The world is not enough
Dammit - aren't the machines satisfied with overrunning this planet? Must they seek to conquer other worlds too?
UK boffins ID three new exo-planets
Planet-hunting boffins based in the UK have announced the discovery of three more spinning globes to add to the more than 200 extrasolar planets already known to science. The planets turned up during the Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP). All are gas giants, roughly the size of Jupiter, and are orbiting their parent stars so …
-
-
Wednesday 31st October 2007 15:13 GMT Luther Blissett
Just a sec
"All are gas giants, roughly the size of Jupiter" ... "the surface temperatures are likely to be approaching 2,000°C". Hotter than Paris, alright.
So we're talking about hydrostatically stable (gas) plasmoids with an orbital period of "a matter of days" (wow, neat pun Lucy). Shurley shomething wrong shomewhere. Eye-watering facts, yet the "boffins" haven't blinked...?
Either our New Insect Overlords are over there and holding it all together with technology we can't understand, or they're over here and subverting explanations we can understand and aren't being let onto. Or both. I think we should be told, as we're paying.
-
Wednesday 31st October 2007 17:07 GMT Edd
Just a sec
Jupiter's escape velocity - 60 km / s
Typical kinetic energy of a gas molecule - 3/2 k T
Temperature at which hydrogen molecules typically have speeds equal to escape velocity of Jupiter - about 30,000 deg C.
Lose a factor of a few because you might only be worried about the peak of the distribution of molecule speeds and you're still way over 2,000 deg C.
Yours truly,
Boffins
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
