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burgunder October 4 2008, 04:33:55 UTC
Article suggests: 6,000mph winds pushing hot air from star-side

My first thought: the planet itself is of a material composition that is conducting the temperature star-side to dark-side through the core

The wiki article indicates that high sodium signals have been detected, but my material science and thermodynamics is crap so I can't say whether or not that says anything about the planet's internal thermal conductivity. :/ Would love your comments if you can speak to this.

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metalmensch October 4 2008, 05:40:00 UTC
Nevermind...I guess it does! :) That would explain the small differential. Our water content and spin is the supposed reason ours is such a small difference.

And now...I really want to watch Chronicles of Riddick.

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metalmensch October 4 2008, 06:04:47 UTC
You need atmo for wind, which is a surprisingly good conductor. Imagine that...the wind being literally hotter than a blowtorch.

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metalmensch October 4 2008, 05:38:59 UTC
Does it have an atmosphere?

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chiaspod October 4 2008, 05:47:02 UTC
I'm thinking convection, not conduction.

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burgunder October 4 2008, 06:26:13 UTC
The astrophysicists agree with you :)

As I'm typing this, I have another thought...

The Earth's molten iron core is way hotter than its crust. What if this planet is still pre-cooled-crust? Hunh. (Fuck, do I even remember my rogue geology properly? Planet formation - everything's hot for a long time, cools outside to inside...?)

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cryophile October 4 2008, 17:27:21 UTC
There's not going to be any visible crust on this planet. From radial velocity measurements, we know that it's mass is slightly greater than Jupiter's. This means that it is certainly a gas giant planet like Jupiter and Saturn, with no surface to speak of. The HD189733 system is one of those lucky cases where the planet's orbit is aligned so that we can observer it transit the disk of its sun--an eclipse nearly 70 light years distant. The radius of a transiting planet can be inferred from the degree that the star dims when the planet passes in front of it. HD189733 has been measured by this technique to be slightly larger than Jupiter. So, similar mass and radius as Jupiter -> similar density -> HD189733 is gas giant ( ... )

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a_muse_d October 4 2008, 06:36:46 UTC
the planet's distance from its star would make a difference. plus the heat has gone through the planet. i wouldn't be surprised if Mercury has a similar heat ratio.

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