Friday, June 22, 2012

Amazingly Close Planets Challenges Planet Formation Theory

Amazingly Close Planets Found orbiting Kepler-36

Two planets discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope orbiting the star Kepler-36 that come to with in 1.2 million miles every 97 days. One is a so called "super-Earth" and the other is a gaseous planet about the size of Neptune 30 times closer than any planets our solar system. What makes this a particular challenge for naturalistic planet formation is that one has a density similar to Earth and the other has a density similar to that of Saturn. This will likely force yet another reworking of both planet formation and migration theories.

No comments:

Post a Comment