The fine line between stability and instability -- when do gas giants reach the point of no return?

Professor Alan Aylward, co-author of the paper, explains some of the factors which the team incorporated in order to make the breakthrough: “For the first time we’ve used 3D-modelling to help us understand the whole heating process which takes place as you move a gas giant closer to its sun. The model incorporates the cooling effect of winds blowing around the planet - not just those blowing off the surface and escaping.

“Crucially, the model also makes proper allowances for the effects of H3+ in the atmosphere of a planet. This is an electrically-charged form of hydrogen which strongly radiates sunlight back into space and which is created in increasing quantities as you heat a planet by bringing it closer to its star.

“We found that 0.15AU is the significant point of no return. If you take a planet even slightly beyond this, molecular hydrogen becomes unstable and no more H3+ is produced. The self-regulating, ‘thermostatic’ effect then disintegrates and the atmosphere begins to heat up uncontrollably.”

Professor Steve Miller, the final contributing author to the paper, puts the discovery into context: “This gives us an insight to the evolution of giant planets, which typically form as an ice core out in the cold depths of space before migrating in towards their host star over a period of several million years. Now we know that at some point they all probably cross this point of no return and undergo a catastrophic breakdown.

“Just twelve years ago astronomers were searching for evidence of the first extrasolar planet. It’s amazing to think that since then we’ve not only found more than 250 of them, but we’re also in a much better position to understand where they came from and what happens to them during their lifetime.”

Notes to editors:

For additional information or to arrange an interview with a member of the research team please contact:

Dave Weston in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 7678, mobile: +44 (0) 7733 307 596, out of hours +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: d.weston@ucl.ac.uk

About UCL:

Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government’s most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence.

UCL is in the top ten world universities in the 2007 THES-QS World University Rankings, and the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2007 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Marie Stopes, Jonathan Dimbleby, Lord Woolf, Alexander Graham Bell, and members of the band Coldplay.