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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".
Posting anonymously to avoid any accusations of being a karma whore.
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.
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
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.
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.