..it's things like this that make me love science. Force 1800 storms on a planet 190 light years away (seriously, get your calculator out and work out the miles) that's scooting at a right pace around it's parent sun in a weird orbit?

Awesome.

Nice one distant-planet-gazing-boffin-type-dudes.

but let's not forget that all this stuff was going on nearly 200 years ago, so who knows what it looks like now

The parent star is a dwarf of spectral class G5, a little less massive than the Sun. The orbital period is listed as 111.78 days (plus or minus 0.21 days): see http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/HD80606.html

If the orbital period was less than a day, the orbit ... all of it ... would have to be much closer to the star.

A blue sunrise through a red atmosphere, so that would be some kind of Purple Haze effect... Hmm, i feel a thunderous solo coming on. Now, wheres my lighter fluid.

Very naff indeed.

none of this 1 degree over 20 years what not

... is an utterly fuckin' bollox thing to do when you're fitting a quadratic curve. Use the bleedin' formula:

v = 0.836 B^(3/2) m/s

5kps = 5000m/s, so B^(3/2) = 5000/0.836, or iow

B = (5000/0.836) ^ (2/3) = Force 329.5

Not as impressive as your figure, but not as utterly wrong either.

"Yes, we know"? Like buggery do you, you're fooling nobody. Get back to maths class, you stupid boy!

anybody else see the 'grey' on its side?

These aliens and their damn cars and Patio heaters!

Well you're even worse now!!

In the limit of large x the difference between x^2 and x^(3/2) is far far greater than the difference of x^(3/2) and x. So a straight line is an infinitely better approximation than a quadratic. It's pretty simple really - get back to maths lessons, arsehole!

Anyone ever watch The Chronicles of Riddick :)

Isn't the 'prison planet' in a similar state ?

Flames -- well you can figure that out :)

What other type of hour is the author aware of?

So, I thinko'd "quadratic" when I should have written "polynomial." BFD. I'm still right about the numbers, and your English comprehension skills are lacking: my post makes it quite clear that it's the underlying data I'm referring to by the term quadratic, not that I'm proposing to use yet another curve that still isn't the real one for fitting the data.

Most. Learned. Flame. Ever.

"Generally the faraway gas-planet sees a balmy 500-odd degrees, but as the massive world barrelled in to periastron, sun swelling hotter and hotter in the sky, this soared by 700 degrees in just six Earth hours."

That's the old estimate.

James Hansen has already adjusted it upward.

Where do these guys come up with HD80606b? It's a lame name.

I vote to rename it "Marriage".

Another measure of time which could throw the "six earth hours" into disrepute.

I am, of course, talking about microsoft time which is completely different to earth time.

You can all prove this for yourselves by transferring some files from one place to another and keeping an eye on the time remaining. Ever noticed how earth time passes much quicker than Microsoft time. When it says 1 hour remaining, you might just be able to get a cup of tea made and the job will be done.

Paris cos she likes it quick......

Quite learned, but he did overlook the fact that I didn't actually say to use a quadratic curve, having been carried away by his own learnedness. I said to use ^(3/2) and that's what I used.

..for making PMSL actually literal for the first time in my 22 years.