Originally posted by Trance Optic
now im curious, was this planet always this close to the its sun, or did the star get bigger an engulf other planets that were near it, mean that this meth planet had life on it but the star got too big an now the methane is just boilin off?

I dunno, could still have life inside it maybe.......

i like the galactic trash dump idea..... lol

Originally posted by Wirral Bagpuss
The pkanet itself is too hot to support life as we know it, but i guess there has to be SOMETHING on the planet producing methane !!!

"Initially, that is surprising," says Sara Seager of MIT in Cambridge, US, who was not involved in the study. Because HD 189733b orbits very close to its parent star – just 10% of Mercury's distance from the Sun, it is very hot, with atmospheric temperatures of about 700° Celsius. "When the temperature is this high, the dominant form of carbon should be carbon monoxide, not methane," says Seager.