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Hubble Discovers an Evaporating Planet

Posted by michael on from the sublime-beauty dept.

Licensed2Hack writes "For the first time, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have observed the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet evaporating off into space. Much of the planet may eventually disappear, leaving only a dense core. The planet is a type of extrasolar planet known as a "hot Jupiter." Spaceflightnow and Nature have the details."

5 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. WRONG! by Doctor+Fishboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    The star in NOT in a red giant phase - it's still on the Main Sequence for dwarf stars, and is very similiar to our Sun.

    The point is that you can't form a large gas giant so close to a star, it must have formed a long distance out and then 'migrated' to its present position near the star. How that happened will keep astro theorists in grants for a long time ;)

    Also, the size of this gas giant has been noted to be much larger than theoretical models predict, suggesting it is being heated up by the proximity of the parent star - this 'boiling off' of the atmosphere confirms this interpretation.

    Dr Fish

  2. duplicate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    first posted as "related solar system news" in Jupiter's Great Dark Spot

  3. Re:diamond core by chrisseaton · · Score: 2, Informative

    "They couldn't give those damn diamonds away for free."

    Diamonds are very useful in industry. Just think - we could all have diamond tipped power tools, so they would be useful, and worth buying whatever. People buy less valuable rocks, don't they.

  4. Re:diamond core by kfx · · Score: 2, Informative

    The diamond market is already overwhelmed by vast volumes of earth diamonds, as diamonds themselves are neither rare or valuable in reality.

    The entire concept of rare and valuable diamonds is a result of the most successful advertising/social engineering campaign ever devised; even now DeBeers and other diamond companies resrict the supply while telling you how rare diamonds are--they've been profiting from this strategy for some 70-80 years now, and they aren't about to stop now...

    The only difference with a diamond asteroid being mined would be that the reality of worthless, plentiful diamonds would become blatantly obvious to the public.

  5. Re:We're next [?] by Alsee · · Score: 2, Informative

    63% of the atoms in your body are hydrogen.
    Yeah, hydrogen is important lol.

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