weapons testing that life was found just below the surface close to where weapons were detonated?

67 posted on 08/26/2010 10:12:00 AM PDT by dragnet2
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