A hot Jupiter orbits close to the face of its star.
Credit: ESA
LONDON: The belief that planets always orbit their sun in the same direction has been turned upside down, and such renegade planets would wipe out any Earth-like planets, astronomers said.
"This is a real bomb we are dropping into the field of exoplanets," said Geneva Observatory astronomer Amaury Triaud, referring to planets outside the Solar System.
Triaud's team are to report their findings at a meeting this week of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in Glasgow, Scotland.
Six of 27 orbit the wrong way
The researchers discovered nine new planets - bringing the ever-growing tally to more than 450 - as they passed directly in front of their sun. These rarely captured 'transit' events are especially coveted, for they can yield much more information about the planet.
After combining the new results with previous observations of transiting exoplanets, Triaud and fellow astronomers Andrew Cameron and veteran exoplanet hunter Didier Queloz were stunned.
Six of 27 exoplanets they sampled were found to orbit in the opposite direction of their host star. The big hypothesis about planets is that they coalesce from a disc of dust and gas orbiting a young star and move in the same direction of the star's own rotation.
Renegade hot Jupiters
"The new results really challenge the convention wisdom that planets should always orbit in the same direction as their stars spin," said Cameron, of the University of St. Andrews, Edinburgh.
The transiting planets are so-called 'hot Jupiters' - planets with a mass similar to or greater than Jupiter.
Unlike our Jupiter, which encircles the Sun at a great distance, hot Jupiters are found very close to their star, sometimes roastingly so.
Theories about hot Jupiters also questioned
Until now, hot Jupiters were believed to form from material far from the host star and then gradually migrate to a closer orbit as a result of gravitational interaction between the star and the proto-disc of planetary dust.
How the renegade hot Jupiters came to exist dents this theory, too. It could be that, in their infant stage, these planets became caught up in a "gravitational tug-of-war" with distant planets or even nearby stars, the astronomers suggest in a press release.
New hot Jupiters rewrite planetary theory
Maybe not.
Maybe it's a result from a collision between different planetary systems.
Resulting in something similar to Uranus's sideways rotation. Except on a much larger scale.
Maybe, maybe, maybe, but what do I know?
Peace,
no quizzle
Yeah, but what about...
Ok so they've found a reasonable amount of these planets but one explanation would surely be captured planets that originally formed around another star. That would explain there reverse orbit.
Everything in Universe reveals a design
Maybe, the scientists will have to rethink all of their theories soon, especially the one on how our solar system formed. They say; a little knowledge is a dangerous think. We have been on that part before. A theory based on an assumption that everything in our Universe evolved out of nothing will essentially form differently to the one based on a belief that an almighty God created it. Everything in Universe reveals a design including life on earth. If God has put it there, then he is also able to control it and use it for his purpose. Instead of being preoccupied by trying to understand the secrets of the Universe, shouldn’t we be more concerned with if we do qualify to live in it, since it says in the Bible that God, the Creator will soon turn everything upside-down and shake the ungodly elements out of the Earth?