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New Planetary Systems Stun Astronomers
jeffsenter writes "The NYTimes (free reg. req.) has coverage of two new outlandish planetary systems announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. One system has a planet x17 as big as Jupiter, the largest ever. The other is around a red dwarf only 15 lightyears away. It has two jupiter class planets in synchronized orbits." I'm not happy when astronomers describe things as "frightening".
"This massive planetary object defies our expectations for the largest planets. But it's right there next to another planet. We never expected nature would make such gargantuan planets, and indeed maybe they aren't planets at all."
Looks to me as if it is a beta deathstar for episode 2.
There is no
Does anybody remember how the first neutron starts got named LGM-number? Astronomers heard the periodic radio source and thought that it was a transmission from an alien source - hence, Little Green Men. Only later did they discover that these weren't little green men, but an astronomical occurance.
I think that the same thing is going to be true with the planets that are "too good to be true" - e.g., they aren't planets, but something else entirely. It would make far more sense.
Seriously though, that's pretty cool. Who knew, 30 years ago, that we'd be discovering several planets every year -- let alone those of such amazing size! I'm not one of those alien-buff types, but every time more of these are discovered within our viewable range, it only encourages the idea that life somewhere else in this universe is more and more likely.
I'm to young to have experienced the "ooh"s and "aah"s that my parent's generation were able to when man first orbited the earth and landed on the moon. But little things like this bring a spark of excitement that astronomy and space exploration has been missing for sooooo damn long.
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seumas.com
Posting anonymously to avoid any accusations of being a karma whore.
Hope it has auroras like Jupiters.
I love these sort of images...
The Master Of Muppets,
CAPTAIN: TAKE OFF EVERY "SIG"!!
I note that it will be "interesting", in the Chinese sense of the word. . .there is likely to be a great deal of acrimony and controversy at the next few Planetary Astronomy symposia. . .
The "under 13 years of age" version is here.
"That's not a planet...it's a space station..."
Stranger than fiction, folks! While the x17 bodies are probably *not* planets, it's nice to see the astronomers and exogeologists get turned on their ears from time to time.
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The simplest being a brown dwarf. This is an object that astronomers have predicted for some time... an object not quite large enough to support sustained nuclear fusion, but too large to be classed a planet.
Now, if you tell me that's a Dyson's Sphere around a sun in a binary system, you've got my attention!
You are right; the former is impossible. The period of the orbit can be calculated using only the mass of the Star and the average orbital radius. The "linked" orbits comment refers to orbits with a small integer ratio of orbital periods. In this case, the length of a year on one planet is exactly double the length of the year on another.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
Bodies of size greater than x, at least in our solar system, almost always have multiple planet-sized satellites. It can be argued that if they occupied their own orbits, the four big Jovians, Io, Europa, etc... would be classified as planetary bodies rather than moons.
When the next generation of big, badass telescopes goes into production, it's going to be neat to see how man moons this guy has, and what kind of stress they go through. If anywhere in explored/known space is going to have a M-Class planet to live on, this seems like a likely candidate.
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Hmm couldnt the super big planet be a couple of 8 x jupiter size masses orbiting each other? Or a 10 times jupiter mass planet with a couple of 2 x jupiter size moons and some a heap of junk orbiting it? These scientist they always jump to conclusions....
As for the possibility of it being neither a planet or a brown dwarf..i dont get that, a mass is either caused by the compression of material (sunlike) of the fragmentation of material (planetlike)...hmm unless you got a very large planet expeled from a star in the early stages of formation...that could possibly 'steal' alot of the contracting gas and become a sort of hybrid.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Is there a reason we keep seeing it like this? The last time epicycles had a go around, they were trying to use them as proof that the Earth was the center of the universe...
---- INTERMISSION ----
(stolen without permission from Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, et al of Monty Python)
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
[boom]
[slurp]
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
--
In announcing the findings here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Marcy confessed that in particular the system with the unusually enormous planet - the one with 17 times the mass of Jupiter, largest companion of the Sun - called into question the very meaning of the term "planet." Another team member, Dr. R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said: "This massive planetary object defies our expectations for the largest planets. But it's right there next to another planet. We never expected nature would make such gargantuan planets, and indeed maybe they aren't planets at all."
