5400mph winds discovered hurtling around exoplanet
Source: Phys.org
5400mph winds discovered hurtling around exoplanet
November 13, 2015
Winds of over 2km per second have been discovered flowing around planet outside of the Earth's solar system, new research has found.
The University of Warwick discovery is the first time that a weather system on a planet outside of Earth's solar system has been directly measured and mapped.
The wind speed recorded is 20x greater than the fastest ever known on earth, where it would be seven times the speed of sound.
Commenting on the discovery lead researcher Tom Louden, of the University of Warwick's Astrophysics group, said:
"This is the first ever weather map from outside of our solar system. Whilst we have previously known of wind on exoplanets, we have never before been able to directly measure and map a weather system."
Discovered on the exoplanet HD 189733b, ...
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Read more: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-5400mph-hurtling-exoplanet.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Smaller than Sol (.86 mass of the Sun), therefore cooler and more long lived.
The planet is larger than Jupiter and orbits the star in 2.2 days. So it is really, really hot.
Here is the Wiki on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_189733_b
Science is so cool!
BTW, star classes are (from high mass to low) OBAFGKM. Sol is a G-type. This star is a K. And the lower the mass, the longer the star lives.
According to this article: http://www.space.com/21157-uranus-neptune-winds-revealed.html
Our solar system's highest wind speeds occur on Uranus and Neptune. 560 & 1500 mph respectively. Nothing compared to that planet.
There's got to be a joke in there about high winds and Uranus. 
