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Jupiter-Sized Planet Orbits Epsilon Eridani
Phrogman writes: "SpaceRef is the first to report that a Jupiter-sized planet has been discovered orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani which is located about 10.5 light years from Earth. The planet is oribiting the star at roughly 300 million miles - about the same distance as earth's asteroid belt. The discovery was made by astronomers at McDonald Observatory in Texas in collaboration with other astronomers around the world."
So you've never heard of the prime directive in star trek have you?
I've got connections - I know ;)
-Leo
Believing something to not be extraordinary is not conceited, unless my perception is skewed. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but most average things aren't too special compared to the above-average (or even the below average).
-Leo
Mars is bereft of atmosphere because it its escape velocity is low enough that the atmosphere can boil off - solar influence has nothing to do with it.
I'm not talking about the piddling little difference between a Marslike atmosphere and an Earthlike atmosphere, I'm talking about the difference between a gas giant atmosphere and a rock planet atmosphere. The point was that a Mercury-distance planet might be a rock planet like Mars is.
I was explaining why there might be rock planets for the gas giant to throw around. That should have been obvious.
With a Jupiter-mass planet at the distance of the asteroid belt, you'd have stable planetary orbits from Earth-distance on in.
Just what are you basing that specific distance on? You just pulled it out of your hat, didn't you?
Even that effect has nothing to do with the sun "blowing away" the atmosphere
Ugh, as if "blowing away" meant anything other than "removing". If you want to write a short statement about astrophysics, you have to use imperfect analogies to terrestrial phenomena, and it takes quite a jackass to point out how the analogy isn't an accurate literal description.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Sol is the name of our sun; therefore, the system that orbits around it should be the Solar system. Similarly, the system that orbits around Epsilon Eridani should be the Eridanic system or the Epsilonic system. The only thing you have to change is capitalize Solar; otherwise, the "solar system" might tend to mean a generic group of planets orbiting a generic star.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Oh god... please don't tell me we've reached the point that we're going to start seeing things like the the "Pepsi Supercolider -- The choice of the next generation of physics majors" or Wendy's logo emblazoned on the side of the Space Shuttle next?!?
;)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Well, technically, neither the sun nor the earth orbit each other. They both orbit their mutual centre of gravity. Seeing as this imaginary point in space is actually located inside the sun (as it is so much more massive than the earth), then it would seem more appropriate to say the earth approximately orbits the sun.
I'm sure that if you took a poll of normal English speaking people, they'd identify 'solar system' as the general term for a star and its satellites. It seems quite engrained into the English language and would require some effort to change. If it is to be called the Solar system, then what is the generic term for a star and its satellites?
;)
I myself have been found of the grammatically incorrect 'Sol system;' the solar system around any star would be referred to by the star's name, without transforming it into an adjective. Then again, as people seem fit to refer to our sun as the only Sun, we might as well call it the Sunny system.
--
Well, you have the mass and kinetic energy of the probe, which might amount to that of a fair-sized nuclear device if it did not decelerate. If it aimed itself appropriately, it might return important data to sensitive receivers, perhaps several bits:
Signature of impact originating from Epsilon Eridani: Rocky, earth-type planet detected.
Signature of impact including spectral lines of chlorophyll: Earth type planet bearing strong signs of life.
Signature of impact including spectral lines of chlorophyll and return volleys of relativistic weapons: Earth type planet bearing strong signs of intelligent life.
You're missing the point. We don't concern ourselves with the effect one body has on the other. It is irrelevant WHY the objects move as they do when we choose a reference point. We can pick any point in space and say the entire universe orbits around it and be no less correct than if we calculated the perfect center of the universe around which everything in the universe orbits with a basically circular pattern.
And anyway, your argument (if I understand what you're trying to say) falls apart when you realize that gravity from one object affects every other object in the universe, making it perfectly logical that objects don't orbit other objects in a perfectly circular fashion, and thereby making it moot what orbital patterns are changed by changing our reference points (if you understand what I'm trying to say =-) ).
and the planet itself gives off heat
I don't think this is strictly true. The gas giant itself would not give off much heat - what does come into play is the constant stretching and compressing of a natural satellite by the massive tidal forces involved in orbiting such a monster. This process, in turn, can generate the heat in the satellite to kick off all kinds of interesting stuff....
Actually, Jupiter does *kind of* have a surface. After you get so far down in the atmosphere, the pressure forces the gases into liquid form, IIRC. Then again, IANAA (I am not an astronomer).
You don't. We'll contact you if we have a use for you.
Perhaps he is referring to the 100 year period starting now ('now' referring to the time at which the post was conceived).
The belief that the Sun is "as average as one could get" is as conceited as believing that Earth is the center of the universe. In your case, it is just at the center of the universe of all possible star sizes.
but the craft doesn't think it's moving near the speed of light. I think it was meant near the speed of light, relative to the earth.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
--Lenny
Hey,
Henceforth, my worldview shall be yo-centric.
My world is already yoyo-centric. It's funny to see the look on peoples' faces when you tell people:
Me: "My world's yoyo centric."
Them: "I don't understand."
Me: "That's because your brain is only a half-yoyo."
Try it yourself! a yoyo-centric world.
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
What's the big deal ? With the equipment available to astronomers these days the best we can do is to spot glimpses of Huge ( Jupiter Sized and larger ) planets around nearby stars.
:) was off by a couple orders of magnitude we would still have enough for a star trek like future.
:)
My unscientific guess is that the Galaxy is literally swarming with small rock planets ranging in size from Mars up to 2X Earth. Manyt of these planets will have oceans of water and some life. With 200,000,000 Stars in our Galaxy and 1 in ten for planets, water, life ( as we know it ) and intelligence we would still have 200,000 sets of aliens to find.
Even if my above math ( very bad math at that
This is a theory based on nothing whatsoever but alas. For years scientists held that the planets around Sul were such a massive fluke we would be lucky to find even 1 other star with planets in our Galaxy.
