Slashdot Mirror
Planets May Form in Hundreds, Not Millions, of Years
Seanasy writes "Recent simulations on the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Terascale Computing System suggest that planet formation may take a lot less time than previously thought. The results were published in SCIENCE."
I'm going to go build my planet RIGHT NOW!!
AFKCFPSBBI1H
(Away from keyboard currently forming planet should be back in 1 hour)
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
The headline will be: "Um, planets may be formed in slightly under a week. Scientists all over shocked and suprised." :-)
It has been discovered that scientists actually set there game of Civ^W^W^W planet simulator to run at several times normal speed. More on this as it developes.
Why not fork?
Planets obey Moore's law
God made the Earth about 6000 years ago so it couldn't have formed in millions of years. Similarly evidence from the petrochemical industry is now demonstrating that coal and oil can form in short periods of time too. Ultimately all science will lead back to scripture.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The study actually looked at gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. My understanding is that these planets formed by scooping up gas as they orbited the sun. The interior rocky planets of the inner disk probably took longer to achieve final shape, though their materials would have been the first to cool into solid form.
Neat stuff.
Here's the Science abstract:
A Quickie Birth for Jupiters and Saturns
Richard A. Kerr
On page 1756, a group of astrophysicists presents computer simulations of the nascent solar system that suggest a possible mechanism for the formation of the gas giant planets: runaway fluctuations in the density of the protoplanetary disk. In their model, gas giants of about the right size, number, and orbit condense from a disk of gas to look like very young Jupiters. The trick was to simulate the process in fine detail so that the gas's own gravity could take over.
Full Text
After checking out all of the articles I did not see a mention as to a possible recalculation or restatement of the age of planets in our solar system.
Is it a possibility that any of the planets, including earth, are much younger than previously thought?
If so it could offer some information on how quickly life actually "forms".
Odd, they have a different abstract from the summary. Sorry, I don't have a full subscription to Science.... not that I would blow their copyright and post it here. :)
To wit:
Formation of Giant Planets by Fragmentation of Protoplanetary Disks
Lucio Mayer,1*dagger Thomas Quinn,1* James Wadsley,2 Joachim Stadel3dagger
The evolution of gravitationally unstable protoplanetary gaseous disks has been studied with the use of three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations with unprecedented resolution. We have considered disks with initial masses and temperature profiles consistent with those inferred for the protosolar nebula and for other protoplanetary disks. We show that long-lasting, self-gravitating protoplanets arise after a few disk orbital periods if cooling is efficient enough to maintain the temperature close to 50 K. The resulting bodies have masses and orbital eccentricities similar to those of detected extrasolar planets.
1 Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
2 Department of Physics & Astronomy, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M1, Canada.
3 University of Victoria, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 3800 Finnerty Road, Elliot Building, Victoria, BC V8W 3PG, Canada.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lucio@physik.unizh.ch, trq@astro.washington.edu
dagger Present address: Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
Here's a direct link to PSC's article, which does -not- require registration (bah).
As mentioned by another post, we're talking about "Jupiter-like" gas giants, not Earths. The reason it can't take millions of years: "The problem with [the current model], however, is that if the formation process takes too long, nearby stars will, in effect, boil off the gas envelope."
Planets may form YOU!!!
Have you ever checked out the software user-reviews on Spyware Central ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H uhhh, I mean download.com? Talk about pimping for the man!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
The article says it took 30,000 processor hours to compute. The computer has 3,000 processors in it, so did it take 10 hours of actual time?
They say that they were able to include 10 times the detail of previous simulations because of the power of the machine.
Perhaps the Seti@home folks could lend some cycles to similar endeavors that are clearly related to their goals. It seems to me they could do it in less than 10 hours...
Free book: Science Toys You Can Make
No Uranus/Urectum jokes? Jesus God!
They created a planet rather quickly at the end of Titan AE. Planet Bob, wasn't it? =)
If it takes hundreds of years naturally, could modern technology (read: nonexistant future technology) speed the process up (just like medicine can help speed up the healing of a wound)?
proton != antielectron
Wow. And to think that Velikovsky was just about run out of the scientific community 50 years ago for putting forth a similar idea, among others -- that planets could form rather quickly, in years or hundreds of years, rather than the millions of years previously thought.
