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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."

2 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. dry planet? by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Funny

    May I recommend core-so-soft lotion? Guaranteed to bring revitilizing atmosphere and vitaman E to itchy and dry celestial bodies.

    --
    "I only speak the truth"
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  2. 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