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WASP-121b. Nine-hundred light-years from Earth, there's a football-shaped planet so hot that heavy metals boil through its atmosphere, venting into space. The planet is about 10 times hotter than any other known exoplanet, due to its proximity to its host star, which is hotter than the sun. This proximity also gives the planet its unique shape, because gravitational tidal forces in its atmosphere elongate the whole planet.” https://lnkd.in/d3b5Rts View in LinkedIn

WASP-189b temperatures “are enough to melt all rocks and metals, and even turn them into a gaseous form. It is not quite as hot as the surface of our Sun (6,000 degrees Celsius or 10,832 degrees Fahrenheit), it's basically as toasty as some small dwarf stars.” https://lnkd.in/dyZ3niw View in LinkedIn

COLDEST PLANET. “At a temperature of just 50 degrees above absolute zero – -223°C – OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb snatches the title of the coldest planet.” https://lnkd.in/darr44x View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and ends this weekend on the theme of modular metabolism. The realization that many systems in biology are modular is relatively recent. Somewhere between computer programming and engineering the ideas of modular efficiencies seeped into biology, and their impact has been powerful. Nature benefits from modular design because living structures are the most complex structures in the universe, and any pathway that can make their construction — and inevitable modification during development or evolution — less difficult is an obvious energetic advantage. View in LinkedIn

Sorry, at it again, peeking into Girona courtyards. View in LinkedIn

NO STATIC NEWTONIAN STRUCTURE. “The statement that there’s nothing outside the universe — there’s no observer outside the universe — implies that we need a formulation of physics without background structure.” (Lee Smolin, physicist). https://lnkd.in/dFmyVd7 View in LinkedIn

MORE ON NEPTUNE WINDS. “Neptune has the strongest winds in the Solar System. Winds whip clouds of frozen methane across the planet at speeds of more than 1,200 miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per hour). This is close to the top speed of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet! The most powerful winds on Earth reach only about 250 miles per hour (400 kilometers per hour). https://lnkd.in/ddpsRdK View in LinkedIn

NEPTUNE, “the eighth and farthest planet from the sun, has the strongest winds in the solar system. At high altitudes speeds can exceed 1,100 mph. That is 1.5 times faster than the speed of sound.” https://lnkd.in/dyHzQ2g View in LinkedIn