PS : Scientists tend to disagree loudly on things not yet proven.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Shouldn't that be "FIRST CONTACT!!!" instead? Mal-2
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than THAT.
-- J.R. "Bob" D
From browsing this thread, I have the idea that this discovery of distant planets is being taken as a first-time thing by some people. I thought it imperative to fill that void in the collective knowledge base.
We've found approx. 35 such planets to date: here's one found in Nov 1999, a whole system found in April 1999, one in 1998, and here, and here...
We've found Jupiter-sized planets at Jupiter-like distances, which is neat because it means we could detect our own solar system...
-Jason
yeah, what are we expected to say! woo-hoo?
'm not talking about the piddling little difference between a Marslike atmosphere and an Earthlike atmosphere, I'm talking about the difference between a gas giant atmosphere and a rock planet atmosphere. The point was that a Mercury-distance planet might be a rock planet like Mars is.
*Sigh*. For the nth time - this is because of fractioning of the protoplanetary disk *BEFORE* planets formed!
Just what are you basing that specific distance on? You just pulled it out of your hat, didn't you?
This is the distance at which the relative gravitational influences of the star and the jupiter-sized planet would be comparable to the relative gravitational influences of Jupiter and Sol. Not difficult to estimate.
If aliens do contact us by radio signals, it will probably translate to "FIRST POST!!!"
Me & my wife are under the paranoid delusion that the Star Trek shows have been getting the Earth's population ready to make a "First Contact" sorta thing. Or maybe I've just been watching to much Star Trek lately. But look when Star Trek first aired. Wasn't that after Roswell. Gotta go, have to find my Haldol. "Honey did I put that on the shelf next to your Lithium?".....
This isn't sig. it's banner for advertising.
Plus Star Trek Voyer will start next week! Mmmmmm! Seven!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
There's GOTTA be some kinda way to slashdot that planet.
Hey!
I don't see how Antigravity (Boots, ship or other wise) will help in the real problem.
Well, at the current costs of launching 1kg into space (About "£2000 / $3000 IIRC), to launch parts to build, say, the 'Starship Enterprise' would cost the GDP of every nation on earth, all added together (On top of that, you have the cost of actually making the components). If an antigravity conduit into space could be established using a spinning disk (Which could probably be done quite cheaply if the theory is as it sounds), getting things into space would be cheaper.
I think....
Michael Tandy
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I know, they said Jupiter-type, but there is lots of speculation here that there might also be smaller ones.
There won't.
We've got rock planets here in the inner solar-system because our manly yellow star blew off most of the atmosphere of the nearest planets.
Epsilon Eridani is a little pansy orange dwarf that couldn't blow the atmosphere off of this Jupiter-type planet as close as the asteroid belt.
With a gas giant in the inner solar system, no tiny little rock planet is going to find a stable orbit. It would get tossed out into an eccentric orbit, assuming it didn't just get tossed into the sun.
Of course, by Earthlike planet, I mean a rock planet with a gaseous atmosphere in a stable, near circular orbit at a near-constant distance from the sun (yes, dammit, I call Epsilon Eridani the sun, meaning the big hot ball). There might be an Earthlike planet if you're willing to accept a really big unlivable asteroid like Pluto as "Earthlike".
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
No, Sector 000 would be even better...
How about sector 001?
:^)
I'd say it was all of those things, and the one thing it isn't is "aliens from Epsilon Eridani-ly"
the movie looked to me like they'd blown the special effects budget - I mean, using the actor who played her father as the alien? how much of a cop-out is that? the least they could have done was put some latex on his forehead...
<g>
Because while EE is only 10.5ly away, it's in a differant galaxy :)
Hello! Earth doesn't an asteroid belt -- our sun has an asteroid belt, and the Earth orbits the sun.
any life that might have evolved is going to either be very, very strong, or very, very short.
No, it'll be very, very, balloony looking. This planet is a gas giant (anything that big has to be) so it has no surface (not one life could live on anyway). Any life form would have to be able to float in whatever atmospheric layer it can survive in. If it goes too high, it asphyxiates, explodes, or gets poisoned. If it goes to low, it asphyxiates, implodes, or gets poisoned. A balloon is the most efficient way for a large organism to stay in a layer. This is pretty unlikely to happen, but if there is any life it will most likely have balloon-like structures.
I know the article doesn't say that the planet is jovian, but I'm pretty sure any solid planet that size would probably never form, and if it did, it would probably collapse and turn into a black hole or something. Or maybe it would generate a lot of heat? I'm to lazy to figure out the physics so I'll just shut up.
More of an appendix.
Stars are found (usually) by measuring an irregular pulse coming from the star. E.G: we look at a pulsar, and determine that based on its size and distance it should be pulsing at X rate. Instead, it is pulsing at Y rate, therefore there's something orbitting it.
Also, if there's irregular pulses coming from a star that shouldn't be pulsing......
There's a few different ways of finding planets, Red Shift, etc. I don't know them all....
TTFN
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Vulcan is also supposed to be in the 40-Eridani system. I'm not certain which is more widely accepted, but I'm pretty sure it's 40, not Epsilon...
In ours, Jupiter is the "vacuum cleaner" - it attracts many potential meteors away from inner planets so that they are much less likely to have catastrophic impacts. Now if we could just spot the smaller planets from so far away... and transwarp engines would be nice too...
You are correct... foundation was the series... I think it's cool that the fact that earth even existed faded into legend and myth. But they do find it.. oh boy.. :) I consider this to be the best set of books ever writen by Asimov.. the scope is breath taking.
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
Eh, maybe, but not likely. Sunlight recieved falls off at the square of the distance, and E.E. starts out at half strength.
So the satellite starts with less than one thirty-sixth the solar radiation Earth gets, less than what our Jovian satellites get. That means it needs an atmosphere orders of magnitude thicker than Titan's to maintain surface water (although an ice world with a molten core is also possible).
