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Extrasolar Planetary Atmospheres

By drorzel on February 22, 2007.

The only reason I'm not going to hunt and kill James Nicoll for pointing me at the Conservapedia thing is that he also provides a link to the latest results from the Spitzer telescope. Not the one that Kate's former boss uses to keep an eye on the New York State Legislature, but the one that scientists are using to look at the atmospheres of planets around other stars:

The data indicate the two planets are drier and cloudier than predicted. Theorists thought hot Jupiters would have lots of water in their atmospheres, but surprisingly none was found around HD 209458b and HD 189733b. According to astronomers, the water might be present but buried under a thick blanket of high, waterless clouds.

Those clouds might be filled with dust. One of the planets, HD 209458b, showed hints of tiny sand grains, called silicates, in its atmosphere. This could mean the planet's skies are filled with high, dusty clouds unlike anything seen around planets in our own solar system.

"The theorists' heads were spinning when they saw the data," said Dr. Jeremy Richardson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

As James notes, it's not exactly shocking that the first results on new planets aren't anything like the models predicted-- after all, this has been the pattern from the very beginning. It's still cool stuff, and yet more evidence that no matter how weird you think the universe is, it's always weirder than you expect.

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It's also yet another lesson on the difficulty of prediction based on a very limited data set.

But think of the sandstorms! And the dunes! By the way, when our Sun undergoes stellar evolution to a red giant, Earth will first melt all ice (global warming, nonanthropogenic version), evaporate all oceans, burn all flammables, evaporate metals such as tin, and eventually be tidally locked with wind carrying metals and maybe silicates from the hot side to the cold pole, where it will snow them down.

Quick, call Congress, call the EU, call the U.N., something must be legislated right away to stop this....

For details, see:

http://magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/timelineCF.html