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This artist rendering provided by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows the newly discovered world HAT-P-1. The newly discovered planet is both the largest and least dense of the nearly 200 worlds astronomers have found outside our own solar system. HAT-P-1 orbits one of a pair of stars in the constellation Lacerta, about 450 light-years from Earth. (AP Photo/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, David A. Aguilar)


1 posted on 09/14/2006 9:59:08 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
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To: NormsRevenge

On the Net:

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/

Press Release
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/pr0624.html


2 posted on 09/14/2006 10:01:08 AM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ......Help the "Pendleton 8' and families -- http://www.freerepublic.com/~normsrevenge/)
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To: NormsRevenge
Did you say PUFFY planet?

4 posted on 09/14/2006 10:06:15 AM PDT by oh8eleven (RVN '67-'68)
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To: NormsRevenge

5 posted on 09/14/2006 10:06:50 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (The broken wall, the burning roof and tower. And Agamemnon dead.)
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To: NormsRevenge

I suspect all these giant planets whipping around their primaries in two-day orbits are going to turn out to be artifacts of piss-poor computer models.


6 posted on 09/14/2006 10:15:17 AM PDT by Grut
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To: NormsRevenge

These large gaseous planets have really knocked the old solar system formation theories for a loop. The way I learned the stuff in the 70s and 80s, large gaseous planets couldn't exist so close to their suns.

Just goes to show that science should never be taken as a matter of faith.


7 posted on 09/14/2006 10:15:44 AM PDT by cripplecreek (If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?)
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To: SunkenCiv

You've gotta love the headline :)


9 posted on 09/14/2006 7:27:52 PM PDT by annie laurie (All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost)
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To: annie laurie; garbageseeker; Knitting A Conundrum
Lacerta? Sounds like they make really soft mattresses on the puffy planet.

10 posted on 09/14/2006 10:30:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (updated my FR profile on Saturday, September 2, 2006. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: KevinDavis

:') It's super-absorbent! Away with floods! Away with workaday tidal waves!


11 posted on 09/14/2006 11:06:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (updated my FR profile on Saturday, September 2, 2006. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: 75thOVI; AndrewC; Avoiding_Sulla; BenLurkin; Berosus; CGVet58; chilepepper; ckilmer; demlosers; ...
Strange New Planet Baffles Astronomers
by Staff Writers
Sep 15, 2006
Gaspar Bakos, a Hubble fellow at CfA... designed and built the HAT network and is lead author of a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal describing the discovery... "This planet is about one-quarter the density of water," Bakos said. "In other words, it's lighter than a giant ball of cork! Just like Saturn, it would float in a bathtub if you could find a tub big enough to hold it, but it would float almost three times higher."

HAT-P-1's parent star is one member of a double-star system called ADS 16402 and is visible in binoculars. The two stars are separated by about 1500 times the Earth-Sun distance. The stars are similar to the Sun but slightly younger - about 3.6 billion years old compared to the Sun's age of 4.5 billion years.

Although stranger than any other extrasolar planet found so far, HAT-P-1 is not alone in its low-density status. The first planet ever found to transit its star, HD 209458b, also is puffed up about 20 percent larger than predicted by theory. HAT-P-1 is 24 percent larger than expected.

"Out of eleven known transiting planets, now not one but two are substantially bigger and lower in density than theory predicts," said co-author Robert Noyes (CfA). "We can't dismiss HD209458b as a fluke. This new discovery suggests something could be missing in our theories of how planets form."

16 posted on 09/15/2006 9:44:15 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (updated my FR profile on Saturday, September 2, 2006. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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· Catastrophism ping list · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark ·

17 posted on 09/15/2006 9:46:11 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (updated my FR profile on Saturday, September 2, 2006. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: NormsRevenge

This new planet is even fluffier than Saturn. Three times fluffier. Doesn't seem possible.


18 posted on 09/15/2006 9:47:02 AM PDT by RightWhale (Repeal the law of the excluded middle)
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To: NormsRevenge

So THAT's what happened to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man at the end of Ghostbusters!


19 posted on 09/15/2006 9:49:03 AM PDT by BeHoldAPaleHorse ( ~()):~)>)
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Phase diagram of water revised
PhysOrg
Thursday, October 5, 2006
Supercomputer simulations by two Sandia researchers have significantly altered the theoretical diagram universally used by scientists to understand the characteristics of water at extreme temperatures and pressures. The new computational model also expands the known range of water's electrical conductivity. The Sandia theoretical work showed that phase boundaries for "metallic water" -- water with its electrons able to migrate like a metal's -- should be lowered from 7,000 to 4,000 kelvin and from 250 to 100 gigapascals. (A phase boundary describes conditions at which materials change state -- think water changing to steam or ice, or in the present instance, water -- in its pure state an electrical insulator -- becoming a conductor.) The lowered boundary is sure to revise astronomers' calculations of the strength of the magnetic cores of gas-giant planets like Neptune. Because the planet's temperatures and pressures lie partly in the revised sector, its electrically conducting water probably contributes to its magnetic field, formerly thought to be generated only by the planet's core. The calculations agree with experimental measurements in research led by Peter Celliers of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

31 posted on 10/05/2006 10:46:41 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (If I had a nut allergy, I'd be outta here. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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