Planet Migration - Blog Posts

Hot Jupiter

Planets in our own solar system have a wide range of properties. They are distinguished by two basic properties, their size and their orbit. The size determines if the planet can have a life-sustaining atmosphere. The orbit affects the surface temperature and whether there could be liquid water on the planet’s surface.

Hot Jupiters are a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter but that have very short orbital period (P<10 days). The close proximity to their stars and high surface-atmosphere temperatures resulted in the moniker “hot Jupiters”.

Hot Jupiters are the easiest extrasolar planets to detect via the radial-velocity method, because the oscillations they induce in their parent stars’ motion are relatively large and rapid compared to those of other known types of planets.

One of the best-known hot Jupiters is 51 Pegasi b. Discovered in 1995, it was the first extrasolar planet found orbiting a Sun-like star. 51 Pegasi b has an orbital period of about 4 days.

There are two general schools of thought regarding the origin of hot Jupiters: formation at a distance followed by inward migration and in-situ formation at the distances at which they’re currently observed. The prevalent view is migration.

Migration 

In the migration hypothesis, a hot Jupiter forms beyond the frost line, from rock, ice, and gases via the core accretion method of planetary formation. The planet then migrates inwards to the star where it eventually forms a stable orbit. The planet may have migrated inwar.

In situ

Instead of being gas giants that migrated inward, in an alternate hypothesis the cores of the hot Jupiters began as more common super-Earths which accreted their gas envelopes at their current locations, becoming gas giants in situ. The super-Earths providing the cores in this hypothesis could have formed either in situ or at greater distances and have undergone migration before acquiring their gas envelopes.

source