How can some planets be hotter than stars? We've started to unravel the mystery.

[Admin]

Until the early 2000s, the only known planets were located in our own neighborhood, the Solar System.

How can some planets be hotter than stars? We've started to unravel the mystery. : Read more

 

[OrionEridanus]

Until the early 2000s, the only known planets were located in our own neighborhood, the Solar System.

How can some planets be hotter than stars? We've started to unravel the mystery. : Read more

At first I thought you must mean terrestrial mass range planets. Excluding the pulsar planets discovered in the late 80's early and mid 90s' this is correct (if 55 Cnc e in 2004 is early 2000s).

As I read the article, you are clearly talking about gas giants, and the early 2000s claim is just plain wrong (55 Cnc b in 1996, and dozen others in the 90s).

Catalogue of Exoplanets

Sortable and filterable catalogue of the exoplanet discovered so far.

exoplanet.eu

 

[Catastrophe]

Yep! It all comes back to semantics. Is a brown dwarf a star?

Cat

 

[rod]

Yep! It all comes back to semantics. Is a brown dwarf a star?

Cat

Cat, that picture is a much younger Cat but looking good Stars burn hydrogen. p-p chain fusion, CNO fusion, and triple alpha process. Brown dwarf equation of states do not reach the pressures, densities, and core temperatures for fusion. Recently some CNO neutrinos were reported from the Sun, supporting a critical fusion process in the stars.

 

[rod]

"Our Solar System is by no means typical." Very good observation here This site shows 770 stars with solar systems, some have 7 or 8 exoplanets confirmed at them. The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia (exoplanet.eu) example, HD 219134 has 7, KOI-351 has 8, TRAPPIST-1 has 7. Host star masses range from 0.08 solar masses to 1.2 solar masses or so. Some have 6 exoplanets orbiting like HD 10180. Always intriguing to compare our solar system to the others known today

 

[OrionEridanus]

How is it semantics? 55 Cancri b is a gas giant, just like the ones talked about in the article. It was discovered in 1995 and a dozenish more followed in the next few years. The opening sentence in the article is flat out incorrect.