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Interesting Planet Apparently Heating Its Star
T. Panimaesh writes "A Canadian graduate student has discovered a planet which is heating the star it rotates around. 'Evgenya Shkolnik detected a spot on HD179949 that was 700 degrees warmer than the surrounding areas and circled the star at the same pace as the planet's orbit, once every three days. First seen in 2001, it also appeared in two sets of observations in 2002. It is probably not an intrinsic feature of the star, which takes nine days to rotate. Instead, the planet appears to possess a magnetic field that interacts with the star's magnetic field.' The 'roaster' planet being studied is almost as big as Jupiter, a gas giant planet in our solar system, and has 270 times the mass of Earth. It moves at 150 Kilometres per second, completing it's orbit in just 3.5 days."
If ANYBODY here did not know that... well, kill yourself. You have no right to be anywhere near a computer, let alone a "News for Nerds" site.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Here you go: "New Clues Are Detected About Planets of Other Stars
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: January 8, 2004
ATLANTA, Jan. 7 -- For the first time, astronomers have detected a magnetic field around a planet around a distant star, offering one of the first clues to the properties of any planet outside the solar system.
Over the past decade, astronomers have found 119 planets around other stars. But because the planets are detected indirectly -- by their gravitational tug on the stars -- almost nothing is known about any of them beyond a lower limit of their masses.
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Using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, Evgenya Shkolnik, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, looked at the star HD179949, 88 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Its planet, nearly the size of Jupiter, falls in the class of "roasters," a large planet that orbits very close to its star, in this case 4 million miles. (The Earth, by contrast, is 93 million miles from the Sun.)
Ms. Shkolnik detected a spot on HD179949 that was 700 degrees warmer than the surrounding areas and circled the star at the same pace as the planet's orbit, once every three days. First seen in 2001, it also appeared in two sets of observations in 2002. It is probably not an intrinsic feature of the star, which takes nine days to rotate.
Instead, the planet appears to possess a magnetic field that interacts with the star's magnetic field.
"The hot spot is slightly ahead of the planet and appears to be moving across the surface of the star," Ms. Shkolnik said. "The best explanation for this is that it's an interaction between the planet of the star."
The findings were presented Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society here and have also been published in The Astrophysical Journal.
"The observations look legitimate to me," said Dr. Gibor B. Basri of the University of California at Berkeley, who was not involved with the research. However, the theoretical understanding is "very insufficient to be able to judge whether how such a thing would happen," he said.
The presence of a magnetic field implies metal at the core of the planet. Jupiter, which possesses a strong magnetic field, is believed to contain a core of metallic hydrogen. HD179949's planet may be inducing a hot spot on the star similar to how the magnetic fields of Io and Europa, two moons of Jupiter, induce hot spots on Jupiter.
Others have suspected that "roasters" must have strong magnetic fields or that they would have been destroyed by the winds of particles ejected from the star. A magnetic field acts as a shield that diverts electrically charged particles around the planet.".
My Stack Overflow user
A hacker from Canada has been wardriving in said area and reported that the star's hotspot is IEEE 802.11 compliant.
I wonder what use it would be with a 176yr ping time! DOH!
My Stack Overflow user
Well, just your basic law of averages. Most of the planets we've been able to find have been much larger than Jupiter. We've only recently been able to detect Jupiter-size planets.
It's not a difficult extrapolation.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Is anyone else thinking that this gas giant houses a hyper intelligent race of celestial beings? Perhaps there is a satellite array which mantains the strange orbit and prevents the large planet from colliding with the star and destroying the system. Perhaps this array has an advanced energy system which creates the heat bursts we have detected!! AHA!!! Perhaps!!!
Marques Johansson
I wonder what use it would be with a 176yr ping time! DOH!
Obviously, you aren't an Earthlink user.
TOS: A scientist (who lives alone except for his beautiful daughter) is conducting dangerous energy experiments.
TNG: Don't worry, it will be figured out in the last 15 minutes. Data and Geordi right now are trying to trace the source of unknown photocron emissions that were detected at the beginning of the episode.
DS9: You already mentioned the race of celestial beings.
