#3103: Exoplanet System

XKCD comic, described below.
Transcript
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[Title:]

Typical exoplanet system

[Central diagram showing a star with various planets and objects orbiting around it, with trajectories connected by dotted lines and labels and descriptions by solid lines:]

[Label pointing to a large planet with strips and a dot near the center close to the center:]

Giant planet orbiting so close that it's actually rolling on the star's surface

[Label pointing to a small object with several large bulged spots near the star:]

Hot Jupiter

[Label pointing to a small object with strips on side:]

Mini Neptune

[Label pointing to a featureless round planet in the middle distance:]

Planet that could be habitable, if there's a form of life that hates water but loves acid and being on fire

[Label pointing to another object with strips and a dot close to the center:]

Cold Jupiter

[Label inside a bounded curvy area:]

Potentially habitable void

[Label pointing to another planet with dots:]

Hot Mars

[Label pointing to a featureless round planet:]

Planet that may actually be in the habitable zone, according to a very optimistic modeling paper by some desperate postdocs

[Label pointing to a medium-sized object with two sets of spreading out rays coming out. There is also an outline that is slightly dotted:]

There's a pulsar here but it's probably fine

[Label pointing to another small featureless round planet:]

A waterworld paradise with beautiful oceans and warm - wait, no, we just got new measurements, it's a hellish steam oven

[Label pointing to a tiny planet:]

Mini Pluto

[Label pointing to another object:]

Lukewarm Jupiter

[Label pointing to a planet with a line in the middle:]

Planet whose atmosphere is confirmed to contain atoms

[Label pointing to another object which is partly round but some parts are taken off and the parts are shaped like rectangles:]

Earthlike data artifact

[Label pointing to another planet with rings and stripes, but has some small dots near the bottom of the planet and the rings:]

Wet Saturn

[Label pointing to another featureless round object:]

Either a gas giant or a fist-sized rock, depending which calibration method you use

[Label pointing to a bounded area with dots inside:]

Faint dust cloud that will cause several papers to be retracted

[Label pointing to the a dotted line, which is outside:]

Somehow this whole system is smaller than the orbit of Mercury?!

[Label pointing to another object:]

Planet whose surface may host conditions suitable for rocks


(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)

Title text:Sure, this exoplanet we discovered may seem hostile to life, but our calculations suggest it's actually in the accretion disc's habitable zone.


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