Cool Worlds Podcast #31 Joshua Winn - Exoplanet History, Discoveries and Future
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Feb 12, 2026 Joshua Winn, Princeton astrophysicist and author of The Little Book of Exoplanets, walks through surprising discoveries from hot Jupiters to abundant sub-Neptunes. He highlights radius valleys, the mystery of super-puffs and their slow spins, spin–orbit misalignments, and future prospects from Gaia, Roman, TESS, and precision Doppler surveys hunting true Earth analogs.
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Ablation Limits Imply Slow Super‑Puff Rotation
- Precise transit light curves can limit a planet's oblateness and thus its rotation rate.
- Lack of detected flattening in super-puffs implies surprisingly slow rotation for low-density planets.
Spin–Orbit Misalignments Reveal Chaos
- Rossiter–McLaughlin measurements revealed many exoplanet systems with large stellar obliquities.
- These misalignments point to dynamical processes (planet-planet or stellar interactions) reshaping systems post-formation.
Eccentric Orbits Are Common
- Many exoplanets have large eccentricities unlike the solar system.
- These eccentric orbits further suggest widespread dynamical reconfiguration in planetary systems.
