are you aware that you yourself are emitting
infrared light right at this moment [...] ?
WHAAATTT???!!!1oneThe hell you say! Come on, man. You and I both know that exoplanets are a recent discovery (1988 being the earliest verified potential candidate for the real thing), and thus hard to detect in the visible spectrum. No one is looking at them with an ordinary telescope, tuned into the visible spectrum. Last time I checked, anything not emitting visible light is commonly referred to as "dark." But wait, let me just check with my specialized visible light emission instrument. Gee, when I turn off this incandescant light bulb, it goes... dark! Hypothesis verified! Is it still hot? Why yes! Yes, it is still hot. But also dark. Weird! But hey, while we're being pedantic nerds, I'll just take a moment to correct you, regarding your correction of me. Most of the examples in the impeccably cited link are measured in multiples of Jupiter's mass, which, you know, pretty much means they're certainly gas giants, and damn near brown dwarf classification, lending to their thermal activity. So, the heat would likely not be owing to lava or magma. |