First Image of Extrasolar Planet Confirmed

An anonymous reader writes "The year-long controversy about whether the European Southern Observatory had indeed captured the first picture of an extrasolar planet has apparently been resolved. Journal publication today of a fuzzy image of this Jupiter-sized, extrasolar planet led Christophe Dumas, a member of the discovery team, to say enthusiastically: 'The thrill of seeing this faint source of light in real-time on the instrument display was unbelievable. Although it is surely much bigger than a terrestrial-size object, it is a strange feeling that it may indeed be the first planetary system beyond our own ever imaged.'"

Comments

Science Project

[dance2die]

Argh, my science project is now ruined..

"Small" correction

[Space cowboy]

It's actually (according to the BBC and eso.org) 5x the size of Jupiter, or about half the size of our sun. Calling it a mere planet may be a bit harsh - Jupiter itself is a net producer of energy (radiated = 2x incident, roughly), and it's speculated that this is due to gravity forces. This gas-giant 'planet' is presumably more active gravitationally - perhaps 'proto-sun' or 'failed sun' might be a better description (except that discovering a planet is a far greater acheivement than a tiny star...

Simon.

Re:"Small" correction

[LiquidRaptor]

You know I've often wondered about why these big planets are failed suns. I seem to remeber hearing somewhere that anything much bigger than jupiter would collapse in on itself due to gravitation. I wonder if theres not some form of fusion going on in the core that exerts an outward pressure on these big planets.

Re:"Small" correction

[peculiarmethod]

while thats a great idea, and I do not profess to have an answer, I would like to remind you that fusion would not be the easiest solution. I would recommend looking into the specific densities of the materials making up the massive object.. perhaps on average lighter materials (from young stars) were used in creation of these objects. Perhaps the object was formed from two larger object on similiar paths (created near each other, falling into each other later in the development game. Again, I am not sure, but it seems correct in experience to look for the easiest possible solution, and test those first. I dunno.

Re:"Small" correction

[at_18]

It's actually (according to the BBC and eso.org) 5x the size of Jupiter, or about half the size of our sun

Remember that when astronomers talk about "size", they are actually talking about mass. Our sun is 1000x the mass of Jupiter, so this planet is still 200x smaller.

The minimum mass to call a big planet a "star" is about 70 times Jupiter (that's the minimum mass to start nuclear fusion).

Re:"Small" correction

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Wrong, this planet is *not* 5x the size of Jupiter. It has a *mass* 5x that of Jupiter. Due to gravity etc no planet can grow much beyond the size of Jupiter. Don't remember the exact size but it was some 10-30% larger that was the limit.

Re:"Small" correction

[Scott Ransom]

Note: IAAA

The reason why they are called failed suns is because they are. Gravity pulls the matter in towards the center of the planet. This makes the center hot and dense (think ideal gas law). If there is enough mass in the planet, the gravitational attraction is strong enough that it forces the pressure and temperature at the planets core to exceed the thresholds required for nuclear fusion (hydrogen to hydrogen) to occur. If the body is massive enough to do this it is a bona-fide star. Stars slightly less massive are known as brown dwarfs (there are technical reasons why they are not called planets), and bodies even less massive are planets.

Jupiter is giving off heat because the gravitational attraction is causing the temperature and pressure inside the star to be relatively high -- just not high enough for fusion.

Re:"Small" correction

[lawpoop]

The question is, given the proposition that any thing 'much' bigger than Jupiter should form a star, why would something that meets that threshold not form a star?

Re:"Small" correction

[zippthorne]

When considering density you must also consider the pressure. The earth for instance is denser than its composition would be at sea level because of the tremendous forces resultant from its own mass.

It is suspected that the core of jupiter is metallic hydrogen, a phase that occurs only at extreme pressures.

As an aside: The earth is also a net "producer" of energy if you look at luminosity alone. All of the energy from solar radiation must be radiated away or we'd become very hot very quick. In fact, it's a bit worse than that since some heat is also escaping from the core. Evidence: volcanoes. so the total amount of energy leaving the earth as light must therefore be greater than the total amout of energy intercepted by earth as light.

I think most of us would agree that the earth is not "generating" heat, but rather just slowly dissipating the heat that's already there. from the formation of Earth. Io on the other hand is generating heat (or rather heat is being generated as a result of jupiter's tidal forces.)