Given Titan is the gas-giant satellite with the thickest atmosphere we know of, it means there isn't a lot of hope.
Steven E. Ehrbar
The star trek planet Vulcan is supposedly supposed to be in the Epsilon Eridani system, and this corresponds almost perfectly with everything trek says about Vulcun (except that its a Jupiter sized planet, but thats all we can detect so who knows.), and its only 10.5 lightyears away. What are the chances of life ! (hehe. admittedly slim. but still. it would be so cool)
This is great news, for two primary reasons.
First off, it's more or less in our cosmic neighborhood. 10.5 lightyears!! We could quite conceivably send a probe in that direction well within the next century. Knowing that extrasolar planets exist this close to earth is a very good sign indeed.
The planet is also at a very moderate distance from its parent star -- although I see no data regarding the shape of its orbit. It might well be extremely elliptical, but we can always hope for something vaguely circular. In any case, it should make for some interesting viewing.
For more information about extrasolar planets, consult your local library. No, just kidding, try this site here.
First one there gets to name it!
yours,
john
Except E.E. is half as bright as the Sun, so this planet gets less solar radiation than Jupiter.
Steven E. Ehrbar
I believe they detect planets by looking for doppler shifts in the light emitted by the star. The planet causes the star to wobble in a periodic manner.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Also, if there is the possibility of a star trek like furture, was Gene Rodenberry and alien? Never know, may be true, maybe I'm crazy.
The SETI radio collector at Arecebo just 'goes along for the ride' beside the main reciever, so they really don't choose where they are collecting data from...
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Yeah, ok. So when's Space starting over? I've finally got my place to myself, so setting my vcr to autorecord them will be feasable now...
Intolerant people should be shot.
This led to the examination of the existence of exotic life that live without sun light. Why don't we figure out what the F*ck is taking place on this planet!
Please note that I like your comment. This is not meant to flame planetary exploration. However, we should try to understand what is happening on this planet, the one we live on.
Actually, people say that we need Jupiter size planets to sustain life on smaller planets, for they sweep the area (mostly) clean of the asteroids that can sterilize planets.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Quoting from Scientific American:
"Ordinarily a gas consisting of diatomic (two-atom) molecules, hydrogen can be cooled to a liquid (below 20 kelvins, or -253 degrees Celcius) and a solid (below 14 kelvins). In all these states, hydrogen is normally an elsectrical insulator, but in the 1930's physicists predicted that subjecting hydrogen to extreme pressure would cause the molecules to dissociate - break apart into atoms- turning the substance into a conductive metal."
Ewige Blumenkraft.
*Sigh*. For the nth time - this is because of fractioning of the protoplanetary disk *BEFORE* planets formed!
Look, jerk, stop misinterpreting what I'm saying to make me look stupid. I don't know whether you're doing it on purpose or you just think I'm a moron because you can't grasp what I'm saying, but it's bloody annoying. If it doesn't make sense the first time you read it without thinking about it, read it again and think for a minute before you post back to "correct" me.
It doesn't matter whether the gasses were blown away before or after the planet formed. I've never cared about that, and it's never made a speck of difference. I only ever mentioned it to establish what planets could form at which distances.
We know that E.E. is a small star with weak radiation. I didn't infer that from the existence of the gas giant; it's known from other observations. Everything we know about the formation of the solar system says that the gas giant could have, and probably did, form in the orbit it is currently in (where the radiation is weaker than that at Jupiter), and any rock planets would have to form much closer in (and my original post on the topic admitted the possibility that they could, at least, form). That only leaves the question of whether any rock planets between E.E. and the gas giant could have a stable orbit.
As for that, I think your analysis of the possibility of stable orbits is naive. Your conclusion might be right, but your method isn't valid. Whether an orbit in a many-body system are stable over millions of cycles is not trivial to calculate, and the effects of a perturbing force like a large planet do not just scale linearly with the force of its gravity.
We're talking about a gas giant close enough and big enought to make the star wobble noticably. That's a very rough gravitational environment for a small planet to find a stable orbit in.
The point can certainly be argued, but can't be resolved with quick back-of-the-envelope calculations.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
I wanna leave it open in case we find a rocky planet orbiting that star.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Err, don't virii need hosts? Better just send some bacteria and other monocelled creatures.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
The Universe orbits the United States of America. Don't believe me? Live here for a while.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
I think the experience was submitted 3-4 years ago by an obscure russian scientist. But we all know how the scientific community isn't eager to aknowledge experience that would contradict the current theories they pretend to be "laws".
To me it looks like when you have an artifact rotating fast enough, the matrix just can't simulate consistents gravity values anymore.
Perhaps there's an Earth-like moon orbiting the Jupiter-like planet. Maybe.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
True, but it is thought that radiation and tidal effects can generate a lot of heat.
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
But at least one planet has been detected visually.
We're going to run into a terminology problem soon. It's sort of self-centered, and problematic in science fiction, to call the solar system which Earth happens to be in, "our solar system". But what should we call it? Some of the possibilities I can think of are:
Sol would seem to be the best, if we didn't have all romance languages to worry about. It even looks like a proper name ("Saul", "Solomon"). Not going to work out, though, because if I'm on a planet in Epsilon Eridani, and I'm speaking spanish, you'd have to differentiate based only on whether I used it with or without an article ("Sol" vs. "El sol").
Any other ideas? "Earth System", "Terran System" both seem wrong because it's the star, not earth, that we're refering too. "Human system" or similar science fiction stuff sounds totally wrong because the whole idea only matters if we get to another star. You don't call Europe "the white man's continent".
I sort of like "home system" or something with that sort of meaning, but I can't think of anything that works. We could always just steal a word for sun from a dead language (is "helios" a word in modern greek?).
