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A Puffed-Up Extrasolar Planet
Maggie McKee writes, "New Scientist Space reports astronomers have found a planet less dense than a wine cork and 38% larger than Jupiter. It circles a star about 450 light years from Earth. A similarly bloated planet has been found before (HD 209458b), so these puffed-up planets may be quite common. But no one knows how they got so swollen. One possibility is 'that some poorly understood mechanism has separated hydrogen and helium in each planet.'"
In what other science does discovering two instances of the same thing make something potentially 'common'?
When you consider that they've only observed an infinitesimally small portion of the universe, seeing two of the same thing suggests that there's a good chance there are more of them.
This guy's the limit!