Planet with 5400 mph winds!

Post Reply New Topic

Scientists have measured wind speeds of a massive 5,400 miles per hour on HD 189733b, an exoplanet located 63 light years away from constellation Vulpecula. What if we experienced winds like that on Earth?

Gosh..how do they know this detailed stuff about any expoplanet?

Studying a exo star is like looking at a street lamp a 1000 miles away. Studying one of its planets is like studying one of the insects flying around the street lamp that's a 1000 miles away.

Anyhow...

On earth (as I understand it) we can't have winds faster than mach-1 (the speed of sound) which is about 760 MPH.

And even the worst tornadoes only have winds of (I believe) 400 mph. Hurricanes top off at about 200 mph.

Winds of 5400 mph would cause friction that would set inanimate matter on dry land on fire. Thats why the space capsules that Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, astronauts flew in all had "heat shield" bottoms for the fall through the atmosphere back to Earth.

Can't even imagine what winds like that would do to the sea surface.

It's a gas giant which orbits very close to it's star, this is what causes the high wind speed. So the would be no life, or sea surface, or any features at all. Best to take some safety goggles if you are planning on visiting.

On Giant Blue Alien Planet, It Rains Molten Glass

Yeah- its a "hot Jupiter". The easiest kind of exoplanet to find, but totally unlike and totally not comparable to the Earth.

WHOA. Everything would get blown away in an instant if that happened here.

The Earth would possibly tear itself apart if it suddenly got those winds, it's current around 1000 mph rotation would increase from the interaction caused by the crust and mantle getting ripped off (and melted from the friction) to the point where it would either speed up it's rotation to only 4 hours or rip itself apart in the process from added centrifugal force. According to Wikipedia you would be able to escape the moon's pulling gravity at that speed. In short Earth explodes or becomes a blender depending on if the winds are prolonged or brief. Anyone care for a lava smoothie?

5400 is one fifth of escape velocity on Earth, and slightly more than the 4000 mph escape velocity of the moon.



A lot.

Do you have an article?

http://www.gizmag.com/first-exoplanet-w ... nds/40416/

There's also a link in my post above.

"http://www.gizmag.com/first-exoplanet-weather-map-5400-mph-winds/40416/"

"There's also a link in my post above."

Thanks (removed the quote boxes because of CAPTCHA).

You're welcome. That's a different article to the gizmag one with a bit more detail.

(AKA: The CRAPTCHA.)

Last edited by neilson_wheels on 11 Dec 2015, 8:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

The closer in the planet the faster it orbits.

That planet orbits its sun every two days. Mercury takes more than a month to orbit our sun.

So this planet has to be much closer to its sun than even Mercury is to our sun, and the surface of Mercury is almost as hot as the melting point of lead.

And this is a gas giant bigger than jupiter composed of mostly gas.

So with all of that excess heat energy in a gaseous body its not surprising that it would have super fast winds to dissipate the excess solar power its getting.

Theory is that the large temperate differential, between the light and dark sides, is generating the wind speed.

on the plus side, they don't have donald trump

I feel there is a high chance that Trump is an alien being.