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Strange Mini Solar System Found
starexplorer writes "In 1990, Penn State's Alex Wolszczan found the first exoplanets. But he never got much credit from mainstream researchers, because his planets (3
of them, roughly Earth-sized) orbit pulsars and hold no chance for harboring life. Now he's found a 4th object on the outskirts of the system, SPACE.com is reporting. Call it a planet, call it an asteroid, Wolszczan says, but call the setup a dark, eerie twin of the inner half of our solar system. Also in the same story, news of a brown dwarf just 15 times the mass of Jupiter that has a planet-making disk of stuff around it. Together, more problems for astronomers, who still don't have a basic
definition for the word planet or a firm idea of what separates planets from stars."
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho, it's hot, the sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on earth there'd be no life
Without the light it gives
We need it's light
We need it's heat
We need it's energy
Without the sun, without a doubt
There'd be no you and me
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside. and yet, the sun is only a middle-sized star.
The sun is far away
About 93 million miles away, and that's why it looks so small.
And even when it's out of sight
The sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat
The sun gives light
The sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun's
Atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. the heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
How can this professor not be considered mainstream?
He's on the faculty at Penn State! Sounds like he must have ticked off the wrong people at some point in his career. Maybe he needs to hire a PR person.
I would say that finding a planet orbiting any star would be significant news, regardless of whether said planet might harbor life.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
A planet:
-is a non-fusor
-has sufficient mass to be roughly spherical due to gravity
-orbits a fusor
-isn't already referred to as any other type of object by convention
-isn't associated through orbital composition or other general characteristics with another general group of non-planet objects (i.e. Vesta, though spherical, is associated with other objects known as asteroids, which are not massive enough to be spherical, and are therefore not planets. Vesta also is not a planet, because of the previous rule. It is by convention known as an asteroid, therefore it's not a planet.)
My source for this definition is myself, and I deem it sufficient for sparking a major discussion, and possibly for other things as well.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I think most people have an over-obsession with how things are "defined."
Together, more problems for astronomers, who still don't have a basic definition for the word planet
I'm sure the astronomers simply don't care. It's not a problem; definitions don't change anything.