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So why hasn't WASP-18b already gone "poof"? Hellier's team figures that the solar-type star (spectral type F6) is about a billion years old. Yet tidal theory argues that the big planet will edge close enough to be torn apart in well under a million years. As theorist Douglas Hamilton notes in an accompanying perspective, the odds of finding WASP-18b just before its swan song are akin to "drawing two consecutive red aces from a well-shuffled deck of cards."

Conceivably, observers were indeed very lucky to have discovered WASP-18b when they did. But if that's the case, then lots of other hot Jupiters, like one dubbed OGLE-TR-56b, should likewise be wrapping up their death marches — and they're not. Perhaps there's an undiscovered second planet in the mix whose gravitational tugs are preventing WASP-18b's demise. More likely, something's amiss with our understanding of how tidal energy dissipates within the star's interior. If it's a far more frictionless process than believed — say, by a factor of 1,000 — then the planet can hang in there for another billion years.