Odd planet's extreme global warming

crazyeddie · Jan 28, 2009

Will we ever find any "normal" planets?  This one's a doozy: <div class="headlines" style="margin-bottom:10px"><h1 style="font:normalnormalbold1.44em/normalArial,Helvetica,sans-serif;padding:0px;margin:0px">Odd planet's extreme global warming: Highs of 2240</h1></div>BY SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science WriterWednesday, January 28, 2009Astronomers have found a planet with a galactic case of hot flashes. In just six hours, this planet four times the size of Jupiter heats up by more than 1,200 degrees, according to a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's the first observation of changing weather" on a planet outside our solar system, said study author Gregory Laughlin, an astronomy professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to study the planet.Change is a mild way to put it for the lifeless world, called HD80606b, where the word "mild" would never enter a weather forecast.Normally, the planet is a toasty 980 degrees or so. But in the few hours it whips around its sun the planet gets zapped with mega-heat, pushing the thermometer closer to 2,240 degrees.During its brief close pass to its sun, the planet is 10 times nearer its star than Mercury is to our sun. When it comes closest to its star, it becomes one giant "brewing storm" complete with shock waves, Laughlin said. The radiation bombarding the planet is 800 times stronger than when it is farthest away.Then just as quickly, the planet slingshots away and radiates the heat to the cool vacuum of space. It glows cherry red and the temperature plummets, Laughlin said."Utterly bizarre," he said. "It is thoroughly completely uninhabitable. In a galaxy of uninhabitable planets, this one stands out as being completely inhospitable to life."The planet circles its star — the larger of two stars in a binary system — in a comet-like orbit in just 111 days.The star is visible from Earth near the Big Dipper. On Feb. 14, HD80606b will travel between the Earth and its star. There's a 15 percent chance that amateur astronomers using small telescopes could see it swing by, obscuring a tiny part of the star, Laughlin said."This is indeed an oddball planet, where the temperature range of the season changes from hellish to super-hellish," said Carnegie Institution astronomer Alan Boss. "This place makes Venus look like a nice place to live and that is saying something."http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/28/national/a100004S77.DTL <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

silylene · Jan 28, 2009

Is that in degrees F or C ?  The article should state the units. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> petet = silylenePlease, please give me my handle back ! </div>

3488 · Jan 28, 2009

Replying to: <DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Is that in degrees F or C ?  The article should state the units. Posted by petet</DIV>Hi silylene, its in Kelvin.Extra Solar visions entry here. I find this absolutely fascinating. I wonder if the whistler waves from lightning could be detectable from this planet???Andrew Brown.  <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before". Linda Morabito on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.http://www.launchphotography.com/ http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearthhttp://web.me.com/meridianijournal </div>

silylene · Jan 28, 2009

Replying to: <DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Hi silylene, its in Kelvin.Extra Solar visions entry here. I find this absolutely fascinating. I wonder if the whistler waves from lightning could be detectable from this planet???Andrew Brown.  Posted by 3488</DIV> I looked it up too, this article says it is temperature in Farhenheit: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/hot-planet.htmlHere is a way of thinking of this planet:  A HUGE pulse input of heat warms this planet for 6 hrs of every 114 days.  What else could cause a huge pulse input of heat into a planet's atmosphere?  Well, being smacked with a comet or asteroid.Imagine Jupiter being whacked with a huge comet/asteroid every 114 days, and the impact on the atmosphere of that enormous pulse of energy!Picture of Comet Levy fragment impacting Jupiter, and its giant heat pulse in the Jovian atmosphere: <img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/0/4/30149983-e813-4f9a-a40d-f81e7aae4239.Medium.jpg" alt="" />Here is a video of the simulation of the heating and storms in this planet's atmosphere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vaOm3kV8Ag&eurl=http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/hot-planet.html&feature=player_embedded <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> petet = silylenePlease, please give me my handle back ! </div>

thnkrx · Jan 29, 2009

As I recollect, about 90% of the 330+ extra solar planets listed on the 'extra-solar planet encylocopedia' are split roughly evenly between 'Hot Jupiters' with orbital periods of under two weeks (and frequently merely a few days), and what amounts to jovian comets with very high orbital eccentricities - frequently in excess of 20% and sometimes topping 40%, but usually boasting orbital periods on the order of months to years.  This planet seems to have the worst of both situations. This situation came as a sort of needless surprise: stars in binary systems frequently orbit very close in or have highly eccentric orbits (cataclasmic binaries). Binary stars with wide orbits of low eccentricity seem to be on the sparse side.  It should have been anticipated that this situation would also apply to planets as well. More or less 'normal' worlds with 'normal' orbits tend to be much fewer.  However...the techniques used to spot these planets have some pretty severe limitations: they are mostly limited to detecting large (Neptune or better) planets orbiting fairly close in to their star (within 3 or 4 au).  I read once that a theoretical alien astronomer surveying our own system from ffty light years off using these same techniques would be hard pressed to spot Jupiter: he would need a dozen years of perfect observations, and even then the result would be 'maybe'.IT ought to be interesting to see just what COROT discovers (and Kepler, if it ever gets launched).  So far the COROT crew has released details on only a few planets their satilite has discovered, though the claim is they've found 'hundreds'.