The we have the whole problem of renaming a good portion of the natural sciences as soon as we get to Mars: Geology, Geography, Geophysics, and so on.
Second question: do we find their females attractive? (hey, you never know!)
Third question: do we have better weapons than they do?
Fourth question: are they an enlightened, peaceful society that has evolved beyond the memory of war?
If you have answered yes to one of questions 1 or 2 and yes to one of questions 3 or 4, the obvious indicated action is invasion.
I've seen a lot of old movies about contact with aliens, and I they all pretty much go the same way. I think that we, as weird space aliens, have a duty to run amok, eat a few of them, and kidnap the most attractive of their females.
Oh, I forgot a few very important questions.
5) is their version of the common cold a deadly disease to us?
6) (if you answered "yes" to 4) do they have an an ancient weapon of great power which can be reactivated by an epic quest undertaken by one of their most dashing young males whose favorite female we kidnapped and a sufficient number of expendable henchmen?
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Generally planets are so much smaller than the star they orbit that any affect they have on the stars brightness is very minimal, if any...
:).
What's actually being detected isn't a brightness change - it's a doppler shift in the star's emission lines as it moves towards and away from us due to the influence of the orbiting planet.
You have the right reason for nondetection; it's just a different parameter being measured
Since no alien race has contacted us yet, they're probably all less advanced than we are.
Wow. Is humanity really this cocky?
Should we educate them, and perhaps send religious missionaries? Or are these other lifeforms even capable of salvation?
I think that statement proves that all aliens are much more advanced than us! :)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
'Nuff said.
One of the reasons why Earth is such a great place for life to develop is because Jupiter's gravity pulls in lots of stray comets and asteroids that would have otherwise hit the Earth, causing extinction events & worse. It looks like Epsilon Eridani has a planet that could perform a similar function, making it more likely that advanced life would exist on a planet that was in the star's biozone.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
It looks like this story was leaked by Nasawatch/SpaceRef or Space.com prematurely. It was supposed to be embargoed until the International Astronomical Union actually made the announcement on Monday. Naughty naughty.
Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag now, so here's a list of all the sites covering the story in addition to Nasawatch/SpaceRef.
The news will get much better on Monday, when all us space news sites can actually post the real story and provide all the details. Stay tuned.
And of course, my own coverage at Universe Today:
Astronomers Discover Nearby Extrasolar Planet - August 4, 2000
Fraser Cain
Publisher, Universe Today - http://www.universetoday.com
This line of logic is dizzying. I think I'll find a more stable thread, one that doesn't move no matter what the frame of reference.
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
As for that, I think your analysis of the possibility of stable orbits is naive. Your conclusion might be right, but your method isn't valid. Whether an orbit in a many-body system are stable over millions of cycles is not trivial to calculate, and the effects of a perturbing force like a large planet do not just scale linearly with the force of its gravity.
You can most certainly resolve this with "back-of-the-envelope" calculations.
It is only the _relative_ masses and positions of the objects that matter. Absolute scale is irrelevant - it just imposes a scaling factor on time. This means that I can make valid conclusions by comparing the Eridani system to the Sol system.
The only variable in the Eridani system that differs from the Sol system is the relative masses of the star and the gas giant planet, and this doesn't change much - Epsilon Eridani is about 0.75 solar masses, according to a quick web search.
Thus, I would be very surprised if my conclusion _didn't_ hold.
We're talking about a gas giant close enough and big enought to make the star wobble noticably. That's a very rough gravitational environment for a small planet to find a stable orbit in.
The key word is "noticeably".
We've had spectrographs for many, many decades, and *only* *now* have instruments sensitive enough to detect the extremely slight perturbation of spectral lines due to planetary nudging of parent stars.
The effects of a gas giant planet are not as severe as you make them out to be.
At first glance after reading the story initially, I thought to myself "10.5 light years? That's nothing at warp 9!"
I'm sad =[
SuPz.orG
No, it's the Monolith Burger Bar. Go there and play some Astro Chicken now!
The telescope was built in a limestone sinkhole ontop of a mountain. There was nothing there but small vegitation and insects. And as for the 'arecibeños', the telescope has probably bolstered their economy, if anything.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Trekkies will recognize Epsilon Eridani as the sun of Spock's home planet Vulcan. I propose we name the planet Vulcan.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
According to the Annals of Improbable Research (or what ever JIR is now called), the official compromise is that milennium started 1-July-2000.
In Murphy We Turst
There's a "YES" answer to the first four questions right here on earth - Sheep*
Then again, I am from Australia.... carry on. Sorry for the interruption
*Have you ever met a sheep that remembered war?
"In person, WAP'ed up and making your life a misery!" BOFH, 2003
We've got rock planets here in the inner solar-system because our manly yellow star blew off most of the atmosphere of the nearest planets.
Actually, according to the literature I went through when writing a project on star systems in high school, the gasses are blown out of the inner solar system _before_ planets start to form.
Blowing the atmosphere off of an already-formed planet won't happen under anything short of very extreme circumstances. Jupiter could be sitting in Venus's orbit and still remain intact. In the primordial disk, however, there's nothing to hold gases in one place, so they can be moved easily.
So, I think that there is a very good chance of finding rocky planets around Epsilon Eridani.
Just don't be the guy wearing the red shirt when you land on their planet. :-)
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
I saw some interesting research in Sweden (or some damned Scandinavian place) that could be used as a space drive. These physicists got a large massive disk, put it parrallel with the floor and rotated it at extremely high RPMs. They then measured the wieght of a kilogram mass above the disk, and found to their surprise that the mass had got lighter! Another strange thing was that it did so only when the disk was rotating in a clockwise direction.Anyway, the physics community has been highly sceptical about this, but it was replicated in a lab in Edinburgh, I believe, and some other places. Problem is, it seems to violate several laws of physics. It would be just the thing to use as an antigravity machine, to get into space cheaply. Sorry I don't have any links or refs, i'm away from home. Has anybody else heard of this?
