Earth-Sized Planets Confirmed -- But They're Dead

tizo writes "Robert Britt wrote an interesting article about the discovery of three Earth-sized planets confirmed after ten years of controversy. They orbit a pulsar, a neutron stars spinning very rapidly. Researchers pinned down the masses by watching how the planets affect pulses of energy coming from the star. All other known planets around other stars are much bigger (like Jupiter) and were found using other techniques (Doppler effect of main star moving in a close circle because of influence of the planet or direct transit over line of sight)."

Comments

Of course they are dead...

[Sevn]

EVERYBODY knows that class M planets almost always
end up smoking husks because the inhabitants attempt
to discover the mass of the higgs boson particle and
waste themselves.

how to find...

[Ransak]

extrasolar planets.

keep denying it...

[ceejayoz]

It always amuses me when discoveries like this get made. I've had arguments with people who claim Earth is unique, and those arguments have gone from "extrasolar planets can't exist" to "earth-sized planets can't exist" - and now, they'll likely go to "earth-sized planets in the habitable zone can't exist" (which is bullshit, because the habitable zone only applies to our particular ecosystem)...

Sigh... I imagine these same people will claim that it's all a big illusion when we discover an earth-like planet.

The're dead, Jim!

[warpSpeed]

Damit, I'm a doctor, not an astrophysist.

Not necessarily dead...

[pmz]

at least at some point in time. For example, our solar system has been around for only a fraction of the life of the Universe. Whole ecosystems and, sometimes, civilizations can come and go in a moment's time (from the Universe's point of view...if it had a point of view...well, you understand).

It is actually very unlikely that we would witness a civilization in a state similar to our own. They would most likely be millions or billions of years behind or ahead of us. Would we even be able to recognize one even a million years ahead of us? It seems life forms like to do things exponentially...

Re:There is an infinite number of earth like plane

[Larthallor]

Actually, it depends on what you mean by "contact". If you mean two-way communication, I happen to agree. We'd have to get EXTREMLY lucky to be close enough in time and space to a sufficiently similar species to be able to hold an effective conversation.

However, we have a much better shot at hearing the echoes of long dead civiliations coming to us from other systems. Remember that each signal goes flying out in a sphere around the transmitter at the speed of light. Therefore, much of the statistical problems with time/space coincidence go away. We are currently being bathed in emissions from systems 4.5 light years to nearly 14 billion light-years away. That's a lot of history to be receiving at one time and there's a shot that some of those emissions will be coming from machines created by intelligent beings.

Of course, the idea of sitting in a radio observatory listening to the whispers of a race that's been dead longer than our planet has existed is a lot less exciting than coming out of hyperspace, engines audibly blazing in the vacuum as the crew realizes that "that's no moon." Still, it would be pretty exciting to me.

Earth-Sized Planets Confirmed -- But They're Dead

[cgenman]

My goodness, can you imagine what would happen if we found an Earth-sized planet that was alive? What would it eat?

It would be like the Transformers Movie all over again.

Ten years of controversy?

[pq]

I don't know about "ten years of controversy" - these things have been around since 1992 and pretty widely accepted. Here's the original Nature abstract (1992) and here's Alex W's ADS entry - there's a pretty steady stream of PSR B1257+12 papers, and not much in the way of controversy.

But yes, it is extraordinarily neat!