This is also sort of the subject of James P. Hogan's novel, Cradle of Saturn. If you've never read James P. Hogan, you should. Good, good stuff.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Whether or not you believe, or believe in believing, it begs the questions of "what does it say?" Your definition addresses faith, not content. Reading "literally" supposedly promises some sort of absolute and unassailable interpretation, but such is impossible. Only some fundamentalists even accept the 6,000-year figure -- it doesn't appear in the text and was rather inferred by certain interpreters. Ultimately someone has to make the call.
Whatever the philosophical position, creationism is not science. Approaching a question with an predetermined result in mind is not science. The creationist doctrine has its place in theology, not science, because it is by its nature a rejection of science. My primary objection is the continual pitting of evolution against creationism when the two are apples and oranges, fact and faith, and neither can disprove the other.
It takes much longer to get the fjords just right.
My deviantArt site
Where do you draw the line as when the process begins/ends?
...but how long did it take for all the parts to form like raising the pig or growing the wheat?
You have a large number of events that need to be carried out before the actuall planet sphere begins to form...
1) Matter needs to be created
2) A vast ammount of gas needs to slowly collect together.
3) A stable center of gravity needs to be distinguished
4) That gravity needs to slowly (and exponentially) gather more mass around it to finally form the planet.
But when do you start the stop-watch? Step 1... or 4?
It's like saying "I can put together a ham sandwich in 30 seconds!"
If you go back far enough, it took billions of years for that sandwich to be created... since the beginning of time...
For anyone interested in more details, this story appeared here a week ago. An interesting comment pointed out that this theory has major implications in understanding the hundred or so "hot Jupiters" that have been found around other stars. Most have orbital periods of only a few days and orbit their star at a distance less than Mercury's. This new theory may suggest that hot Jupiters are actually newly-formed gas planets and perhaps even a transient phenomena.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
Is the existence of evil in a universe created by an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good being. If you say we have free will to choose evil, then that goes against God's all-knowing nature and the ability for Mary and Jesus to always choose good. If you claim evil serves a greater purpose, then you take away the claim that all humans are of infinite value.
I'll try to wrap up one tiny detail....
The syllogism and its little brother the enthymeme date back to ancient Greece and are styles of argument. The reason the syllogism gets criticized to the point of being deprecatory is that it is easily abused.
Here:
Major premise: The universe is older than 6,000 years if some of its components took longer than 6,000 years to form.
Minor premise: The gas giants took less than 6,000 years to form.
Conclusion: The universe probably (more so than yesterday) took less than 6,000 years to form.
To me, there are several logical flaws there, and this has not a thing to do with religion. The main one is that the major premise is false; the theories concerning the age of the universe are not based on the sum of series of events. You may be making this false assumption because (to my understanding) the 6,000-year version of creationism is derived from how long various individuals lived, added to their descendants, and so on.
So the gas giants might never have formed, the estimates for the age of the universe would not change because they are indifferent to gas giants. Really, the formation of the planets is a bit trivia in the view of the universe, and the difference in formation time proposed here, mere millions of years, are the 0.01% insignificant blink of an eye to a universe thought to be over 10 thousand million (billion) years of age, and a solar system of a sprightly 4.5 billion (again with a "b").
Another trivial bit of semantics is that you misuse the word "hypothesis." Science really doesn't use hypothesis in this way, and when scientists speak of theories they don't mean educated guess, but a framework to explain a fact. So the age of the universe is a fact to a very high degree of certainty; it is older than 6,000 years by billions; and various theories strive to explain the nature of or refine the fact. But whether a theory of good or bad does not alter the fact, and the age of the universe is something so well established that it is inconceivable it will someday turn out to be 6,000 years. Besides the huge difference between the estimates, there's enough evidence on earth -- even the weathering of a mountain takes millions of years -- the pyramids haven't weathered much in that time -- and I won't even bring up the fossil record.
But again, even if these events happened faster than we can imagine, the age of the universe is judged by independent data.
The only remaining hope for a doctrinaire 6,000-year view would be that the universe and earth were created pre-aged, but I doubt the Bible supports that view. I don't care how many people believe it, the majority has erred often enough before, is the name of many causes. You acknowledge that truth isn't determined democratically anyway -- then turn around and say "I am being persecuted for what are mainstream beliefs in much of the US." No, you are being criticized (persecuted? that's a little much) not for relating "popular" beliefs but for your faulty logic concerning astrophysics, and science generally. Don't take refuge in "mainstream." And I am not claiming that God lies, just that falliable humans don't get the message right sometimes.