I personally suspect that the radio phase of civilization is fairly short. If you only have a 2 or 3 century window after which a civilization discovers quantum communications or something, chances of actually finding a civilization based on RF would have to be vanishingly small. However, once you discover quantum communications (Or whatever) you can instanteously tune in to the furthest reaches of the Universe. And THEN you find out that the universal internet is clogged with live qkpth porn and make vlbork fast schemes and tune out in disgust.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But once again this does not address the issue that if there are other life forms out there, how can you even judge what they'll be. To paraphrase what someone said a little while ago in a thread (sorry for the lack of credit) We just found out that there were organisms at what was previously considered uninhabitable on our own ocean floor. Hell, they could be sometype of gaseous beings that live in the atmosphere of the planet. Also, we aren't even 100% sure there isn't little green men on mars. We're pretty sure theirs no life on the moon, but it's not like we spend more than a year on the surface, never mind the inside.
This isn't sig. it's banner for advertising.
There's still the little problem of a gas giant in the inner solar system pulling any smaller planets out of their orbits. If you recall, that's the real reason I said there won't be a rocky planet in a stable orbit.
While I didn't mention it, obviously a weaker star can still blow out the gasses from closer-in planets (a Mercury-distance planet there might get the treatment Mars did here). That's why I left the possibility of Pluto-like (or even more eccentric) planets.
The relevance of the weak gas-pushing power is that it left a Jupiter where it would make a real mess of any sort of inner solar system (and I do believe that it formed there and wasn't thrown in by near passes of several distant gas giants; E.E. is only about half as bright as Sol).
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Real civilizations use Xkkqpli-based (sorry, I know your primitive mouth-parts can't form this sound) communications to access their massive computer archives of goat porn.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
The thing about big planets like this is that they tend to have a lot of moons. In our system, one of the moons (Europa) has water on it, which may be liquid. Now think if Jupiter was closer to the sun. More solar radiation, more tidal forces. Perhaps there could be a livable world in orbit around this planet!!! This is definitely worth sending a probe after. I just wish we were spending more money on space. I really do. It's sad how unimportant it seems to be.
gee, guess what, it was late and i was tired, i happen to be female, and woo-hoo was all i could think of. okay? i'm not a fag, but some other people here sure sound like they could be...
If this could actually work, we'd have to call it a spindizzy drive.
Then again if you have antigravity, why bother with something as small as a spaceship. You could do what he did in his novel and turn the entire bloody isle of Manhattan, the city of Scranton, and some slavic town whose name I don't recall into your starships. (Blish's spindizzy had as a handy side effect a forcefield which you could use to retain atmosphere.)
Like you'd believe that the human race would actually FOLLOW such a law if it did exist? BTW, as referred to in "Angel One", the Prime Directive only applied to Star Fleet. Private citizens of the Federation could break it as much as they pleased.
Anyone who is not convinced by now that a star having planets orbitting it is the norm, and not the exception, needs to have their head examined. As telescopes continue to get better, we're going to find more and more. It won't be a worthy headline until we're able to detect earth-sized/earth-like planets orbitting nearby stars. Which, probably isn't as far in the future as most think...
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
The leading life form on any planet, just like ours would be the most aggressive, compeititive, species that developed on said planet. So more than likely, they'd have a history much like ours.
Our star is a singleton, that alone puts in in the minority.
Stars smaller that our sun are so weak that a theorectically habitable planet would have to orbit so close to it it's rotation would be locked like that of Mercury.
Larger stars would have wider "life belts", but as you get significantly beyond one solar mass, the total life expectancy of said star drops quite steeply. Sol's estimated to be around another 5 billion years or so, though it's expansion would make the Earth uninhabitable in just a billion.
It says the planet was discovered is 10.5 lightyears away. This is wrong, the planet WAS 10.5 lightyears away in 1990!
There's nothing to say it wasn't destroyed by a giant "laser" 5 years ago!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Greetings Earthlings ! Take me to your webmaster !
I'm ready... ready for the grid lock... i'm ready... ready for the push. (U2)
There's still the little problem of a gas giant in the inner solar system pulling any smaller planets out of their orbits. If you recall, that's the real reason I said there won't be a rocky planet in a stable orbit.
At asteroid-belt distance hardly counts as "in the inner solar system". All that this gas giant does is make the band in which stable orbits can occur a little narrower. Inner planets can most certainly still exist stably.
While I didn't mention it, obviously a weaker star can still blow out the gasses from closer-in planets (a Mercury-distance planet there might get the treatment Mars did here).
Mars is bereft of atmosphere because it its escape velocity is low enough that the atmosphere can boil off - solar influence has nothing to do with it.
The only planet that has had substantial solar influence on its atmosphere is Mercury, because it's *extremely* close to the sun. Even that effect has nothing to do with the sun "blowing away" the atmosphere - on the contrary, it _heats_ the atmosphere so that individual molecules can more readily reach the planet's escape velocity.
With a Jupiter-mass planet at the distance of the asteroid belt, you'd have stable planetary orbits from Earth-distance on in. The star is cooler, so atmospheres will be cooler, and more easily retained unless you're *really* close to the star.
I'm afraid that your arguments about atmospheres being "blown away" just don't make any sense. See above.
I just can't bring myself to even come close to liking Voyager. I just can't watch it. I wouldn't mind knowing when Season 4 or so DS9 starts up on Space. (I've seen most of the first three, and the later stuff was better anyhow)
Actually, what I really want is television on demand. Instead of the cable company having channels upon channels, they should just have shitloads of shows that can be called up on demand. If I want to watch the new friends, bam, there it is. Simpsons #129, bam, you've got it. Micropayments for what you actually watch (plus a basic monthly fee I suppose), and some free content that is simply ads for new stuff, or for old shows they think you might get into.
Intolerant people should be shot.
