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Puffed-up exoplanets


Waspie_Dwarf

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Puffed-up exoplanets inflate with heat from their stars alone

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A star’s heat goes deep. For the first time, we have spotted a “hot Jupiter” that has expanded thanks to its swelling host star – an observation that could settle a 15-year-old debate.

Hot Jupiters – gas giant exoplanets that orbit scorchingly close to their stars – are inexplicably puffy. “We see these planets that are the sizes of stars without being anywhere near the mass of those stars,” says Sam Grunblatt at the University of Hawaii.

HAT-P-1b, for example, contains half the mass of Jupiter yet is 20 per cent larger in radius. This gives it such a low density that it would float in a bathtub.

arrow3.gif  Read More: New Scientist

 

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