Planetary Formation Sim Suggests Many Water Worlds

StefanJ writes "Researchers at the University of Washington -- supported by the NASA's Astrobiology Institute, its Planetary Atmospheres program, and Intel -- have come up with a new simulation of planetary formation that suggests that not only are terrestrial planets (small, rocky worlds, as opposed to gas giants) are common, but that water worlds (the subset of terrestrials that have sufficient water to support Life As We Know It) may be plentiful as well. A key factor as to how 'wet' a planetary system's terrestrial worlds get: The eccentricity of the orbits of the system's jovian worlds. It will be a while before we have telescopes good enough to actually see terrestrial planets and spec out their atmospheric composition, allowing us to reality-check these simulations. But it's still cool to play with sims like this. I can't wait for the home version! (Emergency backup link to Science Daily article based on the press release.)"

Comments

Re:Accuracy

[BurritoJ]

I take it from your post that you are unfamiliar with the computing term 'GIGO'?

The only way to determine if the model is accurate is to check it against reality. All computer simulation for engineering and scientific work must be checked against experimental results to be validated before it is trusted as a predictive tool. Even after this verification, there are cases where it will be inaccurate and the educated and experienced user needs to be constantly aware of those limitations.

However, if you believe everything that you read on a computer or is a result of a computer simulation, please contact me and I will sell you my Wall Street Stock Market Simulator, Guaranteed to predict future performance and make you unimaginably wealthy!!!

Cheers

PS... GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out

Re:Impossible to detect Earthlike planets?

[posa]

They look at the movement if the star then looking for planets. A "earthlike" planet is to small to move the star a detectable distance.

Water rich planets not very nice...

[Frans Faase]

... because the are also much bigger, meaning that the G force will be much higher. Not that it makes life impossible, but it will create enourmous presures. For life forms on such a planet it would be very difficult to explore space, I guess. Simply, because the escape speed will be very high as well.

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet we haven't seen a single electron. Ever.

Utter and complete tosh. We have had detectors sensitive enough to detect a single electron for decades. We have never yet had detectors sensitive enough to detect the abundance of water on a rocky world circling another star. Hell, we've never had detectors sensitive enough to detect the abundance of water on another rocky world circling this star!

Re:Accuracy

[Scarblac]

We have not seen an electron. Just traces of things that theory tells us are caused by electrons.

Similar to how we've seen lines for water in spectra that have been construed to be water on exoplanets.