And who says we are already in contact with beings from other worlds.
What about
I'm not saying that any of these are anything but a ficticous story, but it still is an alternative to saying that we are have never been contacted by "aliens". Of course you need to believe that the US government is capable of a "grand conspiracy".
I say wrap up some very hardy bacteria or virii in suspended form, and fire it off. Since we're screwing up this planet so badly, we might as well give evolution a shot on another one. I suspect the teeny ethical issue of pre-existing life on another planet might arise, but hey -- nobody believes in that crap anyway. It's gotta be empty, for sure.
We've got a couple options here...
There are many other options. Here's one: governments have been contacted, and it's being covered up to prevent socioeconomic meltdown. Just a possibility...
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
I really like Sol - maybe it's because we write it *exactly* like that in my native language :-)
Seriously, I'd go for the "Origin System". Partly because of the obvious implication that our origin is here, and partly because once we make interstellar travel we'll need some form of coordinate system to give our position in. It would very likely be relative to the Sun, making it the origin of that system.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Okay, according to the website here, Epsilon Eridani has approximately 80% of the mass of our sun, with about 34% of it's luminosity. At that range, the "life belt" (the range from the star that has liquid water, etc.) would be much closer than that of our sun. There could easily be a habitable planet at about the same location as mercury or thereabouts. And at that range, a jupiter-sized planet at the same distance as the asteroid belt would have almost the same gravitational effect as jupiter has on earth. (It depends heavily on the exact mass of the gas giant.) So it is conceivable that there could be life in that system.
Although you can say that everything orbits the Earth from a certain perspective, there is a small problem with this mathamatical model:
The Sun is so much more massive than the Earth (about 99% of the mass of the entire solar system... including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) that you need to keep track of the gravitational effects of all of the other planets at the same time.
With a heilocentric viewpoint you can simplify the calculations (at least on an initial basis) to only take into account the mass of the sun. In fact, you don't even have to take into account any planetary body when you are calculating rough orbits. Only when you are trying to determine the possibility of other objects (such as what was used to discover Neptune... and erronously used to discover Pluto) is the mass of the other planets even used. And you have to use many significant digits in your calculations for this to be even remotely useful.
None the less, this is a valid viewpoint to suggest that the Sun and everything else in the universe orbits the Earth.
Actually, not quite. The most recent estimates of what speeds we will be able to reach within the next few decades with light objects are about 0.3c.
Now, considering acceleration 0.5m*s^-2 (one meter a second), it would take (300 000 000 * 0.3 / 0.5 / 3600 / 24 / 365) = 5 years to reach that speed. Then, it would be some 30 years of travel and another 5 years of braking. This, of course, asuming the acceleration is linear, which probably won't be the case since 0.3c is a damn lot of speed...
Anyway - all this just considered with present-day physics and mindset. You actually might live to see transmition from this system...
I'm a big fan of Isaac Asimovs sci/fi writings, and in one of his books (in the Foundation series I think, but I could be wrong - I'm at work now) they're searching for the Earth. According to that story, one of the very first systems colonized by man had the old poetic name of 'Epsilon Eridani'.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
> This raises an interesting moral question: would it be wrong to assimilate extrastellar life? Suppose they're just little above chimpanzees, and really don't have any real cognizant thought. They're not human; would diverting their limited thought to improve life on Earth be truly harmful? Should we educate them, and perhaps send religious missionaries? Or are these other lifeforms even capable of salvation?
Why aren't we asking these questions about the chimpanzees, whom we know to actually exist?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I wonder if tomorrow we'll find out the sun, universe, et al actually revolve around.. me.
Of course not, you fool. They revolve around me.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Could the Earth type planet orbit the gas giant?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Epsilon Eridani, located at right ascension 3h33', declination -9 47', range roughtly 10.7 LY, which works out to sol-centered galactic-aligned cartesian coordinates (- 7.641i - 0.2749j - 7.485k) LY (over-precise), is spectral class K2, so this planet, at Earth's distance out, would be somewhat colder than Earth. There is hope that other, more useful planets are in the system, but I wonder if the gravitational influence of the gas giant would have swept that area clean...
-- Sunlighter
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
It isn't "elephantly" or "whalely" or "enormous subterranean fungusly" but it is definitely manly.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
The folks at Burger King observatory in Oklahoma report that the McDonald observatory in Texas has misidentified the new planet. They claim it is simply an spaceborne Whopper which they launched several years ago.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
In December of 1999 astronomers in Britain announced they directly observed the extrasolar planet of Tau Bootis by analyzing what is thought to be starlight reflected from the surface of the planet(with a 1/20 chance of error). this was the first time ever for such an observation. now considering some facts about the tau bootis system, the Epsilon Eridani system should be FANTASTIC for this kind of spectroscopic analysis (ie. we might be able to see what it's atmosphere is made of right now!). tau bootis is 51 light years away from earth (roughly 5 times the distance of Epsilon Eridani, the star in question for this article) and it's planet orbits the star at an average distance of 20 times closer than earth from our sun (not a good situation for the resolving power of hubble, for instance, yet they were still able to extract the reflected surface light of the planet from the light of the star using a doppler shift trick) while the planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani is at a distance of about 3 times the radius of earths orbit about the sun (much better for the resolving power of current telescopes). IANAA (astrophysicist) but couldnt we use hubble or keck right NOW to do these observations and for the first time study the atmospheric contents of extrasolar planets?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
If there is intelligent life on this planet, the overwhelming probability is that it is much much more advanced than we are. After all, if you randomly select a Human Being, what are the chance that that Human Being will be less that 1 hour old? Very small. The same probably holds true for ET civilisations, unless there is some sort of ceiling, or they all blow themselves up.
Earths Astroid belt? that writer must have been taught in Kansas..
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ok, what about a moon orbiting that big one that "could" support life then?
Mario.
