I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens,
and all their host have I commanded.
Isaiah 45:12
"Nothing has been more upsetting to comfortable theory than the discovery of hot Jupiters around other stars.It’s nice to find an honest astronomer not predisposed to triumphalism. Astrophysicist Paul Sutter is such an one. In his Space.com piece, “Extremely Hot and Incredibly Close: How Hot Jupiters Defy Theory,” he writes as if a humiliated penitent in a confessional. His article should send a warning to scientists who tend to be overconfident in their knowledge and methods.
As usual, we thought we had it all figured out. See that gas giant over there in the outer solar system? It was born there. It will spend its whole life there, and it will die there. Sure it might wiggle around a bit every few hundred million years — who doesn’t? — but, by and large, planets don’t move.
Surprise: Planets move. And not just a little. They move a lot. All over the place. In fact, in the early days of a solar system’s formation, planets are a little rambunctious: squirrely little toddlers jostling about underfoot. But it wasn’t until we started observing planets in other solar systems (“extrasolar planets” or “exoplanets” for the astronomer on the move) that we really noticed this fact.
The hot Jupiters, in particular, put shame on the face of planetary scientists whose models went kaput with the discovery of these fast-moving giants. The penitent weeps:
And it wasn’t just any type of exoplanet that kicked off this re-think; it was the hot Jupiters. Imagine: a planet more massive than the largest one in our solar system and 10 times warmer, a monstrous beast of hydrogen and other elements, complete with swirling bands of gas and a rich, dynamic atmosphere, orbiting closer its star than Mercury orbits the sun. In some solar systems, such a planet orbits so quickly that its year is shorter than the Earth’s day. That means these worlds can whip around their parent stars in hours. The physics involved can reduce the most hardened scientist to tears.
Dr. Sutter tries to regain his composure. Maybe a little humor will help.
When astronomers spotted the first hot Jupiter (51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet to be found around a sunlike star, no less), the reaction was mostly, “Ha ha, mother nature, that’s cute. You got us this time, but no more funny business, OK?”
But then another hot Jupiter was found. And another. Then half a dozen more. They went from goofy oddballs to … normalcy. For a while, it started to look like our own solar system was the weird one. Maybe they should just be called “regular Jupiters,” and ours re-named a “cold Jupiter?” CEH
