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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.
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Hope it has auroras like Jupiters.
I love these sort of images...
The Master Of Muppets,
CAPTAIN: TAKE OFF EVERY "SIG"!!
"That's not a planet...it's a space station..."
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.
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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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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.
What is outlandish is that the systems that they've found so far don't look like our system in terms of the distribution of matter by distance from the star. This raises question about whether the models of planetary formation that we have (which were designed by looking at our own system) are adequate to produce these kinds of mass distributions.
The simplest explanation for these apparent anomalies is that we're not getting an unbiased sample in the systems that we are finding. Our methods for finding solar systems (look for periodic wobbles in the spectrum of a star) is biased to finding large planets near stars and large planets in tidally locked orbits. And look! This is what we've found.
The real question is could we detect our own solar systems at these distances (>100 LY from Earth) with these methods. I'm no astronomer, but I don't think so.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
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...
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?
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"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
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
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?
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A lot of people and companies make bad investments. Often this is because they fail to understand the market. The fact that you expect a return on an investment does not entitle you to such a return.
You've mistaken assumptions - bad assumptions - for rules. The NYT has no moral or legal right to tell me that I must display ads on my screen, any more than they could prevent me from running the dead-trees version through a machine that blacked out the ads it contained.
They could use technical means to try to force the ads on me; I could use more technical means to avoid them. But after a point, the advertisers are going to realize that forcing ads on those who don't want to see them is useless.
No they don't. TANSTAAFL. The consumer pays for advertising-supported services via a higher cost for the advertised goods. In fact, even those who don't use the advertising-supported services pay those prices.
I suppose you want to make it illegal to hit the mute button, or change channels, or go take a piss, during TV commercials? Hey, I've got it: everyone must spend one hour in a "Clockwork Orange" apparatus, being programmed to be good little consumers. That should please your corporate masters.
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