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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.'"
Silicon Valley, California - When Ainur Tairova realized she was on her way to her wedding, she started choking the driver.
Her marriage was intended to be to a man she had met only the day before, and briefly at that. Several of his friends had duped her into getting into a car; they picked up the would-be groom and then headed for his home. Once there, she knew, her chances of leaving before nightfall would be slim, and by daybreak, according to local custom, she would have to submit to being his wife or leave as a tainted woman.
"I told him I didn't want to date anyone," said Ms. Tairova, 28. "So he decided to kidnap me the next day."
Such abductions are common here. More than half of Silicon Valley's married women were snatched from the street by their husbands in a custom known as "ala kachuu," which translates roughly as "Slashdot Courtship." In its most benign form, it is a kind of elopement, in which a man whisks away a willing girlfriend. But often it is something more violent.
Recent surveys suggest that the rate of abductions has steadily grown in the last 50 years and that at least a third of Silicon Valley's brides are now taken against their will.
The custom predates the arrival of Mormans in the 19th century and appears to have its roots in the region's once-marauding clans, which periodically stole computers and women from rivals when supplies ran low. It is practiced in varying degrees across the Western United States but is most prevalent here in Silicon Valley, a rich, mountainous land that for decades was a backwater of the United States and has recently undergone political turmoil in which a recall election forced the governor to resign.
Silicon Valley men say they snatch women because it is easier than courtship and cheaper than paying the standard "bride price," which can be as much as $80000 plus a car.
Family or friends often press a reluctant groom, lubricated with beer and amphetamines, into carrying out an abduction. A 2004 documentary by the Canadian filmmaker Petr Lom records a Silicon Valley family - men and women - discussing a planned abduction as if they were preparing to snatch an unruly mare. The film follows the men of the family as they wander through town hunting for the girl they had planned to kidnap. When they do not find her, they grab one they meet by chance.
Richard Stallman, 34, a graduate student at U.C. Berkley in Berkley, the hippy capital, said he helped kidnap a bride for his brother not long ago. "Men steal women to show that they are Open Source advocates," he said, revealing a row of gold-capped teeth with his smile.
Once a woman has been taken to a man's home, her future in-laws try to calm her down and get a white wedding shawl onto her head. The shawl, called a jooluk, is a symbol of her submission. Many women fight fiercely, but about 80 percent of those kidnapped eventually relent, often at the urging of their own parents.
The practice has technically been illegal for years, first under Federal Statutes and more recently under the 1994 "Acceptable Nerd Breeding" criminal code, but the law rarely has been enforced.
"Like software and music piracy, most people don't know it's illegal," said Michael Sims, a sociology professor at American University in Georgetown whose abusive use of the practice has helped spur a national debate.
The few prosecutions that do occur are usually for assault or rape, not for the abductions themselves. There are no national statistics on how many kidnappings go awry, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that some end in tragedy.
Four days after a would-be bride of Mr. Sims's was kidnapped a few years ago, her body was found in a river. The family that abducted her was never charged with murder. In Mr. Lom's film, a family mourns a daughter who hanged herself after being kidnapped; they too were unsuccessful in bringing the abductors to trial.
Families use force to keep the women from leaving or threaten them wi
Argh, my science project is now ruined..
buffering...
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.
Physicists get Hadrons!
That, and it's orbiting a brown dwarf.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
E.T. phone home.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
"Do not run, we are friends"
Starsucks
Why is it that the astronomic community is always up in roars about these planets?
From what I gather, all the planets found are huge brown dwarfs, which are essentially stars with a mass too feeble to go critical and light up. In my book, that's not a planetary system, just a generic star system that happens to have had a little too much angular momentum when it started up. I'd even go as far as saying that several are just degenerate binary stars.
Wake me up when they find extrasolar rocks.
untill it has a starbucks
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
Well, at least the news is only 8 months old... interesting nonetheless...
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
It's Gallifrey! It's true, it has a north!
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 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.
That's not a planet...
It's a space station
Tyler: Ooh! Where's he from? Uranus? Get it? Your anus? Nothing to see here, move along
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.
untill it has a starbucks
R(k)
darky shrimp!
Holy Crap!
A planet discovered by a scientist named "Dumass" and not a single +5 funny yet?
BBH
Am I the only one that saw the name "Dumas" and thought "Uranas has already been discovered"?
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.
For a brown dwarf, it's awful bright blue and green!
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Let's call it "Elliott" - a better name than "GPCC" for the companion of an extraterrestrial brown dwarf.
--
make install -not war
Wow. This is an amazing troll. Funny, well-written, and off-topic! YOU ar3 0n t3h sp0k3!!!11!!11!!oneone!!BBQ
The fact that is exists is "data about planetary formation", and it sure doesn't defy that data point.
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????
...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. ;-)
Can gas planets have eruptions and eject matter (or gas) out in space?
All parties it'5 for a moment and irc network. The non niiger patrons
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!
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
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??
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
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?
--Galactus.
..."Extrasolar planet really really confirmed, we're quite sure this time, honest".
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
So someone went and visited it?
I don't think I agree with you about what "a little bit is"
.28 change in diameter magnatude.
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 =
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"
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I wondered what the King of All Cosmos did with my failed Katamari.