Boffins spot a SECOND JUPITER – the gas giant's baby sister

Re: How many "second" Jupiters are there?

Jupiter is a "gas giant", Saturn has Rings. Uranus is good for jokes, and Neptune is just inconvenient because we're running out of monnikers.

Never mind that the planets are of the same type, having more or less the same basic characteristics. In PopScience speak any gas giant is a "Jupiter". If they could spot rings, some of them would be suddenly called "Saturns".

"I've been getting keyboard marks on my face from the bad habit media has of publishing a cartoon instead of the photo whenever astronomers discover something. As if the photo and an artists impression were in any way equivalent."

What amuses me in this case is that the artist clearly concluded that because the planet is like Jupiter, it would have a red spot.

Re: Nubile?

Maybe Iain Thompson is a closet planetophile? ;)

Re: "at around 800 degrees Fahrenheit (426°C)"

If you're being pedantic the c in Celestial Goofy Shit standard actually stands for centimeter. Temperature is measure is degrees Kelvin.

Re: So..But with dinosaurs? Bring it on!

The little bastards have gone to sleep now but tomorrow the garden will be full of them, unless the buzzards are overhead in which case things will go very quiet. Dinosaurs all over the place, except in the fruit cage which I finally put up out of annoyance at losing the blueberries.

There was a big mass extinction event ca 65mya, but it certainly didn't kill off all the dinosaurs. It changed the course of evolution, but we don't even know for sure whether without it the large dinosaurs would still be around or whether the evolving mammals would simply have outcompeted them. Despite the best efforts of the human race we still have ostriches and albatrosses, but without a single catastrophic event we're doing a pretty effective job of eliminating the large predators, creating a world fit for Minnesota dentists one lion at a time.