Re:"Small" correction

[deglr6328]

It is not really accurate to say that "Jupiter itself is a net producer of energy". Is Jupiter a net EMITTER of energy? Yes, but this energy is the leftover heat of formation from the protoplanet nebula. D+D fusion does not happen in Jupter. Incidentally I predict "planet" imaging simillar to this will become commonplace in about 2 years when VLTI interferometric imaging comes online.

Re:"Small" correction

[nofx_3]

My guess would be that by "bigger" they actually mean more massive. There should be a critical mass, where the weight of the planets mass creates so much pressure that at the center, the electromagnetic force is overcome and fusion begins. My guess would be that if this planet is 5x the size of jupiter and is not a sun then it would probably be about 1/5 the density, so that its overall mass would still not be sufficient to crate the forces necessary at its center for the fusion process to begin. Remember, Jupiter has a very low density, I have often heard that the planet as a whole is less dense than water, and would therefore float!!!! (try finding a big enough body of water for that experiment).

-kaplanfx

Re:"Small" correction

[Scott Ransom]

My guess would be that by "bigger" they actually mean more massive.

Yes. And IIRC, the threshold is something like 15-20 Jupiter masses. So that is why this one is "definitively" a planet.

Re:"Small" correction

[dmaxwell]

The interior of the Earth is also heated by the decay of radioisotopes. It is hotter than what would be caused by tidal forces and residual heat left over from it's formation.

Re:"Small" correction

[imsabbel]

Well, actually lots of people working in that area asked themselves the same question :)

Yes, there are non-stars that dont support "normal"fusion but still create energy by deuterium fusion. But even for this a limit can be calculated.
Normal Hydrogen burning stars start at around 7% of the mass of the sun, deuterium burning ones are normally called brown dward and start around 1.5% of M_sol. So still about 3 times that of this planet here.

You have to understand that those fusion processes are EXTREMELY temperature sensitive (we are talking about T^18 for pp, and it only gets worse for heavier fusion reactions, CC should be around T^50). So a star thats just a little smaller and thus cooler in the core than the limit already has nearly zero activity.

Re:"Small" correction

[Anonymous Coward]

That's understandable. Size is so much easier to pronounce than mass.

Re:"Small" correction

[Doc Ruby]

I wonder what is the Earth's total radiated energy (radio/TV, streetlights, geothermal, etc), compared with our incident energy.

Re:"Small" correction

[mikael]

From the article on Jupiter

A. Composition of Jupiter

The fact that Jupiter's radius is 11.2 times larger than Earth's means that its volume is more than 1,300 times the volume of Earth. The mass of Jupiter, however, is only 318 times the mass of Earth. Jupiter's density (1.33 g/cm3) is therefore less than one-fourth of Earth's density (5.52 g/cm3). Jupiter's low density indicates that the planet is composed primarily of the lightest elements--hydrogen and helium.

The computer models predict that Jupiter's outer layer, composed of a gaseous mixture of hydrogen, helium, and traces of hydrogen-rich compounds such as ammonia, methane, and water vapor, is about 1,000 km (about 600 mi) thick. Beneath this layer, the pressure is so great and the atmosphere is so hot and compressed that the hydrogen and helium atoms do not behave as a gas, but as what physicists call a supercritical fluid. Supercritical fluids form at high temperatures and pressures and have properties similar to those of both gases and liquids. The supercritical zone extends 20,000 to 30,000 km (12,000 to 19,000 mi) into Jupiter, which is about one-fourth to one-third of the radius of the planet.

Beneath the supercritical fluid zone, the pressure reaches 3 million Earth atmospheres. At this depth, the atoms collide so frequently and violently that the hydrogen atoms are ionized--that is, the negatively charged electrons are stripped away from the positively charged protons of the hydrogen nuclei. This ionization results in a sea of electrically charged particles that resembles a liquid metal and gives rise to Jupiter's magnetic field. This liquid metallic hydrogen zone is 30,000 to 40,000 km (19,000 to 25,000 mi) thick--about half the radius of the planet--and extends to the molten rock core at Jupiter's center. The molten rock core occupies a sphere with a radius of about 10,000 km (about 6,000 mi)--about one-fourth of Jupiter's total radius--and has a mass perhaps 10 to 15 times the mass of Earth.

In order for a cloud of hydrogen gas to form a star, both gravity and pressure have to overcome the various fundamental forces that prevent atoms from fusing together,/a> (weak, electromagnetic).

In ratio to the "strong force" which holds the nucleus of the atom together, the electromagnetic force is 1/137, the weak force is 1/(10^6), and gravity is 1/(10^39).

