Hot Saturns

Having formulated an hypothesis that could account for so called "Inflatable Planets" (albeit not without some difficulty - though probably less than assuming the planet is made of balsawood) in a previous posting, I thought I'd ask one of the team members about it.

It was nice to get an informative reply from Francis O'Donovan of the TrES team:

there are indeed several theories abounding regarding the possibility of a
rings around TrES-4. I have not investigated this thoroughly, but my
understanding is that in order to have an opaque disk that could lead to a
larger apparent size for the planet, you need to have a ring made up of
very small dust particles (unlike Saturn's rings), and this dust would
likely be blown away. As you suggest, it might be a more recently formed
ring, but again it is unlikely that we would happen to observe it at that
time.

I look forward to seeing what the theorists have to say about TrES-4

And so do I - now that the Boltzmann Brains have been dealt with, Inflatable Planets are rising to the top of my watch list.