Upon closer examination, Dr. Marcy found that this planet was, in fact, Marlin Brando. "We had known he was growing in mass and size to truely impressive dimentions, but no one had realized just how tremendous he had become."
Until recently, Mr. Brando's publicist had been dodging reporters questions as to the corpulent thespians whereabouts, and said that the actor was simply "taking an extended rest at an undisclosed location".
After the revelation that Mr. Brando was actually in orbit around a star system some 15 light years away, very few people were actually surprised.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Why would it be frightening? I would say if it proves to be true it merely exposes our current theories as being false. It's amazing, though, how much once we write a guesstimate (usually surrounding by lots of highly subjective metrics and calculations based on those guesstimate initial values and we call that scientific research and hold it up as infalliable) we consider it the law.
I think a parallel is with a saying that I hear quite often that drives me nuts : When anyone claims that it is "against the laws of nature/physics/etc." for a bumblebee to fly. OF COURSE it's not against the laws, but rather it's an indication that either the observations (parading as laws) are invalid, or the analysis on the way the bee flies is incorrect. But to hear schooled people actually claim that it defies the laws just boggles the mind. It's MAGIC.
Maybe we don't need to look at the planetary models to correct the definition of a planet; maybe we should just scrap them entirely and go with physics completely.
I mean, Jupiter is a planet, right? Maybe. It actually radiates a ton of infrared radiation, due to friction as it's atmosphere slowly compresses (one millimeter a year, or so I am told). So, what is Jupiter *now*?
I thought I had a nice equation that linked mass and wavelength for a nice blackbody radiator, but I don't (grrr). I have a good one relating Temp and wavelength, but not mass. Damn astrophysics!
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
How about this: an extraterrestrial civilization lives in a solar system, hopping from planet to planet exploiting the resources. After it has used up all the resources of the solar system, or perhaps when the star is starting to die, it uses the remaining planets (the ones it is not on) as fuel to blast itself to another promising solar system. Repeat this process. Leaving us to witness a whole bunch of solar systems with just one planet revolving around them. Perhaps in the two planet system they shot off the smaller inner planet and used the outer planet as a gravitational boost. Might make a good SF story if someone hasn't already written it.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Not only did the grad student make the first observations of a neutron star, but (IIRC) she even got to watch, chagrinned, as her thesis advisor claimed credit for the discovery, a discovery which later "earned" him the Nobel Prize.
Moral of the story: Choose your thesis advisor carefully.
We thought we understood the mass ranges of planets of other stars. We thought we understood
the full diversity of planets.
What's frightening to me is if they really thought they understood these things.
We've been able to find planets outside our solar system for what, a few years now? And we expect to have "a thorough comprehension of their diversity?" We're still finding stuff on our own planet that blows our minds.
The universe is going to hold some serious surprises for a Real Long Time to come. Please check your arrogance at the door. Especially with things we have mostly theories about and very little data.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Marcy and Butler have been knocking out the planets for a few years now, and as their observation baselines get longer, the signal to noise in their data gets better and so they can start to pull out more planets out of the data.
Planet formation theory is taking a real battering, though, as none of the theorists have predicted this kind of planetary distribution. This is of course, a Good Thing (tm) as then the theorists can ask for more money and jobs to get bigger computers to run simulations on.
Doppler techniques only get you the Jupiter size planets close in - to get more earth-sized planets requires different techniques.
In fact, my bet is that the next big discovery will be earth sized moons around the transiting planetary system HD 209458, as you can detect the presence of a moon by timing the exact moment of the beginning of the planets' eclipse of the parent star. It requires a lot of careful work, though...
I think I wasn't clear enough; I was picturing two planets with different orbital radii and the same period. That's not possible. If the orbital radii are the same (or similar enough with slightly different eccentricities in the ellipses) then they could have the same orbital period. The chances of this happening are probably pretty slim, but there's a lot of stars out there...
