50 Top 10 Lists of 2007

Top 10 Scientific Discoveries

#6. "Hot Jupiters" Discovered

This October, British scientists identified three new planets outside our own Solar System, as part of an ongoing search for Earth-like exoplanets called the Wide Area Search for Planets, or WASP. The new planets, named WASP-3, WASP-4 and WASP-5, are about the size of Jupiter, and orbit so close to their suns that their surface temperature reaches some 2,000°C. That rules out the possibility of life on these "hot Jupiters," but scientists surmise that other Earth-sized planets may be making cooler, longer orbits around those same suns.

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