Source: Phys.org

5400mph winds discovered hurtling around exoplanet

November 13, 2015

Winds of over 2km per second have been discovered flowing around planet outside of the Earth's solar system, new research has found.

The University of Warwick discovery is the first time that a weather system on a planet outside of Earth's solar system has been directly measured and mapped.

The wind speed recorded is 20x greater than the fastest ever known on earth, where it would be seven times the speed of sound.

Commenting on the discovery lead researcher Tom Louden, of the University of Warwick's Astrophysics group, said:

"This is the first ever weather map from outside of our solar system. Whilst we have previously known of wind on exoplanets, we have never before been able to directly measure and map a weather system."

Discovered on the exoplanet HD 189733b, ...

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Read more: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-5400mph...exoplanet.html