UK boffins ID three new exo-planets

Planet-hunting boffins based in the UK have announced the discovery of three more spinning globes to add to the more than 200 extrasolar planets already known to science. The planets turned up during the Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP). All are gas giants, roughly the size of Jupiter, and are orbiting their parent stars so …

[Senor Beavis]

The world is not enough

Dammit - aren't the machines satisfied with overrunning this planet? Must they seek to conquer other worlds too?

[Jon Brindley]

WASP

I always thought WASP stood for "World Aquanaut Security Patrol"

[BossHog]

PH?

Paris can't live there, so what's the point?

[Luther Blissett]

Just a sec

"All are gas giants, roughly the size of Jupiter" ... "the surface temperatures are likely to be approaching 2,000°C". Hotter than Paris, alright.

So we're talking about hydrostatically stable (gas) plasmoids with an orbital period of "a matter of days" (wow, neat pun Lucy). Shurley shomething wrong shomewhere. Eye-watering facts, yet the "boffins" haven't blinked...?

Either our New Insect Overlords are over there and holding it all together with technology we can't understand, or they're over here and subverting explanations we can understand and aren't being let onto. Or both. I think we should be told, as we're paying.

[Edd]

Just a sec

Jupiter's escape velocity - 60 km / s

Typical kinetic energy of a gas molecule - 3/2 k T

Temperature at which hydrogen molecules typically have speeds equal to escape velocity of Jupiter - about 30,000 deg C.

Lose a factor of a few because you might only be worried about the peak of the distribution of molecule speeds and you're still way over 2,000 deg C.

Yours truly,

Boffins

[Luther Blissett]

Just another sec

What makes you so certain the kinetic theory of gases is (a) valid here, (b) the explanation? I think we should be told, etc