UFmbutler · Jan 29, 2009

Replying to: <DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>As I recollect, about 90% of the 330+ extra solar planets listed on the 'extra-solar planet encylocopedia' are split roughly evenly between 'Hot Jupiters' with orbital periods of under two weeks (and frequently merely a few days), and what amounts to jovian comets with very high orbital eccentricities - frequently in excess of 20% and sometimes topping 40%, but usually boasting orbital periods on the order of months to years.  This planet seems to have the worst of both situations. This situation came as a sort of needless surprise: stars in binary systems frequently orbit very close in or have highly eccentric orbits (cataclasmic binaries). Binary stars with wide orbits of low eccentricity seem to be on the sparse side.  It should have been anticipated that this situation would also apply to planets as well. More or less 'normal' worlds with 'normal' orbits tend to be much fewer.  However...the techniques used to spot these planets have some pretty severe limitations: they are mostly limited to detecting large (Neptune or better) planets orbiting fairly close in to their star (within 3 or 4 au).  I read once that a theoretical alien astronomer surveying our own system from ffty light years off using these same techniques would be hard pressed to spot Jupiter: he would need a dozen years of perfect observations, and even then the result would be 'maybe'.IT ought to be interesting to see just what COROT discovers (and Kepler, if it ever gets launched).  So far the COROT crew has released details on only a few planets their satilite has discovered, though the claim is they've found 'hundreds'. Posted by thnkrx</DIV>You are correct on most points, but the reason why there are so many hot jupiters and such are because the current planet detection methods are heavily biased toward their detection.  Future missions should help even out the statistics, and we may(probably will) find that hot jupiters aren't really very common in the grand scheme of things.  COROT is very ambitious but so far they haven't delivered on their pre-launch predictions of discoveries.  I think Kepler, which is practically finished, and further in the future missions like GAIA, TPF etc will surely detect many interesting planets.  Over the next 10-20 years I'm pretty sure we'll see that number of ~300 jump by at least a factor of 10.  <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

michaelmozina · Jan 29, 2009

Replying to: <DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>You are correct on most points, but the reason why there are so many hot jupiters and such are because the current planet detection methods are heavily biased toward their detection.  Future missions should help even out the statistics, and we may(probably will) find that hot jupiters aren't really very common in the grand scheme of things.  COROT is very ambitious but so far they haven't delivered on their pre-launch predictions of discoveries.  I think Kepler, which is practically finished, and further in the future missions like GAIA, TPF etc will surely detect many interesting planets.  Over the next 10-20 years I'm pretty sure we'll see that number of ~300 jump by at least a factor of 10.  Posted by UFmbutler</DIV>I agree with that assessment.  I doubt our solar system is all that unique in the grand scheme of things.  I suspect that "normal" planets will be detected in greater numbers as our technology improves over time.   As you note, are technological limitations favor the detection of a Jupiter sized (large) object. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

Mee_n_Mac · Jan 29, 2009

I wonder how much mass this planet looses on each orbit ?  I have to believe that H2 and He would be boiling off and lost to it's sun at perigee.  <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> -----------------------------------------------------Ask not what your Forum Software can do do on you,Ask it to, please for the love of all that's Holy, STOP ! </div>

UFmbutler · Jan 31, 2009

Replying to: <DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>I wonder how much mass this planet looses on each orbit ?  I have to believe that H2 and He would be boiling off and lost to it's sun at perigee.  Posted by Mee_n_Mac</DIV>There are three major mass loss mechanisms for these kinds of planets:  Thermal -the particles in the atmosphere are described by a Maxwellian distribution and some will have velocities higher than the escape velocity and just go into spaceInteraction between plasma and solar wind - tearing particles out of the atmosphere and, the biggest, Hydrodynamic - pressure changes induced by heat There are many other mechanisms for mas sloss, but these are the biggest.  Even so, simulations show that even assuming very generous efficiencies for these processes, the planet will only lose about 1% of its mass over the star's main sequence lifetime.  Although if you convert that to mass, you get 10^10 grams, a mass that is difficult to fathom.  So yes, these planets close in to the sun do lose parts of their atmosphere, but it's difficult to think of any situation where a hot jupiter's entire atmosphere is stripped away without the planet colliding with the star.  Rocky planets, on the other hand, have MUCH higher relative atmospheric mass loss rates.  If we stuck the earth or even Neptune next to this star the atmosphere would be gone pretty fast(relatively). <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

Hawkster · Feb 3, 2009

If ya guys want a accurate look on the earth with global warming(only works if you have a mac)Switch the color scheme to negative <img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-wink.gif" border="0" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Every so often, I like to stick my head out the window, look up, and smile for a satellite picture. </div>

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