Thus gravity is 10^37 times weaker than the electronmagnetic force, and 10^33 times weaker than the weak force. So you are going to need a considerable amount of mass to overcome these forces.

Another factor is Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation:

F = G . m1 . m2 / ( r^2)

where G is the Gravitational constant
m1 and m2 are the masses of two objects (eg. hydrogen atoms, dust, asteroids, ...)
and r is the distance between the two objects

The implication of this equation is that gravitational forces become greater the closer the two objects are. So the gas cloud has to pull itself together from gas to liquid (a liquid cannot be compressed any further). At this stage, pressure is created, and gets converted into heat (electromagnetic force)

If there isn't enough mass, a sufficiently deep gravity well won't form, and you will end up with a superhot liquid gas planet - which is more or less what Jupiter is.

Re:"Small" correction

[thebudgie]

It should be roughly similar, given that if we radiated less than the sun put in it would be getting uncomfortably warm around here just now.

I don't think the quantity of heat from the sources you've mentioned is significant though when compared to the source under our own feet...

Re:"Small" correction

[Phiu-x]

So, your are an Insurance Advisers Association of Australia Incorporated. Good for you. Now what do YOU know about astronomy? :) http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=IAAA&btnG=Sear ch&meta= Lousy abreviation I tell ya!

Re:"Small" correction

[thePjunisher]

You're thinking of Saturn. Jupiter is more dense than water.

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/saturn.htm
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/jupiter.htm

Re:"Small" correction

[mbrother]

Careful astronomers don't make this mistake, but we're talking about results massaged by PR people and the press. I've been through that experience, and it makes me always go to the journal article or preprint to determine what they're actually talking about.

Personally, I would never use "size" for mass, and geometrical sizes are still ambiguous. Is a size a radius, surface area, or volume? Each of the three could be the answer under different circumstances.

The best estimates I recall are more like 80-82 Jupiter masses for fusion, a little bigger than 70. I remember being irritated with Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 for saying that if Jupiter were only "a little bigger" it would be able to have fusion processes and be a star. My little bigger above is for 10% bigger, not a factor of 80 times bigger. I don't think that's being picky, I think that's just Clarke being wrong in that case.

Re:"Small" correction

[Anonymous Coward]

IAAA: I Am An Asshole ?

Just had to quess at it

You seem nice otherwise :)

Re:"Small" correction

[coopex]

With all the screwups by the popular media, ala in this article bigger = size instead of mass, do you think that enough scientists/people misquoted by the media will just stop talking to them, forcing them to have higher standards? Or will it be that the charletons and fools fake being scientists and everyone has even less correct information? Or is it something like choice 3, cowboyneal?

Re:"Small" correction

[neobit]

No no no no, you mean they are more dense than a slashdot editor.

This was a test of the emergancy troll broadcasting system. This was only a test.

Re:"Small" correction

[Doc Ruby]

We do reflect less than the insolation - it's why our albedo is less than 100%, and how all the surface ecology and meteorology is powered. My question is just what percentage do we generate synthetically, compared with the insolation. I don't know what would be "significant" (or of what), but I'm interested in our human contribution.

Re:"Small" correction

[Tomfrh]

You sound a bit confused regarding mass/size/diameter etc...

What's interesting about this...

[Future Man 3000]

Is that the planet is something like five times as large as Jupiter, which defies all known data about planetary formation.

That, and it's orbiting a brown dwarf.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

"That, and it's orbiting a brown dwarf."

Excuse me, but the politically correct term is Ethnic Little Person. Mmkay?

Re:What's interesting about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think 9 references points (or 8, take your pick) counts as a statistically significant sample. When you take into consideration the fact that they're all orbiting the same star, you don't have a very representative sample, now do you?

Re:What's interesting about this...

[aslate]

Go take your political correctness back to your TPLACs!

Re:What's interesting about this...

[helioquake]

One small note: "co-moving" and "orbiting" are not the same thing. They have enough evidence to suggest that they are co-moving. But that doesn't necessarily prove (nit-pick, I know) that they orbit each other. That'll be proven in follow-up observations.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

The theory is not based on statistics (even if it was, we don't have any data on the *formation* of the planets on our solar system), it's based on theoretical models of gas in space, etc. that happen to match up to given evidence (perhaps until now).

Re:What's interesting about this...

[nofx_3]

Ok, so what you are saying is the two bodies which are as massive as the brown dwarf/planet, are very near to each other, and co-moving, and yet the gravitational forces of said bodies are not sufficient enough to warp spacetime sufficiently to effect the orbit of the other body?

-kaplanfx

Re:What's interesting about this...

[helioquake]

No. Gravity affects every body. But there is a difference between gravitationally affected and gravitationally bound.

The sign of co-moving is a pretty good indicator that the system can be bounded (but you can't exclude a possibility that these stars are merely in the same association and the direction of their motion is coincidental). To establish that the planet is bound to the brown dwarf, one needs to examine its orbital path, which requires more data points in future.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[MarkRose]

With much more resolution, they'll soon be able to capture Kirstie Alley's ass! Mmmmm... I look forward to that.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[3vi1]

Dammit... If I had any 'Funny' mod points, I would give them all to you.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most of the planets we've found (not imaged, found indirectly) around other stars are about 10x Jupiters mass, and generally about as close to the sun as Mercury is here (if memory serves correctly).

This data makes our solar system look like an anomaly, until you realize the method of finding these was observing the wobble in the star. This makes it strongly biased toward massive stars close to the sun.

Also, all of the data you mention is based on our solar system, which contains a planet which supports life. This may or may not mean that it's an unusual system.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

With much more resolution, they'll soon be able to capture Kirstie Alley's ass!

I think the reason your post didn't get modded up as funny is because the moderators who are as moronic as you and would find that funny won't be reading this topic. And as an aside, if it required more resolution to see it that would imply that it's very small, so your cretinous joke doesn't even make sense.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[MarkRose]

And as an aside, if it required more resolution to see it that would imply that it's very small, so your cretinous joke doesn't even make sense.

Exactly, it's smaller than a planet. I was just making an offhand remark. I like my women fat.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you mean "Tin Pot Little European Country"?

Re:What's interesting about this...

[anethema]

Well, when they talk about size they mean mass. As pointed out earlier..planets can not be a whole lot bigger than jupiter. They just get more dense.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[maxwells_deamon]

I have hot heard this term co-moving before but it may be close to what I understand the relationship is between the earth and the moon.

If we were not living on the earth or the moon we would be more objective and not call the moon our satellite. We would instead call it a double planet.

The moon is so large compared to the earth that if you drew the paths of the two bodies relative to the sun you notice that the moons orbit around the sun is never concave.

The moons orbit gets straighter when closer to the sun than the earth is, but never concave.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[coopex]

The problem with trusting our theoretical models is that we have only 9 datapoints, which is far too low to have something like a 90% confidence margin givin there are trillions of planets of various types.

A theoretical model that isn't based on statistics is basically worthless, as you need *sufficient* evidence to prove it. Until enough evidence is gathered, it's not a theory, it's a conjecture. Science is based on the two sides of theoretical and experimental adding onto each other, with the theoreticians predicting something and experimentalists confriming it, or experimentalists finding some weird result and theoreticians explaining it.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

Take an astronomy class. For whatever reason, good or bad, those guys don't use statistics.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[coopex]

Please re-read my post, I wasn't denying that that is how astronomy does things, I was merely saying that it reeks of bad science, fitting the theory to available data, instead of hypothesizing a theory and checking that it fits the data.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

So any science without statistics is bad science, or at least reeks of it? Most physics only uses a small sample of peer-reviewed experiments. In fact, I would say that statistics has no necessary part in science. Statistics don't help determine law, which is what science is about. Statistics originated as an alternative to doing censuses for a large state. Science started as a method for understanding the laws of the universe. Over time, certain experiments were designed to use statistical methods, and statistics became a part of quantum physics, but there is no *necessity* of statistics in science, and it certainly doesn't make for *bad* science when it doesn't include statistics.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[coopex]

I was wrong to say that science without statistics is bad science, or reeks of it.

I should have said that science without statistics is completely worthless.

Statistics: (from dictionary.com) The mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data, especially the analysis of population characteristics by inference from sampling.
Science: The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

Physics uses experiments with a large number of datapoints, the number of papers on a subject mean jack to the validity of a theory.

Statistics don't help determine the law, they provide the vital data to determine the law. Experiments have always been designed to use statistical methods, by the very definitions above.

You are correct about the the start of statistics and science.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

You are talking out of your ass. That's fine if you believe that science without statistics is worthless, but any physicist would disagree with you. Statistics has its place in biology or sociology, but it *has no place* in the hard sciences like physics. Physics does *not* "use a large number of data points". In physics, one run of one falsifiable experiment, like the classic double-slit experiment is good enough to say that the law applies now, in the past, and in the future, everywhere, and for all time. We don't run 100 experiments and find the confidence level of a particular result. It either works or it doesn't.

You dictionary.com definition of statistics reeks. Statistics is sampling, and that's about it (Sampling gets very complicated, but that's all it boils down to). "The mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data" is not *necessarily* statistics.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[coopex]

Hahaha.

You lose, dipshit. Take a look at yourself man, you're freakin argueing with a dictionary.

To bad the world isn't how you *feel* it should be, and you're gonna get knocked on your ass time and again because of your pissy immature arrogance.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

Note that in your preious arguments, when you talk about statistics, you are speaking solely about sampling -- the part that has data points, confidence levels, etc.

Your dictionary definition sucks. Find a better dictionary, preferably one not on the internet. The first part of its defintion is actually just the definition of 'mathematics'. The second part of its definition is actually the definition of statistics in the modern sense, and in the sense that you used it.

You are saying that physics needs to use sampling to make valid science. I am saying that they've made it this far without it, and they don't need it now.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[coopex]

You need to learn to read - I spoke about data points and confidence levels because that's how science does things, call it sampling or collection of data, it's the same thing.
Now we come to the crux of the matter - all dictionaries don't define statistics the way you want it to, so you have to find fault with that. I suppose in your infinite wisdeom, all these poor dictionary makers are morons, and that your word is the absolute truth.

Also, note the differences in the defns. of statistics: The mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data, especially the analysis of population characteristics by inference from sampling.
and mathematics: The study of the measurement, properties, and relationships of quantities and sets, using numbers and symbols.

So let's see, you're pissy because statistics doesn't mean what you want it to, you have absolutely no idea what mathematics is about, and you're too stupid to use you brain to realize either one of these.

I repeat, physics without statistics is worthless, go find out how many physicists don't take string theory seriously without data/statistics to back it up. Physics would be nowhere without statistics, from Tycho's data of the planets, to modern accelerators producing terabytes of data.

You need to go learn the definitions of words, and something called logical thinking.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

Here's a better online reference:

Statistical Physics is a subset of physics. It only covers *a small part* of physics.

Neither statistics, nor math, nor physics is what *you say* it is.

Still think you're right? Then go fix the wikipedia article. Let's see how fast your changes are undone.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

Here's a better online reference:

Statistical Physics is a subset of physics. It only covers *a small part* of physics.

Neither statistics, nor math, nor physics is what *you say* it is.

Still think you're right? Then go fix the wikipedia article. Let's see how fast your changes are undone.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[coopex]

You're right, statistics, math and physics aren't what I say they are, they're what the dictionary says they are. You make the mistake of thinking that if all physics uses statistics, then all physics must statistical physics, when even you point out that statistical physics is a subset of physics. Just because A implies B doesn't mean B implies A. You lose.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[lawpoop]

Statistics is not mathematics. Cite one physics paper or experiment that use statistical reasoning -- confidence level, p number, etc.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[xconfig]

You mean Kristie's alley.

Telefono, Casa

[jvd]

E.T. phone home.

You may have bigger things to worry about.

[ShaniaTwain]

"Do not run, we are friends"

Re:You may have bigger things to worry about.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do not run, we are friends"

Do not run.... I have pie! I have a pie, and I'm willing to share it.

Re:Article in case of Slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Best.
Troll.
Ever.

My hat's off to you. Also my pants are around my ankles to you.

Its not a proper planet

[Timesprout]

untill it has a starbucks

Re:Its not a proper planet

[rob_squared]

Starbuck just got the arrow of Apollo, give them time man!

Re:Its not a proper planet

[interstellar_donkey]

Planet Starbucks?

Is that in the Microsoft Galaxy, near the IBM Stellar Sphere?

Re:Its not a proper planet

[the idoru]

No, I'm pretty sure that it's somewhere in the Ford Galaxy.

Re:Its not a proper planet

[ThePeterFiles]

Until it has a Mac running OS X.4:

_________________________________

Tiger, Tiger burning bright

on the planet in the night,

can't explode with fires bright,

until there's iPods to delight.

_________________________________

I have no idea where that came from.

Frankly, I don't care how proper a planet it is.

Does it have raw materials? Is it close enough for us to send robots to go get them?

Will the boy leave the chair?

And what about Naomi?

For answers to these and other questions go to:

http://thepeterfiles.blogspot.com/2005/04/you-too- can-enter-world-of-internet.html/

Home of the International School of Blog Technicians and Blog Technician Groupie Training

Scholarships Available for Highly Qualified Groupie Candidates

Peter, Founder and Chief Groupie Interviewer and Trainer

mirrordot for picture...

[mmThe1]

Here's the mirrordot link for the "picture" page in the story.

The actual page has started showing signs of fatigue due to slashdot effect, so use the above link.

Old News...

[stuffman64]

Summary (Sep 10, 2004): Faint, failed stars like brown dwarfs are borderline planets themselves, but the European Southern Observatory atop the Chilean mountains may have imaged what could be the first infrared view of an extrasolar planet.

Well, at least the news is only 8 months old... interesting nonetheless...

Re:Old News...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you see the mention of a "year-long controversy" being resolved in the article text?

First Image of Extrasolar Planet Confirmed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Gallifrey! It's true, it has a north!

use mass, not "size"

[Von Rex]

It's not accurate to say this object is "half" the size of the sun.

The planet in question is 5 times the mass of Jupiter. The sun is about a thousand times the mass of Jupiter.

I think you're confusing mass with diameter. Jupiter's diameter is indeed approximately one-tenth the diameter of the sun.

The keyword: Distance

[helioquake]

The key issue is whether the suspected planet is at the same distance as the brown dwarf [and I assume that we know accurately enough about the distance to the brown dwarf].

Since these stars are co-moving, it is very likely that these objects are either formed out of the same primodial materials (ie., these stars are in the same association) or gravitationally bound (i.e., the suspect planet revolves around the brown dwarf). The evidence of the co-moving alone doesn't necessarily prove that the stars are bounded by gravity, but the accuracy of their measurements probably suggest that it's pretty darn likely. Further studies are necessary to derive the orbits for sure.

Anyway, once you establish the distance, one can figure out its true brightness of the suspected planetary object. That helps you narrow down the mass of that object (which is nailed down to be about 5x the mass of Jupiter). Combined with the "color" information of the object, these scientists makes a conclusion that this is indeed a planet.

By the way, these objects are separated by the whooping 0.7 arcseconds. Its apparent seperation is 5 times greater than the apparent size of Pluto or something like that. You don't really need use the Hubble for studying something like this.

Can't believe this hasn't been said yet.

[isny]

That's not a planet...
It's a space station

Re:Can't believe this hasn't been said yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

BEN: That's no planet! It's a space station.

HAN: It's too big to be a space station.

LUKE: I have a very bad feeling about this.

(Chewie dons tinfoil hat)

ET already knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Tyler: Ooh! Where's he from? Uranus? Get it? Your anus? Nothing to see here, move along

Re:ET already knows

[nofx_3]

Actually, there is something to see here, but you are going to need some good adaptive optics to see it. (VLA anyone?)

-kaplanfx

Re:Extrasolar planet hype

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Why don't we just let you sleep until we spot a rock that sends out radio signals? Meanwhile, others are eager to learn as much as possible *now*.

BTW, these *are* important discoveries as they give us an insight into what kind of planetary systems are out there. Though we are only yet able to see those that have large mass planets in close orbit to the stars. This gives a possibly slightly skewed sample, but it's better than nothing.

Re:Article in case of Slashdotting -silicone

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you shouldn't have posted as an AC. I can tell you that if you'd posted with an account, you'd have a ton of fans and foes right now that'd check out your next week instalment.

Minor addendum

[EtherAlchemist]

untill it has a starbucks

...with a hotspot

Re:Extrasolar planet hype

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I should propably mention that we are going to be detecting those rocks when Darwin, an infrared interferometer telescope, launches in 2015.

nigger midget!

[Anonymous Coward]

spic shorty!

darky shrimp!

No funny making

[BigBuckHunter]

Holy Crap!

A planet discovered by a scientist named "Dumass" and not a single +5 funny yet?

BBH

Re:No funny making

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's a french name, you don't pronounce the 's'.

Re:No funny making

[BigBuckHunter]

Reminds me of the "Asswipe" family SNL skit where it's pronounced "as-wee-pay"

BBH

Re:No funny making

[Anonymous Coward]

So are we gonna name this planet "Dumass" Planet

Dumas?

[fat man with a monke]

Am I the only one that saw the name "Dumas" and thought "Uranas has already been discovered"?

My perspective...

[ArbiterOne]

I actually work at the ESO, at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen in Garching, Germany. This is a major event for them up there- (I'm surprised it made /., they usually discourage it as they discouraged me from posting about the Venus Transit last year) . Generally, they have to fight hard to get funding from the government (although Europe is nicer about astronomy (as opposed to stuff like the ISS) than the US), so something like this is great. It incites public interest in astronomy, which is always needed for scientific institutions such as this.

Re:My perspective...

[deglr6328]

"This is a major event for them up there- (I'm surprised it made /., they usually discourage it as they discouraged me from posting about the Venus Transit last year) . Generally, they have to fight hard to get funding from the government..."

And....Do they maybe see a connection here....?

I love the stuff ESO and ESA are doing but honestly, they have a LOT to learn about pr. They made watching the live Huygens Titan landing (surely the achievement of this decade for them in terms of planetary/moon exploration) into a boring coffee hour. The image and data release from Mars Express has been extremely disappointing at best. There have still been no images released from the high res imager HSRC. The ion-drive lunar orbiter Smart-1 which has been in stable orbit for months has released like what...4 lunar images? nice. If I were a tax paying member of a ESA member country I think I'd be a little pissed off at the data (non?)disclosure practices of the agency. NASA, on the other hand, while not perfect, does do a hell of a lot better job at data release.

Re:My perspective...

[deglr6328]

Shamefully, in my haste to post such a curmudgeonly criticism I failed to congratulate you on the achievement your organization has accomplished. Very well done!! and I hope to see more of the same from ESO in future :)

Re:My perspective...

[ArbiterOne]

Hey, it's not me- I'm in a different division.
ESO does release a lot, it's not just as average-person friendly as, perhaps, NASA is. I think ESO actually does a lot more heavy-duty scientific research than NASA, and is more focused on actually using the data they collect, not just putting it up. Check the Outreach site, though- lots of good stuff there.

Re:My perspective...

[CaptainAvatar]

There have still been no images released from the high res imager HSRC.

Actually, plenty of HSRC images have been released already, but the fact that you didn't know that just proves your point about ESA being bad at PR. (Or do you mean the Super Resolution Channel of the HSRC? Because you may be right about that, I can't find anything. If so, my apologies.)

Re:My perspective...

[deglr6328]

Yeah I was talking about the highres capability. but I haven't seen some of those images on that page so..was interesting anyway!

Photo

[zoogies]

For a brown dwarf, it's awful bright blue and green!

Update

[ackthpt]

What's interesting about this... Is that the planet is something like five times as large as Jupiter, which defies all known data about planetary formation.

Update: The planet was discovered shortly after a bout of sneezing around the telescopes. New speculation has emerged that the giant planet is composed of phlegm.

That, and it's orbiting a brown dwarf.

"We prefer to be called people of extraterrestrial-melanin-enhanced-skin-vertically- challenged", said a spokesextraterrestrial.

Long-Distance Call

[Doc Ruby]

Let's call it "Elliott" - a better name than "GPCC" for the companion of an extraterrestrial brown dwarf.

OT - GREAT TROLL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. This is an amazing troll. Funny, well-written, and off-topic! YOU ar3 0n t3h sp0k3!!!11!!11!!oneone!!BBQ

It doesn't defy *all* known data

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that is exists is "data about planetary formation", and it sure doesn't defy that data point.

Resolution power of today's telescopes

[dolphin558]

Wow! I must have been under a rock these past few years. I thought the only extra-solar system stellar object to be imaged with as much clarity as this photo of a Brown Dwarf (w/ companion planet) was Betelgeuse! What other stars have been resolved so that you can make out or almost make out the disk????

Ever wonder....

[Anonymous Coward]

...if the edge of our solar system is just the concaved wall of the inside of a sphere? Meaning our solar system might be a massive big bubble-dome in someones bedroom with star/planet painted wallpaper on the walls. Every year are technology improves, we just get better close-up photos of said wallpaper. NASA might know all this, but are not letting on. ;-)

Re:Ever wonder....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the bubble dome is in some kids bedroom. Every so often he gives it a shake, and we get an earthquake, tsunami, (insert any other disaster/event which an insurance company defines as an 'Act of God' here).

Re:Extrasolar planet hype

[imsabbel]

A brown dwarf cannot be a planet.
A planet cannot be a brown dwarf.

Thus none of those planets they found are huge brown dwarfs.

(just a reminder: Brown dwarf: deuterium fusion, 15times at least jupitermasses, main series dwarf:hydrogen fusion, at least 70times the mass of jupiter. Everything below: planets. Like this one)

Giant Massive Gas Planets

[WormholeFiend]

Can gas planets have eruptions and eject matter (or gas) out in space?

Re:Giant Massive Gas Planets

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't seem to have have volcanism or 'sun spots', but when hit by a very large meteor - remember Schumacher-Levi and Jupiter?

I'm so Hubbled

[Lotharjade]

Point the Hubble at that sucker. Either we find out a bunch of neat sciency things, or we find out its Admiral Thrawns secret hidden research facility. Either way its a win!

Those hyperlinks suck

[p3d0]

Before clicking, I figured out what "controversy" linked to. But "European Southern Observatory" didn't link to the ESO, "first picture" didn't link to a picture, "extrasolar planet" didn't link to a page explaining what extrasolar planets are, and who can guess what "indeed captured" should point to??

Re:Those hyperlinks suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, mods, parent post is offtopic. It's not a troll.

And no doubt..

[Darvin]

And no doubt the RIAA has already sent subpoenas and cease and desist orders for evading them for so long.
But seriously, this is spectacular. To think that there might be another planetary system within viewing distance, albeit a few small pixels is mind numbing. This is bloody brilliant.
Any suggestions on names?

Planets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm...Plantets.

--Galactus.

Next week there'll be a story with a title like...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

..."Extrasolar planet really really confirmed, we're quite sure this time, honest".

Confirmed, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So someone went and visited it?

I don't think I agree with you...

[arete]

I don't think I agree with you about what "a little bit is"

In something you normally talk about in linear measurement, I might agree with you about 10%. But for a topic (like planets) where the range is variable enough that it makes sense to talk about the magnitude of the number, not the number (10^28 m etc) and where those exponents are high, 10% isn't even part of the number you're talking about. That's from a language point of view.

From a physical point of view, it's very reasonable to assume that AC might've meant diameter while those thresholds are all about mass. So your x70 mass is only x4 diameter.

The smallest sensible unit if you're talking about the magnitude (from a power of 10 POV) is x10... x5 is a fractional magnitude lost in the rounding error. (10^(.5) )^3 = a 32x mass increase. Some other posts here have said the threshold may be as low as 7x mass = 2x diameter = .28 change in diameter magnatude.

Furthermore, it's a description in a book. The sense of "a little bit" should be taken in context. I don't remember the context of that book being "we should park a bunch of spaceships on it and make it implode" (or keep that from happening) Sometimes numerically big changes are "a little bit" because there's a lot of range in whatever you're talking about. On the other hand good electric motors are (taken alone) very efficient - so "a little bit" better is a tiny number. The context in the book, I believe, was "boy it's big"

Re:I don't think I agree with you...

[mbrother]

Two orders of magnitude isn't a little bit in astronomy, one of the most liberal fields in terms of accuracy (both because the ranges are so large and because the measurements are so difficult). As a side point, be careful about the relationship between size and mass in stars -- there are regimes where mass increases reduce the diameter, and it also depends on the age of the star/planet.

I put my money where my mouth is. I write science fiction novels and critique the hell out of my own work and those of my peers. The bit about Jupiter is misleading to the reader, in my opinion, both as a writer and as a professor.

Re:I don't think I agree with you...

[arete]

I don't have a copy of 2010 handy, and I'll admit to not remembering the passage you're referring to. I'm also aware of the not-necessarily linear size-mass relationship.

If some other posts in this article are correct it may be closer to 1/4 than to 2 orders of magnitude. I'm not at all convinced that AC may not have had reason to believe it wasn't even less (or perhaps would be discovered to be less)

I'm a fan of old-school science fiction, and I hugely appreciate the work that goes into making a good story while making the reality as consistent ours as possible. I enjoy exploring the ramifications of relatively few assumed changes about our reality. In fact, I usually call this "extrapolative fiction" to separate it from what I consider the chaff of space operas.

Nonetheless, while 2 OM may be a lot in scientific astronomy it is not a lot in "armchair" astronomy. A novel - even extrapolative fiction - shouldn't be a science textbook. If every phrase had only the precision of a good textbook it would be a terrible novel. In particular, the narration in a good novel should be humanized, and the characters should almost always be mistaken at some point.

The underlying physical "model" of the universe in an ef book should be accurate as much as possible. Unlike a textbook, however, the narrator of a novel's primary obligation not to always be perfectly accurate. This is doubly true if the book or chapter is being narrated from the point of view centered around a particular character.

So while I'd be equally disappointed if the "facts" of the novel depended on it being 'just a little bit' bigger, I think you're confusing the narrator with the model. Perhaps I recall wrong, but as I recall the piece of text was descriptive and illustrative, not factual and numeric.

Lonely Rolling Planet

[Nintenfreak]

I wondered what the King of All Cosmos did with my failed Katamari.