A 'super-puff' planet like no other:
The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Université de Montréal have found.
This intriguing discovery by Ph.D. student Caroline Piaulet of UdeM's Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) suggests that gas-giant planets form a lot more easily than previously believed.
Piaulet is part of the groundbreaking research team of UdeM astrophysics professor Björn Benneke that in 2019 announced the first detection of water on an exoplanet located in its star's habitable zone.
Published today in the Astronomical Journal with colleagues in Canada, the U.S., Germany and Japan, the new analysis of WASP-107b's internal structure "has big implications," said Benneke.
"This work addresses the very foundations of how giant planets can form and grow," he said. "It provides concrete proof that massive accretion of a gas envelope can be triggered for cores that are much less massive than previously thought."
WASP-107b was first detected in 2017 around WASP-107, a star about 212 light years from Earth in the Virgo constellation. The planet is very close to its star -- over 16 times closer than the Earth is to the Sun. As big as Jupiter but 10 times lighter, WASP-107b is one of the least dense exoplanets known: a type that astrophysicists have dubbed "super-puff" or "cotton-candy" planets.
[...] "Exoplanets like WASP-107b that have no analogue in our Solar System allow us to better understand the mechanisms of planet formation in general and the resulting variety of exoplanets," [Piaulet] said. "It motivates us to study them in great detail."
Journal Reference:
Caroline Piaulet, Björn Benneke, et al. WASP-107b's Density Is Even Lower: A Case Study for the Physics of Planetary Gas Envelope Accretion and Orbital Migration - IOPscience, The Astronomical Journal (DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/abcd3c)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday January 22 2021, @06:03AM (10 children)
What exactly does that mean? Earth averages 1au from Sol, but what does 16 times closer mean? What would 1 time closer mean?
The linked article simply keeps throwing the same language around with no clear explanation, so I resorted to wikipwned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASP-107b
If that's correct, orbital distance is about .0566au at max.
That's about 3/53rds of an au, but I still have no idea what that would translate to in 'times smaller.' If they meant 'less than 1/16th the distance Earth is from the Sun' the this is accurate, 3/53 > 1/16 (=3/48) but that's a hell of a rewrite, if that's what they mean I should get a check for correcting it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by deimtee on Friday January 22 2021, @06:19AM (5 children)
They should also get a Nobel for discovering negative weight: "As big as Jupiter but 10 times lighter"
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Arik on Friday January 22 2021, @06:23AM (4 children)
English, do you speak it?
I weigh about 13 stone. You're 1 time lighter. About how much do you weigh?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @12:10PM
why would a journalist win the nobel prize? SN so kindly puts the actual article (DOI...) link, where even the abstract is more illuminating than TFA the subject was discovered through.
who reads TFA anyway? (oh only internet trolls with 1/1th of an ax to grind about proportions).
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 22 2021, @06:13PM (2 children)
The metric to use to decide whether communication has taken place is to see if the audience have understood the communication, not to see if some smartarse on the internet can find a deliberate misinterpretation.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday January 23 2021, @01:05AM (1 child)
Unknown, and unimportant. The construction is ineluctably implied by the one that was used. If 1x is meaningless, then 16x is also meaningless.
Again, language isn't just a cosmetic feature. It's for communication. If one doesn't understand ones own words, how would one expect the readers to understand them?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday January 23 2021, @01:52PM
> Unknown, and unimportant.
So it's unimportant to you whether you're using a straw man fallacy or not? I notice that you follow up immediately with a hasty generalisation fallacy too. Fallacies really seem to be your thing.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday January 22 2021, @06:20AM
"3/53 > 1/16"
IN OPPOSITE WORLD.
Still, you know what I meant.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 22 2021, @06:10PM (2 children)
If you can't understand that "16 times" represents "a scaling factor of 16", then it's you who has the problem.
By all means encourage people to use clearer terminology, even present it as an angry rant if you like, it is mostly justified, but don't pretend that the construct they use is utterly devoid of meaning.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday January 23 2021, @12:59AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday January 23 2021, @01:49PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:29PM
WTF does TFA have to do with law enforcement?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @06:53PM
lol, How did that survive the name purge?
https://observer.com/2020/08/nasa-racist-star-name-changes-hq-name/ [observer.com]