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
Okay.... I know a solid Dyson sphere has been proven in theory to be unstable, but we don't know if this 17x-Jupiter massive object is actually solid yet, do we? So who's to say that someone didn't actually try to build one?
------------
"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
Actually all they're doing is seeing how much the stars wobble. They assume this is due to planets tugging on the stars.
But I have to wonder if there aren't other explanations for these rotational wobbles besides orbiting bodies...could they be induced by long-ago gravitational encounters with other stars passing stars? Could they be left over from stellar formation somehow?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Jupiter sized planets are a bore these days. When we have the technology to find Earth sized planets, that will be exciting.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Both Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler (I've never met Vogt) are smart guys and are the leaders in the field of radial velocity planet detection. However, I think Geoff went a little far with his remarks (as many slashdotters have already pointed out). I wonder if he made the over the edge remarks about frightening and knowing it all just to be exciting for the press, not that that would excuse it. Pay attention to their first class observations, but don't take their theoretical comments as the final word.
Presently, there's no good reason to beleive that the two criteria for distinguishing between planets and brown dwarfs (mass and how they formed) are consistant. It could be that objects with larger masses form one way. Objects with smaller masses form another. However, it's also possible (and IMHO more likely) that the two formation mechanisms can both produce objects with the same masses somewhere near the transition point or maybe there's a mass range that neither mechanism can produce. Finding a 17 M_J object around a star with another planet shouldn't be that suprising. We've already found planets around stars that have 1 M_sol binary companions (although farther away). Since it's lower mass, it can be closer in.
What's this previous research that 17 M_J planets didn't exist? Marcy and Butler looked at hundreds of stars and didn't find any, but the Geneva group which looked at many more stars (but with larger noise) did. So we already knew they were out there. It's still nice to get a better handle on their frequency, but I certainly wouldn't say previous reserach disproved their existance.
About the other system... Finding two planets in resonant orbits, should not be considered very suprising either. In fact the first extrasolar planets discovered were in resonant orbits (three around PSR 1527 (I think I got the ID right)). Maybe it was suprising then, but a plethora of papers have been published on the system, so that should have been expected to show up eventually. True some formation mechanisms require a stage with large tidal effects (red giant for the PSR system), but those theorists can use the PMS stage for this system, although that may put some interesting requirements on the time to form the planets.
Oh yeah, analyzing resonant orbits from radial velocity data can be especially complicated. So I wouldn't be too suprised if one of them turned out to be a mistake. On the other hand, the complications can provide very strong and dramatic confirmation of resonant orbits (via the objects mutual pertubations), if the data is good enough and the time scales are short compared to the observations. They may already have that (in which case they were very cautous) or they maybe announcing it hoping this critiism will help them justify making more observations. I haven't seen the data yet, so I just don't know...
Anyway, nice work, guys. Please keep the observations coming.
No, that's a myth. The myth has been uncritcally accepted by a huge number of historians of science and scientists, including, and perhaps most importantly, by Thomas Kuhn. It's still a myth, and it was in fact completely debunked by Owen Gingerich 30 years ago. He has been fighting it ever since, but it dies slowly.
The point is, they never improved the observations, so there were no need to improve the model. Gingerich recomputed the Alfonsine Tables, and showed that they were based on a purely Ptolemaic model, even the input parameters were almost identical to the ones used by Ptolemy himself.
I wrote a paper titled "Some popular myths about the history of astronomy" (214 kB, gzipped Postscript) where I attempt to sum up debunking done of three popular myths.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
While we're at it, the LGM grad student's name was Jocelyn Bell, now added Burnell, and here's her homepage.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
To be less extravagant, it could be just 14x the size of jupiter with a lot of companion moons one of which might be the size of jupiter :-)
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
the AC above captures most of it, but basically the real problem with all this 'whats outside the matter' stuff is a conceptual/philosophical one. You know that you've heard that relativity means matter 'curves' space, well to a large degree matter defines space as well. Basically it goes like this:
you can get from the standard equations of electricity an magnetism a equation for an 'electromagnetic wave' that travels at a fixed speed. (maxwells equations)
notice that this equation is true whatever speed you are traveling at etc, make a conceptual leap and realise that these 'light rays' define a metric on space. i.e. that space isnt cartesian/euclidian but the that the only sensible definition of a straight line is the path which light would take between two points.(thank einstien for this baby).
