A Candidate Giant Planet Imaged in the Habitable Zone of α Cen A

Re:A Candidate Giant Planet Imaged in the Habitable Zone of ... by fc417fc802 on Thursday August 07, 2025 @03:50PM (#44829481)

Pedantry. (Well I suppose it's at least a valid point that without a solid surface there probably isn't anything for a human to want to bother visiting in the first place.)

This one presumably doesn't have a surface either, yet an earlier commenter spoke of surface gravity. Doesn't it surprise you in the slightest that two planets of the same size could have gravity that differs by such a wide margin?

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Re:A Candidate Giant Planet Imaged in the Habitable Zone of ... by exe34 on Thursday August 07, 2025 @06:13PM (#44831021)

I worked in the area a long time ago, so as it happens, no, but I can see how it's unintuitive!

Surface gravity in this case would be the visible radius - the same way we talk about the surface gravity of the sun, and mean the photosphere.

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