  In recent years it has been shown that the tidal coupling between extrasolar
planets and their stars could be an important mechanism leading to orbital
evolution. Both the tides the planet raises on the star and vice versa are
important and dissipation efficiencies ranging over four orders of magnitude
are being used. In addition, the discovery of extrasolar planets extremely
close to their stars has made it clear that the estimates of the tidal quality
factor, Q, of the stars based on Jupiter and its satellite system and on main
sequence binary star observations are too low, resulting in lifetimes for the
closest planets orders of magnitude smaller than their age. We argue that those
estimates of the tidal dissipation efficiency are not applicable for stars with
spin periods much longer than the extrasolar planets' orbital period. We
address the problem by applying our own values for the dissipation efficiency
of tides, based on our numerical simulations of externally perturbed volumes of
stellar-like convection. The range of dissipation we find for main-sequence
stars corresponds to stellar $Q_*$ of $10^8$ to $3{\times}10^9$. The derived
orbit lifetimes are comparable to, or much longer than the ages of the observed
extrasolar planetary systems. The predicted orbital decay transit timing
variations due to the tidal coupling are below the rate of ms/yr for currently
known systems, but within reach of an extended Kepler mission provided such
objects are found in its field.
