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Oldest Planet Ever Discovered
crymeph0 writes "NASA has found the oldest known planet in a globular star cluster in the constellation Scorpius. At 13.7 billion years old, it's just slighly (~1 billion years) younger than the universe itself. Get more info from HubbleSite"
It's a pity that we still have to detect planets by there gravitational pull on the suns they orbit. This will only alow us to "see" gaseous giants (like jupiter) who have lotsa mass. The earth-like planet have much too little mass to ever see with this method.
I know people are tring to detect the reflection of the stars (of it's sun) light, but that's pretty hard since you have to filter it out from the light directly recieved from that star. But if we would really try and be lucky, could we see the planet directly when another planet is blocking our view of the star?
Just my $0.02. $0.04 with inflation correction and VAT.
Yes, we knew that stars formed in low metallicity environments. But it might have been that the first generation of stars didn't have enough heavy elements in their disks to form planets. Now we know that at least one did form an object with a mass a few times that of Jupiter. Maybe this planet formed by direct collapse (like a star or brown dwarf), which would imply that maybe many modern giant planets form by direct collapse. Or maybe this planet got started by accretion (like most scientists think modern giant planets formed), in which case I suspect some theorists will have to think of some new wrinkles to explain how that can happen with so very few heavy elements in it's disk.
If they did then they are an incredibly short sighted race, so much so that they probably wouldn't have got much beyond "banging the rocks together", let alone to radio astronomy. We are detecting Jupiter sized planets with a growing regularity, yet do we conclude from this that there are no other Earth type planets in the same star system, located in the zone necessary to support life as we know it? No. So why should they?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
It may be the oldest planet on record based on visiuals from it's light that finally reached Earth for observation. But in reality, the star could have turned super nova for all we know. Again, what we are seeing is a delay in observation.
Life is not for the lazy.
Read again what I wrote. I have said nothing about how aliens think, but about the categories they do not think in.
> I mean, we humans already know (from quantum mechanics) that the concepts of space and time
- ra ndom-science-fiction-fans
> are of limited value as models of reality, although we cannot escape the way our brains
> are hardwired. Extraterrestrials will probably think in completely different categories, which
> are as much beyond our imagination as space and time are to them.
I think it is a fairly model independent assumption to say that any intelligent lifeform must be rather complex and therefore orders of magnitudes larger than the typical quantum mechanical regime of atoms and molecules.
To be able to have a level of consciousness it is also a fairly safe assumption that the physical proportions of a being ('s "brain") must be small enough that the speed of light doesnt seriously restrict the exchange of information between the various parts of the brain.
Therefore any (or at the very least, most) intelligent life should exist in a regime where the classic concepts of space and time are an EXCELLENT approximation to reality.
Why you think it is UNLIKELY that they would think in concepts of space and time* is beyond me.
*:there is btw. nothing wrong with the concepts of space and time. For instance time is NOT just a "fourth dimension" as some folks believe. And QM doesnt discard space and time.
from-a-physicist-who-is-tired-of-the-ravings-of
"the universe"
this means our universe, the universe we call home.
but what we don't know yet, and from what I understand this is still under debate, or maybe we'll never know for sure, is whether we will one day say
"this universe"
as opposed to all of the other universes, past, present and future.
I like this concept; it's kind of cool.
I would imagine that the composition of this planet would be different from the composition of our planet, provided that the globular cluster has less "recycled" supernova remnants. Or is it possible that there had already been supernova explosions prior to the time the planet was formed? Or is this some complex interrelationsip between the white dwarf, the pulsar, and the planet? Some strange type of accretion or something? If that planet contains heavier elements, then maybe it's artificially manufactured by intelligent beings! It would be cool to check it out.
Because, you know, back when I was a little lad, new discoveries were peer reviewed and independently verified before being announced as fact. Especially so when a single data source is quoted, and especially especially so when they're based on incestuous reasoning: if we're right about what gravitational wobble should look like for bodies X and Y at distance Z, then we've just found bodies X and Y, therefore the theory is right! Tenure for everyone!
Until we get Hubble II up there to take independent readings which can be independently analysed, this is a theory awaiting review. An exciting theory, but a theory. If you want to believe it, go ahead and believe it, but I'm in no hurry to pencil it in to my Big Book of the Universe.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Globular clusters are deficient in heavier elements because they formed so early in the universe that heavier elements had not been cooked up in abundance in the nuclear furnaces of stars. Some astronomers have therefore argued that globular clusters cannot contain planets. This conclusion was bolstered in 1999 when Hubble failed to find close-orbiting "hot Jupiter"-type planets around the stars of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae.
Goes to show you that even if the probability of something happening is (seemingly) very low, the numbers the Universe presents to us still make it possible. People should be careful about drawing conclusions based solely on conjecture when they're speaking of the (nearly) infinite.
You can't ride two horses with one ass
I dont see you proposing an alternative. At least the scientific community looked up and said "Gee, why is it that everything seems to be moving away from everything else. Why is there this weird microwave background radiation that comes across our TVs as static. Why ...?"
Nobody is purporting that the big bang theory or anything based off of it is fact. Anyone who believes it as fact is deluding themselves. But its a damn good explaination based on observations. This is the definition of science, is it not?
At least the scientific community has come up with some kind of explaination to the questions that arise from their big bang theory. Nobody ever said there was nothing to *make* a big bang. It just didnt exist in a form it seems you are capable of comprehending.
So in summary - its not the scientific communbity that is closed minded - they at least are providing a bunch of answers to questions posed by what they can see. Its you who is closed minded since you dont want to accept basic explainations of things we see in our universe.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
But the main thing it tells us is that planets are able to form in regions/epochs that were previously thought impossible.... Hence, the possible number of planets in the universe just went up a whole load... Hence, number possible places for life to exist just went up a load ...
Hence, greater chance of life existing spatial nearby...
(Profit?)
No, you can't wash your face in my sig!
That's just an exercise in quasi-philosophical tautology. The two situations, (i)our Universe is unique and obeys the Physics we observe, (ii)our Universe is one of many, and obeys the Physics we observe, are completely identical within the realm of experiment. To argue whether one or the other is the true situation is like trying to argue whether or not the Universe is a computer sim; every piece of 'evidence' for one case is identically 'evidence' for the other.