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Hot Jupiter planets can speed up their stars' rotation
Hot Jupiter exoplanets are the farthest thing from habitable, but that doesn't mean they're boring. Scientists from Princeton University and elsewhere have discovered one that is so large and close to a star that it actually changes its rotational speed. Called HATS-18 after the main telescope (HATSouth) used to discover it, the planetary system is about 2,100 light-years away. However, it's ridiculously near its star (closer than Mercury is to our sun) and huge, at 1.34 times the size of Jupiter, so it completes an orbit in less than an Earth day.