I think it's really interesting that recently we're discovering so many planets. Just think, in the 80's, there were NO known planets orbiting other stars. Of course they can most easily detect large planets because they have the largest effect on the stars brightness (whis I believe is how they detect them). There may be just as many undiscovered planets about the size of the earth.
I really hope they'll discover some form of life somewhere...even some sludge sucking germ on Titan would have drastic implications.
Dennis
To quote:
We've got a couple options here. We can either assume a) that humanity hasn't been contacted; or b) that an incredibly advanced civilization with the power to venture across the intergalactic void is content to reveal itself only at night, to the lone drivers on deserted county roads in Iowa...
Hm...
Actually I had forgotten that... but yes, it's possible. Jovian bodies may indeed sweep the asteroids out and make life more possible on what's left.
-- Sunlighter
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
Calling them Aliens is extremely impolite, but I must agree with you. Statements such as these really shows how bloody our history has been, and how bloody it could get in the future. Just think what happens if we DO find less advanced "Aliens" in our solar system. Man... I'd die and turn in my grave!
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Hey, this can't be right. I'm about to check, but last time I looked at my interstellar database there was no gas giant - it was a bunch of normal rocky planets and two space stations. But I could be wrong.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
You are all a bounch af lazy trained monkeys :)
Yes, well, whatever, in fact the Earth is not moving around the Sun. They both rotate around a point determined by their relative masses (and affected by all the other masses in the universe, to a minor extent).
I wonder if NASA will use the Hubble Space Postcard Picture Camera on it. Look for details on nasaspacetours.com , a joint venture the prohibts the use of MP3's in space and promotes taking pictures of things we will never know or understan d anything about in our life times.
now, i am far from black ... or a nigger ... but christ kid ... what is up your ass? your mother been fucked by a nigger recently? what, are you jealous that he took your turn? i've had your mother, and i don't know why you like fucking her so much .... she is lousy! take my advice, go down to your local black neighborhood carying a large sign "KILL ALL NIGGERS" .... they will help you out!
are usually referred to by astronomers and astronauts as "the Earth - Moon system".
That's all good and well, but it sure doesn't scale very well. Jupiter has 16 moons or something, and it would be pretty darn tedious to recite the whole list just to say "Jupiter and its moons". "Jupiter system" contains the same info.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Since no alien race has contacted us yet, they're probably all less advanced than we are.
This raises an interesting moral question: would it be wrong to assimilate extrastellar life? Suppose they're just little above chimpanzees, and really don't have any real cognizant thought. They're not human; would diverting their limited thought to improve life on Earth be truly harmful? Should we educate them, and perhaps send religious missionaries? Or are these other lifeforms even capable of salvation?
well, hopefully within time we will find an earth sized planet .... jupiter sized planets don't hold much interest. but this one is about the same distance from its sun as our asteroid belt is from ours. there is a possibility that there may be an earth sized planet or two revolving as well. life?
You're right, at great depths the hydrogen gas in Jupiter's atmosphere is forced into a liquid metallic state by the immense pressure. However, Jupiter does actually have a core made of rock that is believed to be about four times as heavy as the Earth. I think it would probably be liquid at those temperatures and pressures though (like the core of the Earth).
The hydrogen can act as a metal as it can lose an electron to empty its innermost electron shell (remember the periodic table, where hydrogen appears twice - it can also gain an electron to complete its innermost electron shell, so it acts as a non-metallic element too). The large swirling mass of liquid metal is believed to be the cause of Jupiter's immense magnetic field and strong radio emissions.
Correction, it has now been identified as a part of the 'Super Supreme' Pizza Hut space program, with the cheese filled crust still intact.
Now the weather...
All spelling mistakes are in my mind and are faithfully reproduced by my fingers
Well, its always nice to know that there's further evidence that there are worlds orbiting other stars.. It gives creedence to our current thoeries regarding the creation of our own solar system, and helps us fine-tune the methods to which we'll find more such planets in the future.
:)
So this thing is Jupiter-sized, and pretty far away from its sun, so its probably a gas giant. "Duhh, so what, we cant land on it then." Well, yes, thats correct..we can't land on it. It doesnt have a surface..Just like with Jupiter, if you tried to land on it, you'de go straight through it. Its made entirely out of gas, not rock, or ice. The big deal about this, is that most Jupiter-sized planets also have Jupiter-like characteristics, i'm guessing, which means they more than likely have a large number of satellites, and the planet itself gives off heat. The same as Europa may harbor life sustained by Jupiter's heat, the moons of this newly discovered planet also have a chance of sustaining life.
Then again, even if we had the technology to span such distances in person, it would take hundreds of years to even build up a decent speed... we'd have to accellerate the spacecraft in a way that was survivable by human beings, mind you. I dont know anyone who wants to spend the next hundred years with their cheeks plastered to their skulls, trying to strain like theyre on the toilet... minute after minute, hour after hour, month after month.
I think i'll stay here..but I get first dibs on real estate.
My 48,500 rupees,
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I n W i d e s c r e e n !
I didn't even think of that. With the way gas giants pick up moons, I'd almost say it's likely.
It wouldn't be too comfortable, though. Not lots of light for photosynthesis, but with enough greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere it could probably be warm enough for liquid water.
Damn, there might be somewhat Earthlike life on a satellite of E.E.!
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Should we educate them, and perhaps send religious missionaries?
I'll bet $5 that within 6 months of 1st contact that someone from the south (most likely Texas, because they have the most religious polititians) starts an organization to "save the souls of the aliens". I predict infomercials and media coverage.
I'll bet a further $10 that if that occours that the aliens will laugh in their faces and proceed to crush earth's fragile ego.
Then I predict humanity will befall the aliens and they'll all get drunk, start wars, and die in saucer crashes. And thus, the human over-ego will be saved.
