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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."
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
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.
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".
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Hello! Earth doesn't an asteroid belt -- our sun has an asteroid belt, and the Earth orbits the sun.
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
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?
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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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!"
> There's GOTTA be some kinda way to slashdot that planet.
Well, now that one has been found so close, everyone on the planet is going to start directing radio broadcasts there in hopes of getting a SETI response. I think that qualifies as spam.
I wonder whether their response will be a cease-and-desist from the galactic equivalent of the FCC. What's the penalty for a RF DoS attack on a solar system?
ps - If any Epsilon Eridanites are reading this... MAKE MONEY FAST!
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
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
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.