Voyager: Whoever it is, I wonder if they want to eat some of Neelix's leftover burnt Antarean alpha-truffles
Enterprise: It's gotta be the Xindi.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Yet, you have to admit that the show had too many of the "Data and Geordi try to figure out strange particles/emissions/transmissions/apparitions" type.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Most likely, either tidal or mag.field effects are changing the convection patterns inside the star. All stars are _much_ hotter in the core than on the surface, it wouldn't take much to influence these boundary-condition dependant internal convective flows.
Is it really necessary to tell us that Jupiter is a planet in our own solar system? I'm not from the USA , but I assume your educational system isn't that bad!
Why is anything anything?
ATLANTA (AP) -- Stars usually heat up their family of planets, but in an amazing reversal, an astronomer has found a planet that is actually heating up its sun.
- Dan
Jupiter, a gas giant planet in our solar system
Did anyone else think they were talking about the other Jupiter?
Someone hates these cans.
A year on Mercury takes 87.97 Earth days; it takes 87.97 Earth days for Mercury to orbit the sun once.
Logicly the planet must be closer much closer than Mercury is to our Sun. I could just be a phenomenon similar to the tides caused by the moon.
Obviously it's completely populated by women and with no one to stop them they keep cranking the thermostat up...
Most of the planets we've discovered outside our solar system are gas giants orbiting very close to their parent stars. Is there any theories to how these planets formed? I remember reading somewhere that the gas giants formed in our solar system because they were so FAR away from the sun (something to do with ice crystals, and how they weren't vaporized becuase they were so far away from the sun). So how is it that gas giants in another solar system can be so close? And really close, I mean - the article says this planet is only 4 million miles away from the sun. I'd like to know how stable this solar system is, and if it will rip itself apart in a few thousand years.
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." - George Carlin
Actually, according the LA Times the issues of Creationist theories and Bush-supported religious plaques are seperate. There is a book sold in the gift shops at the Grand Canyon that advances the Creationist theory of the canyon, written by a canyon guide. It has been moved from the science section to the inspirational section. As fas as I know, the Bush administration has no stance on this issue.
Seperately, there are a few religious plaques in the canyon with inspirational Bible verses on them, but with no mention of creationism, that were ordered to be taken down since it's a public park and there is supposed to be a seperation of church and state. The Bush administration objects to that.
Two issues -- one of ignorance and one of state support of religion -- not one.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...and if it's interacting with the star at all, then the changes must be dragging energy out of the planet, ergo, the planet's orbit will decay and probably swiftly. Magnetism is going to be a huge effect if the range is short enough for a 3.5-day orbit. Think dynamo. Think closer, and faster.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
No.
...then you'll be several orders of magnitude out in your forces. If you run into a "squared" or similar factor anywhere in your terms, the butterfly can suddenly morph to StarGlider size.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This planet is 270 times the mass of Earth, or 1.6x10^27 kg.
The velocity of the planet is 150 km/sec.
Kinetic energy = 1/2 * mass * velocity^2.
This planet's kenetic energy = 1.82*10^37 kg(m/sec)^2.
E=mc^2.
1.82*10^37 kg * (m/sec)^2 = mc^2.
1.82*10^37 kg * (m/sec)^2 = m(3*10^8)^2.
The kinetic energy of this planet is equal to 2^20 kg of pure mass.
The entire energy output of our sun is 1.4 * 10^17 kg per year.
You could take our sun and mount it as a (perfect efficency) rocket engine on this planet and it would still take nearly 1,500 years to kill its orbital momentum.
That is what I meant when I said "Any planet (expecially a Jovian) will have a monsterously large amount of inertial energy in its orbit."
Any attempt to pour the entire energy output of our sun into a planet would obviously vaporize it almost immediately. The order of magnitue is so monsterously large that any force attempting to do so in less than geological time scales would vaporize the planet first.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
...and awed at the effort you put in against my simple answer. I wasn't thinking of slowing it rocket-style but using magnetic braking. If it had been so braked, one would expect the planet's spin to be magnetically "tide locked" to the primary (like our own Moon) to a much greater extent than could be explained by gravity alone, and one would expect heating of the primary side of the planet in considerably greater degree than could be explained by radiation. I wonder if doppler on the limbs of the planet and/or the planet's spectrum as a whole would be accurate enough to tell us anything about that.
I would like to try taking lots of spectra at fixed intervals and looking for a wavy set of hot-but-not-stellar hydrogen lines alongside the star's more-or-less invariant stellar hydrogen.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing