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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.
> 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.