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Old Stars Don't Have Hot Jupiters

Hot jupiters are giant planets that orbit extremely close to their stars, completing an orbit in a few days or hours. We have nothing like them in the Solar System, but astronomers think they're present in roughly 1% of star systems. But all stars? According to a new study, hot jupiters are mainly a young star thing. They looked at all the hot jupiters discovered so far, compared them against the estimated age of the stars, and found that the young stars had hot jupiters. They suggest that orbital decay pulls hot jupiters closer and close until they're inevitably consumed, which is why we don't see them around old stars.

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