I would think it obvious that the Bible makes heavy use of metaphor, and that things like the 6 days of creation may not be at all literal. Of course I'm not the first to wonder about this. But I think more and more people will eventually accept that the Earth is old and move on to that evolution debate, or something else. The truth of the Bible is hardly imperiled.
According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, look out! Here comes Genesis! We'll do it for you in six minutes!
They were using g=9.8 instread of G=6.67*10^-11
I know the secrets of the video game champs
Get out of here! My Grandpa is way older than that!!
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
but one with respect to the beliefs of Christians....
It is inconsistent to call onesself a Christian and also reject God as creator - regardless of your interpretation of the mechanism or timing of the creation of life.
The Bible is filled with descriptions of God as the creator of the universe. It is not just Genesis 1, or John 1, but virtually every place that lists God's resume' lists Him as creator.
If I claim to believe that aliens have visited the earth, but hold to a belief that rejects the idea of interplanetary travel, I don't actually believe what I say I believe.
Along the same lines, if I call myself a Christian and reject God as creator, I am not really a Christian.
Jesus said something similar Himself. (Mt 7:21-23)
Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers'
Going to church, maintaining a church membership, or doing good deeds doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.
I agree that there are a large number of people who might identify themselves as Christians in the world who reject God as creator. From a philosophical and logical point of view, I would agree with the previous poster that they are probably not Christians.
The other possibility is that they simply fail to understand the relationship of God as creator and redeemer of mankind to their belief in Christianity.
If a reader of this posting believes himself to be a Christian, and rejects the concept that God is the creator, please email me so that I can help demonstrate the rationale behind the importance of this concept to a Christian worldview.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
if I call myself a Christian and reject God as creator, I am not really a Christian
Nothing I wrote goes to who is the creator. I simply take issue with adherance to a 6,000-year timeline that flies in the face of so much else that we know. I also find deeply offensive the idea that anyone who rejects the 6,000-year figure is not a good Christian.
The identity of the creator, if one exists (again, I do not reject or promote God here) goes to the origin of the universe, not its age. So nothing you have said about God as creator, however fervently you believe it, is relevant to the question here.
Yet perhaps you mean that to reject the 6,000-year interpretation, developed by creationists, is to reject god as the creator. That bigoted view I do reject wholeheartedly.
"Say lah vee"
Jesus Christ, man. look up a word before you try to write it.
C'est la vie.
"That's life"
Ciao.
Yes, but Velikovsky was also run out of the scientific community because he thought Biblical and mythical miracles/catastrophes were caused by Venus being ejected from Jupiter and rampaging around the Solar System before somehow settling into its current orbit. That's still mighty unlikely.
:-)
For example, he stated that the "day the sun stood still" at Jericho, so the Israelites could take their vengeance, was caused by Venus making a close pass to the Earth. It passed just perfectly so as to stop the Earth's rotation. It then came back just one day later and perfectly restarted the rotation exactly as before.
Nevermind the fact that people didn't get flung into space when the rotation suddenly stopped... he's saying Venus passed INSIDE the orbit of the moon, twice! Don't you think they would have mentioned that somewhere in the story?
(You decide for yourself whether I was being redundant when I said "Biblical and mythical". Trying not to get too far off topic, here.)
as i recall, in tradewars 2002 you could launch a genesis torpedo into an empty sector, and create a new planet in about 5 seconds. game anyone?
Dont ask me...Im just the bass player.
What does this do to the Drake equation/formula?
And that's where we disagree. You call Titan AE science fiction; I call it fantasy. I agree that it makes very bad science fiction, but as fantasy goes, it's at least as good as the vastly more popular "Dragonball Z".
Of course, I wouldn't pay money to see either one of them...
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
Oddly enough though, Douglas Adam's Hitchikers Guide books (I happen to have been reperusing them) violate these principles every other page and yet are still excellent reads. Shrug.
Dyolf Knip
However, you're right about self-consistency and plot. Not that the time to form a giant gaseous planet is usually much relevant to any plot, but we all like our (fantasy) worlds solidly built.
Enoc