Exoplanets



Exoplanets, 2010, Sara Seager


Exoplanets, Michael Summers and James Trefil

Hillsboro, 523.24 Summers 2017

Index skimmed ... not interesting, not much new, some errors. No explicit references or citations.

For example, page 6 mentions "Styrofoam worlds -- planets so light that we cannot figure out why they don't collapse under their own gravity" That is the last indexed mention. News reports about early Kepler discoveries are titled "Styrofoam world" about Kepler 7b, a Jupiter-sized (but 10% as dense) exoplanet, hence a density around 0.13 g/cm³. Foamed polystyrene is 0.05 g/cm³ (and solid polystyrene is about 1 g/cm³). "we cannot figure out" may mean the authors can't choose among many proffered explanations, including experimental error, or simply a Saturn mass gas giant so hot that its outer layers are very large. Without reading the entire book, the index and the table of contents provide no clues.

Better to spend my limited time looking at primary literature.