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Several Extrasolar Planets May Be Optical Illusions
person-0.9a writes "Seems that a few of the extrasolar planets detected via their sun's wobble might be written off according to a CNN article. You can also read it about it in New Scientist."
Space aliens activating their planet-wide cloaking device?
Only a small number of planets are cast into doubt, those being ones around "new" stars. A very large majority of the extrasolar planets found are around very old stars.
In the article it's described not as an optical illusion - it was a spectral illusion.
I can now go to my grave knowing that at least once in my life I used the term "spectral illusion" in a serious discussion.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
IIRC, they like to wobble wobble.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
It seems that if we have discovered 100 'planets' and 95% of them really are planets, we have discovered an interesting occurance which happens to about 5% of the stars that are capable of supporting planets.
Isn't there something we can learn from these stars? They seem to be unstable at best if they have spots that large on them. Maybe we can use this information to learn more about the formation of stable vs unstable stars.
--
Mike
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
An astronomy prof described astronomy as that in a frosh astro course. In particular, we were discussing methods of determining stellar distance. For stars fairly close we use an ultra reliable method called paralactic displacement. For methods beyond that, we start using methods that basically say "as long as our theories about how such and such behaves turn out to be true, this method of determining stellar distance should hold true."
This article just goes to show how fragile human knowledge is. But this is a good thing, and part of the natural progression of science.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
where Holly mistook some dust for a black hole.
A collective whoops might be heard from some observatories.
It seems strange to me that the reason the planets were found not to exist is because the sunspots on the surface of the star somehow masqueraded as doppler shifts, thereby creating the illusion that a doppler spectroscopy observation had found a planet. This is the scenario that both news sources allude to. It seems much more likely that the giant sunspot would fool an astronomer using the so called transit photometry method of planet detection, whereby the transit of a planet in front of the stars disk dimms it slightly, having the same effect that a large sunspot would as it traverses the rotating stars viewable surface. Can anyone who knows more about this story explain what really happened?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
they thought pluto was an opticial illusion too...I guess the only way they would prove that is build a spaceship fly out there and tell us
The only thing that we know about them - is that they send
us 1-photon thick ray. It's entirely possible that we are enclosed in some sphere made as a large planetarium and the stars are just small sphere holes...
The diameter of sphere can be 1 light year or even less...
... is that one of them turned out to be my wife.
No, sir, you did not. I believe that honor belongs to PrinceGrammarTroll.
I love to see the way the story progresses. First, the Scientific American article says ONE found planet, which was suspect all along, has been disproven, and they do not expect this to apply to many other planets because it is a particularly young star.
The CNN article turns the statement from a negative to a positive and says 95% are secure and 5% NEED TO BE CHECKED IN MORE DETAIL
Then it gets posted on slashdot and ONE becomes SEVERAL.
Now Wildcard has concluded that the 5% that are "unsure" do have this wild sunspot activity, and that they constitute 5% of the stars capable of supporting planets.
Oh crap, I just fed a troll, didn't I. Shame.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Like the moon?
sulli
RTFJ.
It's a good thing that this story linked to the CNN front page, because I couldn't remember what the URL is! Thanks, Slashdot.
Yeah the telescopes are not strong enough to see the planets, so they look at the star, if the star wobbles, they believe it has planets orbiting it.
Would make sence if some didnt have planets....
keanmarine.com
Quoteth the article:
"But the researchers do not believe that many other extra-solar planets will have to be scrapped. This is because large sunspots are usually found only on young stars and most planet discoveries have orbited older ones.
"All the other cases are pretty solid," Donahue adds. "In almost every case so far, the star has been old.""
Sounds like it's just the one planet that isn't really a planet, doesn't it?
So where did the "several" in the title come from?
Fuck you, pal. If we wanted professional editors, we'd hire them. If you think you can run a better site, let's see it. Otherwise, fuck off you whiny little cunt.
--
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Then WHAM!!!
Now I'm stuck here. Anyone know where I can buy secondhand trilithium crystals and a really good radar system? Apparently, mine sucked.
the fourth rock from the sun (Mars) is REALLY there despite what the article CLEARLY states!?
I think that you need to stop with the 'shrooms man, your theories are messed up.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
...that Frito Lay's "Planet Lunch" is just an optical illusion as well? And here I thought I was doing something good saving my little cousins those "ploid" things...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
"So in this case you'd link "read about it" or "read about it in New Scientist". A link comprising the words "New Scientist" should link to the main site. "
Yeah!! We're way too busy to click the first link that pops up when you put 'New Scientist' in Google!
"Derp de derp."
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
Is "sunspots" accurate? Wouldn't it be more correct to call them "starspots" instead?
So this is from Tennesse State University? I remember years ago when I was in Tennessee, I had my own problems with the stars wobbling... and the moon, and the street lights, and the buildings, and so on. Had nothing to do with planets. Had everything to do with being in Lynchburg, home to the Jack Daniels distillery.
