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An exoplanet has been found in the ‘Neptunian Desert’
- ilovewhiskey 7y agoWheatley became an Astronomy professor.
- willidiots 7y ago(Orbiting a distant K-dwarf star) Original paper, I believe: https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.00678 https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.00678
- Raphmedia 7y agoThank you, this was unclear to me after reading the article. This planet is not in our own solar system.
- 3JPLW 7y agoThat's the definition of exoplanet :)
- Raphmedia 7y agoThat's right! Neptunian desert confused me. I somehow imagined this was a region that only existed around our sol.
- willidiots 7y agoIIRC the original link didn't include "exo". The whole article seemed intentionally vague in that regard.
- eloff 7y agoIt's posited that this planet kept its atmosphere despite intense solar radiation pressure because it either moved into this orbit recently from a safer place, or it had much more atmosphere to begin with. I wonder if maybe it just has a very powerful magnetic field that protects it, just like Earth's does. That's the reason Earth has kept its atmosphere while Mars did not, despite the fact that Mars is twice as far from the sun.
- txtsd 7y ago> solar radiation Stellar radiation. Solar implies our own local star, Sol.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoMore intuitively, solar radiation would be radiation from the planet's local star, its sun. Radiation from our star would be stellar radiation. We're here; it isn't.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 7y ago“Sol” is the name of our star, not whatever star happens to be closest to a given planet.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoSo what? The name of those little points of light in the night sky isn't "stella", but they give off stellar radiation. It's solar radiation by reference to the concept of the sun, not by reference to an entry in an astronomical catalog somewhere.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> The name of those little points of light in the night sky isn't "stella" Well, yeah, the generic name for them is exactly that (well, in Latin, but that's also where Sol as the particular name for ours comes from.)
- thaumasiotes 7y agoIn terms of Latin, sol is just as generic as stella is. (Modulo the fact that there is only one sun.) If you want to object that "Sol" is the name of an individual star, and that "solar radiation" is named after that name, in spite of the capitalization, rather than deriving from the Latin word, then you can't really make your arguments based on what the words mean in Latin.
- martinpw 7y agoThe HN headline is incomplete and therefore confusing. I realize it is an attempt to avoid the sadly clickbaity phys.org headline, but the fact the planet is smaller than Neptune and has its own atmosphere is not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that the planet is smaller than Neptune with its own atmosphere in the region close to stars where Neptune-sized planets have not previously been found.
- sctb 7y agoOK, we've updated it from “An exoplanet smaller than Neptune with its own atmosphere has been discovered”. In either case I think users will be able to decide whether or not their Neptune-related exoplanet curiosity is aroused enough to click through to the article.
- eganist 7y agoI mean, I think everything you just laid out is effectively encapsulated by the fact that "neptunian desert" is in quotes, encouraging the reader to click through to see the exact scope/scale of said desert. Or at least, that's what went through my mind when I opened the article. I made an assumption that there was either/both: 1. a lack of exoplanets identified at around the size of Neptune, or 2. a lack of planets in the rough orbital region around a given star analogous to the region occupied by Neptune in orbit around the Sun. and in order to clarify which of the two it was, I clicked on. --- tl;dr: still clickbait, but I wouldn't call it confusing and I would call it an effective summary for those in the field. --- edit: sctb evidently edited the title from the original to the neptunian desert title, which makes my comment seem largely out of place as I believed OP was commenting on the 'neptunian desert' title and had not seen the original title which was the subject of OP's comment. My comment can be disregarded, but I'm leaving it up for historical purposes.
- PorterDuff 7y agoImagine what the weather is like.
- PorterDuff 7y agolol. Say what? I get downvoted for wondering what a large planet with an atmosphere that's close to it's star has for weather?
- PorterDuff 7y agoI decided to declare a jihad on downvotes. In some ways, this site is as bad as reddit with the children and their 'vote' concept. Every downvoted comment gets an upvote from me, it doesn't matter what they say.
- rozab 7y agoWhat the hell is the Neptunian Desert? All I can find on google is articles about this, none of which actually explain what it is. Is it an actual location in space or just a space in the distribution of planets?
- Abundnce10 7y agoFrom the article: The Neptunian Desert is the region close to stars where no Neptune-sized planets are found. This area receives strong irradiation from the star, meaning the planets do not retain their gaseous atmosphere as they evaporate leaving just a rocky core. However NGTS-4b still has its atmosphere of gas.
- libria 7y agoNot sure why GP's downvoted, the definition sucks. What's "close to stars"? 1AU? Here to Pluto? Here to the Oort cloud? 1LY? In the orbital plane? Localized to an arc or surround ing the Sun? Then the link to desert goes to nothing but Earth deserts and the wikipedia article was literally made today. It's like the author has no clue what the Neptunian Desert is.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sorryforthethro 7y agoA nice user created this Wikipedia page[1] in the few hours since your comment was written: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptunian_Desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptunian_Desert