We could always use those light sails (like in "The Mote in Gods eye"). The thing is, Epsilon Eridani is only 10 l.y. away :P If we abolished the education system, the military, stopped paying aid, & ransacked and robbed neighbouring countries & funnelled all the money into space, I think it would be achievable. And worth it:)
First: something about another plant being discovered
Second: The earth has an asteriod belt!
I wonder if tomorrow we'll find out the sun, universe, et al actually revolve around.. me.
Now that there is a global network of people using the seti client, they are pumping thru the packets pretty quickly.. I wonder if they will decide to focus a bit more on that galaxy to see if anything shows up.. just a thought though..
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>How does one ransack and rob neighboring countries without a military, huh Microsoft does it just fine, as does the world trade association.
Unless Pansperma theories turn out to be true, any aliens will have totally different biochemistry so we can answers. 1. No, if their not downright poisonious they'll indigestable and not neutrious. 2. Yes, Human are worse than dogs, some of us will screw anything. Seriously therious suggest that two or three sex species get a big evoluationary advantage compared to one or four sex species. 3. Their not here yet so no. 4. Humans evolved from territorial mammals some species are quite non territorial, and might have evolved into intellgent species without war. 5. No, different biochemistry so their virius and bacteria are unlikely to find us eddible either. 6. Their iludium PU 36 explosive space modulator was recently reported stolen by be a long eared grey anthropomorphism.
Generally planets are discovered by a "wobble" that they induce in the star that they orbit that is caused by the gravitational attraction between the sun and the star. This is also why a large number of the known extrasolar planets are also in relatively close orbits, both due to the increased gravitational force and the fact that an orbit takes place in a much smaller amount of time.
Generally planets are so much smaller than the star they orbit that any affect they have on the stars brightness is very minimal, if any, and thus differences in relative brightness are not a good way to detect extrasolar planets.
WRCT Pittsburgh, 88.3FM
They could be really flat prodigies....
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
McDonald observatory?
Hmm, are McDonald that interested in interstellar franchise?
English is not my first language, so cut me some slack -: Om du kan lasa det har sa kan du Svenska
The Wendy's Observatory is what fuels these scientific developments. Dave Thomas and his "cool crew" whipping up jr bacon cheeseburgers and frostys. What more could a scientist need? OH yeah, spicy chicken combo!
prosebeforehos.com
>ransacked and robbed neighbouring countries
How does one ransack and rob neighboring countries without a military, huh?
Though, yeah, I agree, it would be worth it.
--
It's "Arecio", dammit. Learn to spell.
Anyway, have you ever stopped to think the huge damage the operation of this radiotelescope has brought upon the Arecibeños? Have you ever stopped to think of all the people who were forcibly displaced from their traditional home to build this behemoth? The huge damage to the local habitat? How its operations affect the possibility of a local subsistence agriculture?
Not withstanding the fact that the chances of life are extremely slim anyway, with such a massive gravitational force, any life that might have evolved is going to either be very, very strong, or very, very short.
(Chipmonk voice) "Greetings Earthling!"
"Huh? Where did that come from?"
(Chipmonk voice) "Down here!"
"Weird, I wonder.. " *squish*
"Oops."
</SILLY>
Isn't Epsilon Eridani where Mr Spock, and his Vulcan friends, live?
-- Cisk for the Cisk God
Epsilon Eridani would be a horrible choice for SETI. The star itself is only a billion years old, hardly enough time for life to start, let alone evolve into intelligence.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
You are all a bounch af lazy trained monkeys :)
:)
Anyway, we CAN notify that the earth is orbiting the sun, not vise-versa. And a Jojo-sitizen could easily notise he's livinging on a moving jojo
Motion is arbitrary, sine motion is relative. However, that goes only for _linear_ motion. Motion without acceleration/retardation.
Acceleration has the same effect on mass as has gravity. It is, in contrary to mere motion, significant, that is, the refference points are NOT arbitrary.
And orbiting is equal to acceleration (Directed at the center of the orbit).
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Panspermia theories don't have to be true for aliens to have similar biochemistries. (At least similar to some Earthly life form, not necessarily humans.)
It's not unreasonable to assume that the rules of chemistry are pretty much universal, and within those bounds, carbon/hydrogen/oxygen/nitrogen based biochemistries are the most probable (variations on those, eg subbing silicon for carbon, or fluorine for oxygen, tend to produce insufficiently interesting variety of compounds, at least in the sort of environment we'd be interested in occupying.) And from that it's a safe bet that the biochemistry that evolved on Earth is the most probable (if not the only) one that can evolve under those conditions.
But even within the bounds of DNA/RNA and recognizable amino acids, there's a heck of a lot of room for variation in proteins and relative amounts of the other elements that lifeforms depend on. So your answer to (1) is probably correct, ditto your answer to (5). (After all, how many people get infected by, say, tobacco mosaic virus or Dutch elm disease?)
-- Alastair
IIRC B5 is supposed to orbit the 3rd planet in Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon 3.
:)
BTW: All those interested: B5 will be rebroadcast on Sci-Fi starting Sept 25th. 7:30pm, daily, I think.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
A Jupiter-sized planet occupying a (roughly) Jupiter-sized orbit leaves room for smaller rocky planets in smaller orbits. The theory of solar system formation is that small dense planets (rocky, lots of metals, etc) form closer to a star because of gravitational forces in the proto-star. This makes them difficult to detect with the perturbation technique.
So Eridani could very well have an Earth- or Mars-sized planet in orbit.
"On Monday 7 August 2000, an announcement will be made at a meeting of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) that a Jupiter-sized planet has been discovered orbiting the nearby star Epsilon Eridani."
The problem is that a jupiter sized star is most likely all gas, hydrogen mostly. What i am waiting for is a earth or mars sized planet only about 10 light years away! Then we could send some probes! (i am not talking right now, but within the next century)
Isn't is amazing that we can debate planet exploration but none of us will ever live to see the 'Star Trek' vision of space in our lives?