At www.cnet.com/news/see-something-smash-into-jupiter-causing-an-explosion-… …. where you can access a video of a comet or asteroid striking the gas giant Jupiter. Even Phil Plait acknowledges an 'actual impact' but the video sequence was recorded by Gerrit Kernbauer of Austria (an amateur astronomer). He put the sequence on You Tube on March 17th and it has taken that long for mainstream astronomers to catch up. It was also verified by John McKeon of Ireland and therefore was confirmed at an early stage. The area showing an impact is 4 per cent of the diameter of Jupiter, it has been calculated. This is as wide as the United States on Earth. Pretty big impact.
The story is now at http://phys.org/news/2016-03-amateur-astronomer-apparent-large-impact.html … and at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/amateur-astronomers-capture-ast… which repeats the same information. Phil Plait is again quoted for some reason.
Meanwhile, at http://phys.org/print378451553.html … the subject is exoplanets and migrating 'hot jupiters' – which appears to be the majority of exoplanets so far discovered, probably as a result of their size.
How did hot jupiter's form – a mystery. Why is our solar system different in that we have no exoplanet additions. Is that right – or is that just the consensus? Hot jupiters are common enough for over 2000 of them to have been discovered in just a few years. How did hot jupiters end up close to stars – in what looks like binary formations (but what can't be seen might be just as important). Some hot jupiters have what is said to be eccentric orbits in that they resemble the elliptical orbits of comets. Is this because they have not settled down in equilibrium with other nearby bodies – or do nearby bodies not exist (apart from a star on occasion).