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

So..

[hookedup]

Did the sim come with built in monsters/disasters?

Accuracy

[Slick_Snake]

Given that we only have a small sample size to base simulations of world formations how accurate could this be. We have never seen an actual formation of planets and can only infer what happens. It amazes me how pompous we humans are in thinking we know everything. At one point we were sure the world was flat, that everything was made of four elements, and that lightning was thrown by a large man wearing a toga.

Albert Einstein -
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Re:Accuracy

[Scarblac]

- He said, on a web page that he connected to using a super-fast computer, built with loads of exotic materials like plastics we refine from dead dinosaurs, over a huge network of copper wires and glass fiber, etc etc. That you can post here is absolutely incredible.

And yet we haven't seen a single electron. Ever. How accurate can our simulations be? This "electricity" thing can never work.

Re:Accuracy

[RevAaron]

What more do you have in science than inference from known data? What more do scientists have than making a conclusion from the data, having that conclusion challenged with new data and then forming something new?

Sorry, but some of us aren't willing to just sit on our hands, isolating ourselves from the universe or our natural surroundings.

Plenty of humanity is pompous, yes- including a lot of non-scientists. A real scientist may be pompous in his personal life, but in his view of science, no. Any scientist that thinks she knows everything isn't a scientist but some sort of goofball who thinks she is.

Astronomers, astrophysicists and other scientists have a lot of data on what makes up the universe. They take this and plug it into a simulation. It's far from perfect, but how else are we going to get answers other than plugging away, putting forth some ideas, and then refining them?

Note usage of the word "suggests" in literature like this. That is what they mean. So often people with non-scientific brains can't think along the lines of uncertainy, seeing their world as a composite of blacks and whites. When they see that a simulation "suggests" that water worlds are relatively common they take it to mean that some bunch of know-it-all whitecoats are proclaiming to the world that we'll find one earth-like world in every solar system.

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: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.

Re:Accuracy

[Slick_Snake]

There is one thing you are overlooking we can test our theories on electrons and refine them. When is the last time you went to a remote star to check and see if their number crunching predicted what is really there. Lots of data and lots of processing doesn't me squat unless the data is good and the theories are sound. I can take lots of numbers and manipulate them on 400 computers and conclude that "Barney the Purple Dinosaur" is really Osama Bin Ladin, but that doesn't mean that its true. Verification is what separates the jackasses from real scientists.

Re:Accuracy

[NanoGator]

"This whole thing is one expensive guess, nothing more nothing less."

If it's wrong, it's wrong. BFD. It's still an interpreted collection of data, and over time it'll improve. It's called science, and it's the basis of a lot of things you take for granted.

Chill. Give the people working on it a little credit instead of trying to shoot it down because it's early in development.

"using" this sim

[RevAaron]

you love sims like this? I find it pretty doubtful you've ever used a sim like this in any "home version." this isn't simfarm. it like doesn't have any snazzy openGL renderings of planets being born, one star system at a time, making a picture of the galaxy you can zoom around in by holding down the control- and meta-keys as modifiers of axis. It's a big and ugly number crunching beast that spits out some probabilities. fun, if you know what the numbers mean, but mostly worthless to an outsider.

though i suppose someone could write a GUI front end that just takes the probability matrix it spits out and generate a random solar system based on the numbers, along with total mass, etc etc. But I could do that now with some guesses at the numbers and it wouldn't be much different...

Re:"using" this sim

[Urkki]

Actually I believe it really simulates actual star system formation (44 different simulations, according to the article). It should be relatively easy to create snappy 3D animations of each of those 44 simulations you could zoom around to your heart's content.

Of course that still doesn't make a sim-style game since after initial parameters are set there's nothing to *do*, just let the simulation run and see how the system develops.

Hmm, sounds a lot like Stair and Truck Dismount games, so perhaps it'd still make a fun game after all ;)

Impossible to detect Earthlike planets?

[meadowreach]

From the article: "It currently is impossible to detect Earthlike planets around other stars."

As I am not overly familiar with astronomy, why is this the case?

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.

Re:Water rich planets not very nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...you do realise that the Earth is a water-rich planet of the type they're talking about, right?

Like islands in the ocean

[Jesrad]

Reading the article I can't help but think of all the stellar systems around as archipels of islands spread in a huge ocean. The other islands near ours might be inhabited, too ? That's one more reason to start sending "smoke signals". Or perhaps the current electromagnetic madness we emit permanently might suffice ?

Planetary Sim results I'd like to see...

