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A Puffed-Up Extrasolar Planet

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the floats-like-a-beachball dept.

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.'"

6 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Astronomers... by /ASCII · · Score: 5, Funny

    I love astronomy. In what other science does discovering two instances of the same thing make something potentially 'common'?

    Reminds me of an old joke. An astronomer, a physisist and a mathematician are traveling on a train through Scotland. Through the window of the train they notice a black sheep.

    "Aha," shouts the astronomer. "In Scotland, all sheep are black."

    "Nonono, " says the physist. "We only know that there are black sheep in Scotland, not that all scottish sheep are black."

    The matematician looks furiously at the other two and almost screams "In Scotland there is at least one sheep with at least on black side!"

    --
    Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
    1. Re:Astronomers... by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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!
    2. Re:Astronomers... by /ASCII · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nope. If you take a small number of samples from a very large and diverse population, the odds are actually very high that several of the very uncommon results (e.g. planet types) will be highly overrepresented. It's a variation on "there are so many extremely unlikely things which can happen that it's extremely likely that a few of them will happen."

      --
      Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
    3. Re:Astronomers... by i_should_be_working · · Score: 5, Funny

      A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician are sitting at a cafe patio sipping coffee and watching the people go by. They see two people enter a nearby building. A few minutes later three people come out of the building.
       
      'Ah,' the biologist says, 'they must have reproduced'.
       
      'Nah,' says the physicist, 'three is within statistical error of two'.
       
      'Well,' says the mathematician, 'one thing is for certain: if someone walks into the building now, it will be empty'.

  2. Two is impossible.. by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "The number two is impossible," - Isaac Asimov in The Gods Themselves.

    The meaning being that there may be none of something in the universe, there may be one of something, but if there are two, there are lots more than two. Actually, in this case he was referring to universes themselves, not just things in the univrerse, but the point is the same.

    --
    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  3. Mating Displays by the+phantom · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think it is facinating that scientists can now observe the mating rituals of planets. I assume that these planets are making themselves look larger for potential mates. Soon, we will have scores of baby planets running around, which might answer questions about litter sizes among planets.

    --
    Rhapsody in Numbers