Hot Jupiters May Indicate Hospitable Planets

eldavojohn writes "An interesting article from National Geographic points out that other solar systems which contain planets like a 'Hot Jupiter' have a higher chance of also containing Earth-like planets." From the article: "'We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered--and possibly habitable--planets in solar systems unlike our own,' Raymond said. The simulations also showed that rocky planets known as hot Earths may often form when hot Jupiters push material forward during their inward treks. But hot Earths, which can be up to five times bigger than our Earth, orbit closer to their stars and are not likely to support life. Even if water does contribute to their formation, most hot Earths probably end up dry, study co-author Raymond says. "

Comments

Hot Titans?

[darkonc]

Well, if you have a hot jupiter, perhaps you could have earthlike conditions on the moons of the hot jupiter. We're pretty close with Titan. If jupiter were a brown dwarf, it might be just enough to put Titan or one of the other moons into a habitable zone -- You'd also have good tidal action to help push life onto the dry land.

Has anybody exhaustively explored the concept?

Re:Hot Titans?

[MichaelSmith]

Well, if you have a hot jupiter, perhaps you could have earthlike conditions on the moons of the hot jupiter.

If those moons were at least as massive as Mars, and preferably Venus or Earth there might be a chance of this working. Titan has its volatiles because it is cold. Heat it up and you are left with a small rocky moon.

Hot earths AND ocean-bearing planets

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not very clear in the article, but I think the original intent of the investigators was to relay that ocean bearing planets AND "hot earths" are likely to form in a system with a hot Jupiter. There's a buried 'also' implication in the article, and the illustration demonstrates the three kinds of planets. I think this is more a case of poor writing than a misrepresentative headline.

Re:Who says inhabitable is really inhabitable?

[Jeremi]

There's a big difference between a chemical compound that has certain effects on humans and a parasitic mold that uses human bodies as a host, as in the GGP.

It works just as well the other way, too: Why is it that healthy people don't get digested and putrefied by bacteria, when corpses will be broken down in a few weeks or months? Because the human immune system has been refined over a long period to recognize and fight the particular organisms that continuously try to invade and digest our bodies. So why would you expect our immune system to know how to fight off a completely alien lifeform that it's never experienced anything like before? Hell, lots of people get sick just flying to another continent, let alone another ecosystem.

Keep in mind that in the eat-or-be-eaten scenario, the eater need only know how to digest and make use of the opponent's raw materials. The eatee has to know how to disable or kill the attacker, a much more difficult problem. Without our immune system, we're equivalent to 150-pound bags of rich growth medium...