[Baron_Yam]

I'd love to see a series of sims run on a modified Earth model - each sim run with only 1 parameter changed, and then examined to see what would happen to life as we know it, here on Earth.

For instance, play with the Earth's mass, water content, distance from the Sun, or mass of its satellite. It would be interesting to have an educated guess as to how much each of these values could differ from reality before Earth wouldn't be Earth anymore, and how things would change as we approached those limits.

Re:Planetary Sim results I'd like to see...

[no reason to be here]

An interesting thought, but, damn, there are a lot of variables. Apart from the ones you named, you could also play with varying the amounts of other important for life elements and chemical (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.), change the kind of star our sun is, varying the amounts of life-affecting compounds (like methane). It's really mind boggling. I suppose we could just limit the things one could vary in the simulation. It would still be an interesting exercise in trying to determine the upper and lower bounds of what might constitute a "class M" world.

Chicken-Egg Problem

[jazman_777]

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.

So, this is not based in reality _quite yet_. There is only one data point!

Relative Balance of H, O, and C

[G4from128k]

The formation of water worlds would seem to hinge on the relative abundances of H, O, and C as well as the ability of other heavier elements to bind these crucial light elements. The inner system of a forming star seems like a hostile place for hydrogen. Between the hot accreting planets, their low gravitiation pull, and stellar winds, I'd bet that its too easy for a small rocky inner world to lose all its hydrogen and other volatiles.

Assuming that hydrogen is retained (locked up in the rocks), it then becomes a matter of the C-O balance. If carbon is too prevalent, it will scavenge all the oxygen from the atmosphere and lead to a CO2/hydrocarbon atmosphere (other things, like FE also scavenge oxygen). Only if there is enough oxygen will you get water.

I wonder how accurately the sim modelled the balance of elements and chemical reaction cycles.

Re:exploration

[NanoGator]

"We have 2/3's of a watery planet right here, that we are yet to explore in great detail."

I hate comments like this. As if astronomers can just take up deep sea diving and marine biology.

Let's settle this once and for all: Diversification is a GOOD thing. We do not gain anything by 'focusing' on what YOU think is important. I'm a 3d artist. Do you think that somehow qualifies me to do cancer research?

So knock it off. We do a little bit of everything on this planet. Over-focus on one thing, and you neglect other areas of research that benefit man-kind. You're not being insightful here.

Qlbthrx, look at what my sims are doing!

[sam_handelman]

Glbsnoop: On this one simulated planet, these "humans" have created a simulator to see how likely earthlike planets are to form! Isn't that rich?

Qlbthrx: Very amusing, Glb. Now turn off the computer and take out the trash.

Glbsnoop: Fine. CLICK

I designed things like this for playing...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...the RPG Traveler as a kid. I've a hunch that my simulations were as accurate at these.

Adding to the

[Wardish]

This data just adds to the mystery of where are they. Fermi Paradox

By all that's reasonable, if life is common, and this data just increases that likelihood, then it's extremely likely that someone somewhere would have colonized the galaxy.

Of course there are only a few reasonable conclusions (reasonable as I see it anyway...)

1. We're the only "intelligent" life around. Meaning that life may be common but intelligence as we see it is such a long shot that we are the only or the first.

2. We're the only life around. Meaning that a unique combination of events combined to produce life on this planet.

3. We're not the only intelligent life but the other's haven't reached this neck of the galaxy yet.

4. We're not the only intelligent life but we're off limits for whatever reason.

Feel free to juggle the odds or toss in new ones...

Re:Adding to the

[Urkki]

My favourite is intelligence inevitably wiping itself out before they can expand to other star systems. Something like, there's some really nifty way of launching interstellar ships using the stars energy output or tapping energy from parallel universe or something, but actually using it will unexpectedly cause the star go nova, wiping everyone out. Or maybe in 10 years someone discovers a way to make artifical neutron stars, then two of them escape, collide at the center of earth and collapse into a black hole blowing earth apart.

Anyway, I have no trouble believing that we could be alone in our galaxy (for whatever reason, I can imagine many reasons why intelligent life would be very very rare), so I don't see a paradox here really. Perhpas after (if ever) we have lot of real data, like having visited a 100 other star systems, and everything then suggests that intelligence should be abundant but we've found no sign of it other than ourselves, then I'd say it's a paradox. But with our current data, talking about a paradox is a bit of sensationalism.

But the real question for /. is...

[Imperator]

Are any of those worlds "duplicates" of other worlds?