Cornell University | 2014 Sep 11
Blame the “Hot Jupiters.”
[c][attachment=0]hot-jupiter-binary-stars-or.jpg[/attachment][/c]These large, gaseous exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) can make their suns wobble after they wend their way through their own solar systems to snuggle up against their suns, according to new Cornell research published in Science, Sept. 12.
“Although the planet’s mass is only one-thousandth of the mass of the sun, the stars in these other solar systems are being affected by these planets and making the stars themselves act in a crazy way,” said Dong Lai, Cornell professor of astronomy and senior author on the research, “Chaotic Dynamics of Stellar Spin in Binaries and the Production of Misaligned Hot Jupiters.” Physics graduate student Natalia I. Storch (lead author) and astronomy graduate student Kassandra R. Anderson are co-authors.
In our solar system, the sun’s rotational axis is approximately aligned with the orbital axis of all the planets. The orbital axis is perpendicular to the flat plane in which the planets revolve around the sun. In solar systems with hot Jupiters, recent observations have revealed that the orbital axis of these planets is misaligned with the rotational axis of their host star. In the last few years, astronomers have been puzzled by spin-orbit misalignment between the star and the planets. ...
Chaotic dynamics of stellar spin in binaries and the production of misaligned hot Jupiters - Natalia I. Storch, Kassandra R. Anderson, Dong Lai
- Science 345(6202) 1317 (12 Sep 2014) DOI: 10.1126/science.1254358
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1409.3247 > 10 Sep 2014