Science
Related: About this forumPuffy Planet
http://www.space.com/2891-puffy-cork-planet-float-water.htmlA newly discovered planet has one-quarter the density of water and would float if placed in a bathtub large enough to hold it.
"It's lighter than a ball of cork," said study team leader Gaspar Bakos of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
Called HAT-P-1, the planet is about half as massive as Jupiter but about 1.76 times wider-or 24 percent larger than predicted by theory.
http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/hat-p-1_b/

DhhD
(4,695 posts)DhhD
(4,695 posts)eppur_se_muova
(38,910 posts)with plenty of low-molecular weight volatiles in its atmosphere.
Amazingly, no radical new theories are needed to explain this.

DhhD
(4,695 posts)How about another gas giant-Jupiter's remaining black spots after it took hits from a broken up comet? What is the energy state of the core of the planet and then outward along the radius through a black spot on the surface? Core density up to and through a storm? Density in the path of a magnetic field?
There is no such thing as a mean density except at a time of measure. Time is relative. The universe is accelerating. Particles of matter and particles of force seem to be in acceleration.
https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0SO8zJ4MZNWE4YAFkBXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEwaDZzZnZoBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNxc3MtcXJ3?fr=sfp&ei=UTF-8&p=magnetic+field+and+energy+gradient+of+saturn&fr2=12642
eppur_se_muova
(38,910 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Why the hell did they use the word 'puffy' anyway?
I got a puffy shirt and now you want to name a planet puffy?
and What the hell were they doin' with a car on the g-d damn moon? You're on the moon already! Isn't that far enough?
DhhD
(4,695 posts)DetlefK
(16,636 posts)The Hubble-constant right now is about 74 km/Mpc * 1/s.
1 parsec is about 3.1*10^13 km.
That means, all the lengthes are expanding by a factor of 3.2*10^-20 per second. Or by a factor of 10^-12 per year.
That seems... mighty insignificant... to expand a planet.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)DetlefK
(16,636 posts)This isn't simply the distance between two rocks getting bigger.
This isn't simply the distance between atoms getting bigger.
The distance between all particles is getting bigger. Sure, they grow farther apart, but at the same time they increase in volume by the same ratio.
Let's say, Earth is 5 billion years old. That's 5*10^9 years.
The Hubble-constant means a length-increase by a factor of 10^-12 per year.
Multiply them and you see that Earth has grown in size by a factor of 5*10^-3 since it formed.
And not only has Earth's radius gained a whooping 0.5% over the last 5 billion years due to cosmological expansion, but so have all the atoms that make up Earth.
Just to be sure:
I have gained the impression that you are proposing a theory that the shapes of Earth's continents stem from a cosmological expansion, leading to rifts between portions of matter.
If so, you failed to take into account that those portions of matter are growing in size, too, because all the distances everywhere are increasing by the same rate.
And until the expansion becomes so big that it starts messing with the equilibrium of forces that holds baryonic matter together, it won't have any practical relevance on anything. At least not for the next trillion years or so.
An example:
Diameters of atoms range from about 0.06 nm to about 0.2 nm. That's a factor of 3 and all the atoms still work by the same rules. Conclusion: Even if the universe expands by a factor of 3 (in about 3 trillion years), everything will still just work the same.