Saturday, May 22, 2010

Interesting density figures for extraterrestrial planets

The article, "Extrasolar planets: Larger than they ought to be," in Nature this week has some interesting specs for these "hot Jupiter" planets recently discovered around nearby stars. Most of them could float in water!

This is helpful to glance at because we will be studying
  1. density,
  2. radiative heat transport and
  3. gravitation with its tidal effects.