Slashdot Mirror
Looking For Intelligence
Calgacus writes "We've all read stories about extra-solar planets being found by gravitational wobbles. The Scotsman has a story here about a planet in the Fomalhaut system being discovered because of its wake through a dust cloud. It's further out than other recently discovered planets and astronomers are saying it means there's an odds-on chance of intelligent life being out there. If only there was more on Earth..."
i thought that space was absolute zero for temperature, or at least something remarkably close. how in the world are they able to get something colder on earth than they can in space?
You thought wrong. "Space" doesn't have a temperature in any very meaningful sense, but if it did it would be 3K, from the cosmic microwave background radiation. In the vicinity of a star, however, objects will reach a thermal equilibrium where the energy they absorb from solar radiation matches the infrared they radiate away. This is a lot higher in the neighbourhood of Earth orbit -- the Earth, for example, has reached a thermal equilibrium of around 285K (complicated slightly by extra heat produced by radioactive decay).
Ok. Now reread the article for what it actually says.
,who led the team,] said there was little chance of finding life on the planet because it was under constant bombardment from a surrounding belt of comets. "
"However, [Dr Holland
before that his unrelated comment to the finding was...
"Personally speaking, I think it must be odds-on that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and I think one day we will find it - or they will find us."
Please read the article all the way through before you jump to conclusions.
This space intentionally left blank.
One of the big disappointments of all the planets detected thus far is how closely they orbit their stars, making it quite unlikely that enough material was left when those systems were formed for smaller planets to form within the habitable zone of those systems.
If the big gasgiants are further away from the center of a solar system, then there is more chance that planets resembling Earth (or Mars, or Venus) will have formed.
With this discovery, it's become more likely that there is a significant amount of systems out there resembling our own solar system, and thus that we might some day discover the existance of recognizable life within those systems.
The answers to your questions are there in the article, really...it's just that the language the authors use is imprecise and hence confusing.
In simplest terms, Hubble can't "see" it because it's too dark. Optical telescopes just scoop up light in the visible spectrum; if the object you're interested in doesn't produce enough such light, then you won't see it.
SCUBA isn't looking for visible light, though; it's looking for electromagnetic radiation in a different area of the spectrum (different frequencies/wavelengths) than visible light. Since the object produces significant radiation at these frequencies, SCUBA can "see" it.
Regarding temperature: yes, it's cold where Hubble is (in the shade; it's very hot if you're in the sun), but that doesn't affect its ability to detect visible light. What matters is whether there's other visible light to interfere with the visible light it's interested in. In other words, if you're an optical telescope, you want it to be DARK around you...in an ideal world, the only source of light would be from the object you're trying to observe. Optical telescopes are looking for the difference between "absolutely dark" and "not quite absolutely dark". SCUBA, on the other hand, doesn't care about darkness, because it's not interested in visible light, but it does care very much about temperature, because at the wavelengths it deals with, heat energy affects its ability to "see", so it wants it to be COLD all around it; it's looking for the difference between "absolute zero" temperature and "not quite absolute zero".
It might help to: instead of "see", think "detect"; instead of "light", think "electromagnetic radiation"; and, consider temperature, wavelength, and frequency to all be ways of describing which part of the spectrum you're interested in.
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That spin on it seems to have come from the newspaper. I work for one of the organisations involved, and you can see the original press release on our website.
This post is strictly my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.
I work for the organisation that operates SCUBA and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.
No - you're thinking of interferometer arrays. In this case SCUBA stands for Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array:
This post is strictly my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.
Sorry that you think this is sensationalism, but this planet is sort of like what we've been looking for in the matters of even basic live existing in other locations of the universe. A large gas giant creating a debris-sink is exactly what jupiter and saturn do for our planet. They are the saftey net so to speak. Let me explain. There are thousands of roaming celestial bodies in our solar vicinity. Many of these are destined for the largest gravity well in the system, namely the sun. Well, there are planets in direct linear obstruction of these bodies and they usually just fall into the nearest gravity well they can find, usually eachother or another planet. The ONLY REASON that we haven't been wiped out is because most of these bodies tend to fall into jupiter or saturn and not reach little old earth at all. Without thos e two planets acting as graitivistic scape-goats, we'd be bombarded by every roaming rock in the heading toward Sol. (Excuse the hyperbole)
:)
What the scientists are stating is that if a planet, surrounded by debris far a way from the Folmahouth system exists, it will act as a buffer to those planets that we cannot detect. If it exists in two systems, Sol, and Folmahouth, then the "odds" are that it exists in many, (as you know, the universe is either infinite, or close enough to infinite, that only Marvin the Paranoid Android can count all the suns in it.)
So I don't think this is too sensationalist- for these reasons.
1. this wasn't printed on the front page of NYT
2. slashdot isn't much of a sensation
3. this is on the science section from the science department. If jerry springer was reporting on it, i'd buy the sensation part
4. Finding a gas giant *far_from* the sun with lots of debris around it means that there are likely smaller planets closer to the sun made up of heavy elements (like our planet) and life is likely to be present in many parts of the universe/galaxy.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'