European Southern Observatory press release on globular cluster 47 Tucanae
47 Tuc is one of my favourite globulars.
It is large, quite dense, metal rich as globulars go, and it is gorgeous.
It is full of pulsars, blue stragglers, x-ray binaries and other fun beasties.
A few years ago we looked there for planets - "hot Jupiters" to be specific
There were none. Which is moderately surprising in a subtle way.
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Ok...can I convince you to explain a little more about why it's surprising that there are no "hot jupiters" in 47 Tuc?
Nevermind...I some info from hubblesite.
I liked the nucleosynthetic justification: old -> metal poor -> no hot jupiters
Interesting...
I'll get to that, it took me several lengthy papers to convince myself in the first place.
The "metal poor" doesn't quite do it; for one thing it is relatively metal rich.
For another the Jovians may sometimes form through direct disk instability, which is interesting if true.
Anyway, I'll blog on it when I have the oomph, early July maybe.