* Astronomy

Toddler stars' baby fat kicks out almost all their exoplanets

Single-exoplanet systems may be the fault of their stars.
Recent studies have shown an overabundance of these singleton planets among the thousands seen by the Kepler space telescope, compared with the numbers computer models predict.
This excess is often interpreted to mean that, although only one planet passes in front of the star, others may orbit at different inclinations relative to Earth and so be invisible to us.
Now, Christopher Spalding and Konstantin Batygin at Caltech in Pasadena, California, argue that the rapid rotation of young stars may explain this situation. The spinning makes each star bulge in the middle, altering its gravitational field and tweaking the planets' orbits, especially inner ones, Spalding says. 
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