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Supersonic waves could Explain the strange orbits of Hot Jupiters and Neptunes

The Offical Study: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae9e27

Using advanced new simulations, a team of astronomers in the U.S. has developed a promising new theory for how giant, gaseous exoplanets migrate into stiflingly close orbits around their host stars.

Led by J. J. Zanazzi at The Pennsylvania State University, the team showed how both massive "hot Jupiters" and smaller, Neptune-sized planets could migrate from distant, elliptical orbits as they release energy via dramatic shock waves in their outer atmospheres. Their results have been published (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae9e27) in The Astrophysical Journal.

Hot Jupiters are a class of exoplanets with masses comparable to the largest planet in our own solar system, but which orbit extremely close to their host stars—imparting them with temperatures that can exceed some 2,000 Kelvin.

Not only are their orbital periods extremely short, they also cluster within a window between three and five days: a phenomenon dubbed the "hot Jupiter pileup."

Similar clustering can also be seen in smaller gas giants, with masses between those of Neptune and Saturn, known as the "Neptune ridge." Yet unlike hot Jupiters, these planets are strikingly scarce on orbits shorter than about three days, creating a stark observational gap named the "Neptune desert."

For astronomers, these features offer clues about the dramatic histories of these exoplanets. To explain their formation, it is widely proposed that they began their lives in highly elliptical orbits, far farther out in their stellar systems. As tidal forces from their host stars drained the energy from their orbits, they would have then migrated inward, eventually reaching stable, circular orbits with strikingly similar lengths.

But for their orbits to change shape in this way, the planets themselves must have absorbed vast amounts of orbital energy.

"What always bugged me is although all this energy is thought to pass through the planet—enough to completely blow off most of the planet's mass—few have ventured to understand what process causes this to occur," Zanazzi says.

https://phys.org/news/2026-10-supersonic-strange-orbits-hot-jupiters.html

— u/ADragonFromTheAbyss