Are mirror worlds opaque?

Abstract

Over the last few years, many close orbiting (∼0.05 A.U.) large mass planets (∼Mj) of nearby stars have been discovered. Their existence has been inferred from tiny Doppler shifts in the light from the star and in one case a transit has been observed. Because ordinary planets are not expected to be able to form this close to ordinary stars due to the high temperatures, it has been speculated that the close-in large planets are in fact exotic heavenly bodies made of mirror matter. We show that the accretion of ordinary matter onto the mirror planet (from, e.g., the solar wind from the host star) should make the mirror planet opaque to ordinary radiation with an effective radius (Rp) large eno..