Fluffy, not stuffy

[ericcoleman]

Astronomers Find Distant, Fluffy Planet

Comments

[jabber.livejournal.com]

Pluto, while fluffy, is not a planet.

This planet is interesting. It's incredibly un-dense, yet massive and very fast moving. I have to wonder how long it will last.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

At least one of our gas giant planets is less dense than water. (Neptune I think but I'm far from sure.) So that isn't so surprising. What's surprising is that it could be that close to its star. It's got to be disappearing quickly (for astronomical values of quickly). And unless it's a very new star, the planet had to have been a lot bigger to start with; I wonder if it could actually have started out big enough to be a star.

When we talk about how odd these big planets close to their stars are, we need to remember that we only have the technology to detect big planets close to their stars, so the fact that that's all that we're seeing doesn't really say anything about whether there's anything else out there that we aren't seeing.

[jabber.livejournal.com]

I think Saturn is the one what would float in water. And I suspect that this "planet" is a failed attempt at a binary system. Maybe the bigger twin has eaten too much of the smaller for the latter to sustain fusion?

Seems funny to me that astronomers would degrade a chunk of rock like Pluto down from planetary status, while at the same time call a very distant fart (or cloud of gas) a planet.

Silly egg-heads.

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

Perhaps a failed trinary system?

"HAT-P-1 orbits one of a pair of stars in the constellation Lacerta, about 450 light-years from Earth."

My take on the use of the phrase pair of stars means a binary system but that's me

[jabber.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess it technically depends on whether they orbit each other, which I'm sure they do, depending on your frame of reference.

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

I hear this being said in a very Obi-Wan Kenobi sort of voice... "All things orbit each other... from a certain point of view"

[jabber.livejournal.com]

Ha! It's better then being accused of sounding like Yoda. :)

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

Planet you are not, fluffy like Chewbacca you are.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Seems funny to me that astronomers would degrade a chunk of rock like Pluto down from planetary status, while at the same time call a very distant fart (or cloud of gas) a planet.

Silly egg-heads.

Give me a break. Nobody would ever have called Pluto a planet if they had correctly estimated its size and the nature of the Kuiper belt at the time. If science weren't allowed to correct its mistakes, we'd still be teaching Aristotelian physics.

[jabber.livejournal.com]

Quite true, yet I question if this extra-solar planet, or any of them for that matter, qualify as planets by the new definition which has stripped Pluto of the status. A "planet" is one only if it orbits it's star, is roughly spherical, and has "cleared the neighborhood" in its orbit. The only thing that is observable about the extra-solar planets is the first criterion.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, life sounds like a Futurama episode.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Any extrasolar objects massive enough and close enough to their stars that we can observe them will certainly be spherical (unless made of materials unknown to science) and will clear their neighborhoods quickly.