Get yourself a flask of Old No. 7 and you can induce a damn fine wobble in your own solar system.
It's a good thing we figured that out before we sent a multi-generational starship to explore.
Henry and his colleagues took a new look at the star identified as HD 192263, which both California and Swiss researchers said in 1999 had large, gaseous Jupiter-like planet swinging around it in a tight orbit.
The fact that this particular planet is not a planet at all actually neatly solves a dilemma that scientists had with this discovery in the first place. If I recall correctly, the fact that this was an apparent gas-giant type planet so close to its star threw a monkey wrench into the standard theory about star system formation. The standard theory calls for only those planets sufficiently distant from the primary to retain their primordial gas envelopes. The planets closer to the star would have theirs blown off by the intense solar wind generated by the star when it first ignites. I believe the technical term for this phenominon is the T-Tauri wind.
Naturally, the idea of gravitational capture after the star was formed is cited as an alternate explanation, but it would take a rather precise vector for the planet to be captured into such a tight orbit without crashing into the star or being flung out into space. This new information solves the problem,
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
These aren't the planets we're looking for.
Move along.
Move along. Move along.
OK. How can we, as a platform moving through space, spot a distant object, also moving through space, and say with any accuracy that the object is X distance from us. It seems a lot like measuring the distance between rafts on a river by moving from the front of your raft to the rear of your raft and calculating the angles. It may give a ballpark, but the margin for error would be enormous. Especially when you are measuring angles comparable to the width of a dime on the moon.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
we need to stop dreaming and start thinking of viable ways to exploit and expand to the current space around us. planets are just pretty little baubles that distract people from the real task at hand.
i for one do not care when a new planet is found, even the thought of a communique from a far-off civilization holds little appeal to me unless it's packed with information. i'm being realistic when i say these things, we've already shit on our planet long enough to begin to outstay our welcome, we have to look for new living room fast and a planet we have no hope of getting to in 100 lifetimes might as well be non-existant.
now show me news about a snazzy new propulsion method and i'll be jiggling.
(* I had this dream once where you could see reflections of the earth in the night sky. It only happened once in a great while, like a comet or something, so everyone was outside trying to look. It was a pretty trippy dream. *)
Well, I once had a dream that I was a purple toad and that I ate with my butt and went potty with my mouth. However, I died when Nepolean piled too many war maps on top of me while cleaning out his 12-foot roledex, and then I woke up.
I stopped eating spicy cheese-stakes after that.
(I'll give you 5 bucks if you don't mod me "off topic")
Table-ized A.I.
Unfortunately this is only one of many "hot Jupiters" as they're called. The prevalence of these odd planets is primarily due to an observation bias, as our method of detection is only sensitive to large-mass objects close to a star. Thus, when you look, and see a lot of "hot Jupiters", go fig, that's all you could detect.
Giant planets with orbital radii 1 AU are not, however, completely impossible to understand. The current theory is that they form out beyond the ice-condensation point (this is what allows gas giants to balloon to such a huge size/mass), and then some mechanism forces them to slowly migrate inward toward the star. They've managed to do this in simulations, however, it's not a wonderfully good explanation. It doesn't, after all, explain why Jupiter is where it is for us.
And if you were a true religous zealot, you would capitalize any personal pronoun used to mention your precious God. That's how the Bible does it, how any modern writing about God does it, and how you should do it.
All hail Humanity, the only thing worth believing in.
lol
:)
When this was posted here it got modded down to -1, why's it funnier this time round?
IIRC, when they first started looking for extrasolar planets, they spotted a wobble in a star's spectrum that they were convinced was caused a planet. So they watched, calculated and predicted the wobble's movement over a large period of time.
The orbital period was found to be roughly 365 and a quarter days. Then someone noticed they'd forgotten to take one or two things into account. Like the Earth's orbit round the Sun.
They admitted to feeling a little foolish.
Well, it's more fun than thinking.
Move to the UK, where the age is 16 and Charlotte Church gets on the front pages of newspapers.
She's not my type though.
Anyway I thought in the USA you could marry someone when they are 13, or is that only if they are your cousin? Jerry Lee Lewis sparked controversy here about that some while ago.
Now I have to change my universal galactic conquest map.
They better get it right this time, bloody amateurs.
Planet Enron, planet Worldcom, planet Tyco ...
it feels like one
No, it looks like it feels like one.
I found this article very comforting. I've been trying for a long time now to wrap my brain around the idea of an especially big gas giant, orbiting a star down around 0.001AU, with the only observable effect being just a bit of apparent redshifting? No violent flashes as the star snarfs up the red giant until it's just a rock (or diamond? )core? I suspect that all the giant, ultrashort period planets so far discovered, are false positives, attributable to this effect.
Not only has it been posted before...
m l !!!
It's a complete rip from google-cache://spiralx.dyndns.org/texts/troll1.ht
Mod this down...it's karma whoring!
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
for something as simple as www.newscientist.com ?
For fucks sake save some bandwidth and click here.
Get your Unix fortune now!