Realise that the 'distance' between two places is the length of the path light takes. Realise that therefore anywere that light cannot get is not any distance away, as there is no such path (you can view this as infinate distance if you want, but its truely outside the remit of the distance function).
realise that there is therefore nothing meaningful (in the sense of distance or matter or time, i.e. space) outside of the places were light can reach from the universe.
realise that as a space-time object the universe is bounded by the fact that after n years from the big bang it can be at most a 'sphere' of radius n light years.
now as light speeds heads outward from the center of the universe
- it keeps going for ever- infinate universe
-it slows down, but never quite reaches zero speed, it also never quite makes it past a certain distance away from the center- open finite universe, is finite, the is, as I said earlier --nothing-- outside it, it is a black hole.
--it slows bown, stops and 'falls' back towards the center- closed finite universe.
this last one includes the sphere-like possibility, the easiest way to think of this is that a satalite does this and reached a circular orbit. It may or my not collapse.
Now on a personal level i think the big bang theory is right(ish) I thing we live 'metauniverse' that periodically collapses., i think that its essentially the donut like, with the 'centre' of the universe being a black hole (i.e. the gap in the donut). (NB this is a 4-d donut (torus) im talking about)[it may actually be the surface of a 5-d donut im talking about, i cant do these thing in my head].
btw, thats not even a patch on how fucked up it really is.
disclaimer:I only really know some maths, In my opinion most of this is true, regardless of the actually physics involved, I may well be wrong.
What is the speed of gravity?
Perhaps someone with more background in physics could answer this one for me. If all mass is always exerting a force on all other mass, if mass is destroyed (via nuclear reactions or whatever) how long does it take for the change in force that was once being exerted by the object that was destroyed to stop acting on other masses? Is this instant?
These scientists used ultra-sensative gravity measurement tools to discover these planets, could something similar not eventually be used for instantaneous communication accross the universe?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I realise all this, if you read the note I was replying to he says he doesnt know any cosmology. I am was more trying to point out that our usual concepts of distance etc break down at these levels. An the difficulties invovled.
..In an infinite universe everything that can happen will a happen.... boys by poining out that in a infinate set of distinct results the possiblility that any off them will happen at anyone time is 0. It may be wrong but it provokes thought and breaks these wolly misconceptions people have about the nature of topology/infinity/continuity etc etc.
I realise that i was playing fast and loose, and mixing relativistic newtonian and big bang type theories, but I still defend a lot of what I said.
1) when I say matter i mean matter/energy, i realise this isnt clear. I also say places that light cant get to not places wihtout matter. My point is that something (a point of space time) is in our universe if and only if there exists a light path between it and us. My real point is that the universe can be closed, bounded and still not inside anything.
2)a metric topology IS either closed and bounded OR open and bounded OR infinate (assuming it reasonably homogenous and smooth), the light rays coming from the 'center' are from the interior, aproaching what would be the boundary if the object that is the universe were embeded in a euclidean space of one dimesion higher (this obviously assumes it is such that you can do this, if not he idea still has some conceptual validity)
Now to be a real pedant you should really be thinking of a 4 dimesional static space with time represented by a metric along the 'time axis'. My understanding was that this shape is bound by the light cone, I realise this may be wrong.
My objective was to provide a neater conceptual framework, I admit it breaks at all sort of levels, so does cosmology, that half of my point really
Its like dismissing the
btw like i said i only really know the maths.
The current methods of planet detection,
mainly light doppler shift, can only see large,
fast bodies- generally larger than a tenth of Jupiter and
an orbit under two months. This has to do with
the amount of doppler shift that can be measured
over a long period of time. Therefore, we are
going to see the strange stuff first: large and
fast and probably out of equillibrium.
Future space-based methods may have earth-type
sensitivity.
Just in case anybody is still reading this story, I just found an article by her, which is very amusing. And she says it was OK that he got it. I must admit that I tend to think that she's wrong on that one, I think she should have had it.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid