Glass rain, supersonic winds, and Eau de Rotten Egg – just another day on HD 189733 b At the time of year when thoughts naturally turn to a much-earned vacation, news arrives of a planet with temperatures of 920°C (1,688°F), raining glass blown horizontal by 5,000 mph (8,047 kph) winds, and the constant smell of rotten eggs. According to a new Johns Hopkins University study of data from the James Webb Space …
to see just how much projected "information" comes out of some small bit of data. The actual data measured would be parallax (indicating distance from here to the star), the variance in brightness indicating the transit of the planet in front of the star (frequency and brightness change imply orbit and size), and the change in spectral lines hints at the elements present.
But wind speeds? Pull the other one. We're talking about a dot in a telescope for the star; the planet isn't itself visible. Same with planet's temperature - try taking an infrared measurement off of a speck of dust drifting in front of a raging fire, from a mile away.
Just the distance from the sun alone would account for huge wind-speed. It's often the difference in temperature between the day side and the night side that causes wind [when there is an atmosphere] and the difference on this planet is likely to be even more than London/Manchester. Obviously it is hypothesis and no one can measure this but I don't think it is much of a guess.
Cuckoo!
Any information like that will be worked out on the basis of the observations that can be made and what we know about physics. It'll have been written up and published so it can be checked by everyone else working in the field.
You could have just googled it to find out how they worked out the wind speed, but no, better pull that tinfoilhat on tight.
https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/5400mph-winds-discovered-hurtling-around-planet-outside-solar-system/
"try taking an infrared measurement off of a speck of dust drifting in front of a raging fire, from a mile away."
Without an atmosphere in the way, that's a technical challenge, but not impossible at all. With, say, 10,000x magnification*, that's like taking a picture of something 10x the size of a dust particle (so, say, 0.1-1mm across), from 5 feet away. Obviously, with an infrared filter on the camera, a picture _is_ a temperature measurement, so all you need to do is then look how bright those pixels are on your image.
[*This is not actually how space telescopes work. But it's good enough for the purposes of debunking that nonsense.]
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