{"id":601,"date":"2006-09-15T09:42:42","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T09:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/15\/stupid-infinite-universe\/"},"modified":"2006-09-15T09:42:42","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T09:42:42","slug":"stupid-infinite-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/15\/stupid-infinite-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"Stupid Infinite Universe!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/cite> has a story about yet another weird extrasolar planet<\/a>, this one a gigantic fluffy ball of gas bigger than Jupiter, but less dense than water:<\/p>\n

\n

While gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are made primarily of hydrogen and helium, they also possess rocky cores and crushing pressures within that squeeze the hydrogen and helium to higher densities. Jupiter’s average density is 133 percent greater that of water, while Saturn’s is 70 percent that of water. The density of HAT-1-P is one-quarter that of water.<\/p>\n

Astrophysicists now have two problems to solve: how a planet that has almost no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium can form and how it stays hot. <\/p>\n

“Our lack of understanding is worse than we thought it was,” said Alan P. Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington who was not involved in the research.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You know, this has got to be one of the biggest down sides to doing astronomy. In a universe that is effectively infinite, even wildly improbable things are bound to exist somewhere<\/strong>, and when you find them, you somehow need to account for them. And, of course, you can only see a small fraction of what’s out there, so the weird things you find are ridiculously over-represented in your sample, and everything gets all out of whack.<\/p>\n

I’m really glad I’m not expected to explain this stuff. Because that would distract from the coolness of a giant wispy planet orbiting a distant star every 4.5 days…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has a story about yet another weird extrasolar planet, this one a gigantic fluffy ball of gas bigger than Jupiter, but less dense than water: While gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are made primarily of hydrogen and helium, they also possess rocky cores and crushing pressures within that squeeze the… Continue reading Stupid Infinite Universe!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,33,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-in_the_news","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}