Slashdot Mirror
Tatooine-like Planet Discovered
ATP writes "CNN is reporting that a planet has been discovered in a solar system with 3 suns. The observation brings into doubt the theory stating that planets form from the dust orbiting around a single sun. The discovery also resulted in a new method of searching for extrasolar planets-- until now most searching focused only on single-sun systems."
This is not the planet we're looking for.
Move along.
Move along.
Start a happiness pandemic
Don't let George Lucas see this. He'll want to change the next release of episode 4 and have Luke looking over 3 suns setting.
"Really, I had always wanted it to be 3 suns, and now we have the technology to produce my original vision"
-FL
Come on... even google knows how many suns there are.
http://www.google.com/search?q=tatooine+suns
I heard the three suns have been named Moe, Larry and Curly. :P
I suppose it's in a galaxy far, far away?
"I call it a Hawking Planet."
I guess the galaxy isn't so far away after all
Ask me about repetitive DNA
As noted by The Register, the planet is not in a galaxy far, far away, but a mere 149 light-year jaunt through our own Milky Way.
Might it be more like the planet in Pitch Black instead of Tattoine?
moo.
Would agriculture ever start? Would dwellings all be subterranean? Would concepts of work and play be utterly different? Religions would evolve differently. Would gender roles be affected?
Does anyone know of a work of science fiction that delves into this, in the way that The Left Hand of Darkness explored gender issues?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...weird I missed that in the movie.
The only planet I can readily recall from science fiction with three suns is the one from Pitch Black (and even then I think I'm making up the third sun). Most hard scifi authors and such place habitable planets around star systems like ours or around binaries (though most scifi universes take for granted that there is a habitable star in the Proxima-Alpha Centaurus complex (made up of Rigil Kentaurus A and B and Proxima Centaurus)).
I will be very interested to hear the explanation for this.
//Luuuuucy, you got some 'splainin to do!
#define CLUE 0
So how about we just go with the theory that planets form from dust from one or more suns??? What, because there's more than one star in the system, suddenly none of them have dust?
Anyway, how do they even know this planet formed as part of this system? Maybe three stars formed, one of them with a planet, and then they wound up getting into a binary system. Or maybe we just had this three star system and then a planetoid got thrown into it. Lots of things could have happened.
THE SPICE!!!???
It's called nightfall and it's by Isaac Asimov. It's not one of his better works-- it has some neat ideas in it, but it was originally a short story that was later extended to novel length and as a result it feels rather stretched. Perhaps the original short story is better, I don't know (I've only read the novel).
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
From the article:
The planet, a gas giant slightly larger than Jupiter, orbits the main star of a triple-star system known as HD 188753 in the constellation Cygnus.
Unless I missed something major when watching the movies, Tatooine isn't a gas giant...
Not only did tatooine have only two suns, it was NOT a gas giant. So this crappy post is really stretching for the star wars connection.
OH GOD that's scary. The confirm-you're-not-a-script noise is "JARBNXM".. I'm afraid to ask what the M is for.
Isaac Asimov's story "Nightfall" is set on a planet with 6 suns. So keep looking!
The observation brings into doubt the theory stating that planets form from the dust orbiting around a single sun. Ok how many planets have we actually found out there? Considering how huge the whole thing is I'd say anything new that's found has the possibility of bringing theories into doubt.
c2_bag
To me, Tatooine-like would be "that earthish desert planet", not "that gas giant with 3 suns"...
The observation brings into doubt the theory stating that planets form from the dust orbiting around a single sun.
No, it doesn't. That's assuming the star system is as old as the planet. There's no way they can see how the four move relative to each other, so they're just guessing. The two most likely scenarios I can think of are that a star with a planet drifted into a binary system, or three stars and failed star (gas giant) managed--by chance--to drift together without crashing into each other. When they can show me four stars in eliptical orbits in the same plane, then I'll be impressed, but it'll still only suggest a big star had two gas giants big enough to start burning.
In other news: Lucasfilm files a John Doe lawsuit against an unidentified Creator, alleging that he or she is using the copyrighted solar system design and setting without an explicit permission.
Which Simpsons is that a reference to? I'm pretty sure it's a reference to Futurama, but I can't remember which episode. Either Anthology of Interest I or Anthology of Interest II, as part of the "What if I never fell into the freezer-doodle and came to the future-jiggy?" question that Fry asked, which "was less stupid, but ... asked ... in a profoundly stupid manner."
In a galaxy far, far away.... My Ass.
I knew it was true ever since I was a kid ! Ha !
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
AFAIK (w/o RTFA) most of these new discoveries are from infrared readings from the new infrared telescope that was launched into orbit a while back (Spitzer is the name?). Using this telescope, they look at the infrared radiation emitted by a star, which radiates out in a solid disk if there is no planet. The first clue that a planet exists in a system is if there is an abnormal gap or break in the sun's disk
Jesus Saves. Everyone else takes 5d20 damage.
No love for Pitch Black?
Besides, Vin Diesel can kick Chewbacca's ass. He can do anything.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatooinetatooine has 2 suns right? -http://www.retzwerx.com/
It was the Jedi Master's Trivia Guide.
D'oh!
My mom says I'm cool.
... I just want to know if the planet has some of those howling sand guys with the funny sticks ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_People/
I wouldnt mind meeting one to see what revenge plans
they have for Lord Vader.
Great choice. :-)
My mom says I'm cool.
Imagine if such a planet were habitable (that is, a planet with three suns). Think about how much of our human existence is dictated by the cycles of our single sun. I wonder how different things would be with three suns.
Yeah, imagine if the three suns lined up every thousand years. A Gelfling might have to find the shard and heal the Dark Crystal.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
What time would college students roll out of bed? When Sun #1 rose? Sun #2?
;)
Many questions to ask about this multiple sun stuff.
If you had done your research on this before speaking, you would find that except for one or two exceptions, all extrasolar planets have been indirectly discovered. They were discovered by using spectroscopy over a sometimes long period of time,depending on the planet's orbit. The shift in the spectral lines over time allows observers to calculate the radial velocity of a star with respect to the center of mass of the planetary system. This information in turn infers that there is a planet orbiting the star and certain characteristics such as mass of the planet, eccentricity of the orbit, and distance from the star. www.howstuffworks.com has a very simple description of extrasolar planet searching.
Also, the Spitzer space telescope has directly confirmed the existence of already known planets that were discovered using the indirect method. It is possible with the Spitzer telescope rather than Hubble because stars put out much less light in the infrared than in the visible wavelengths.
"Tatooine-like Planet Discovered," I read. Eagerly, I clicked the link. "They've found a way to tell just what the planet is like! Now that is news!"
Oh, but wait... It's actually a story about a planet that was discovered in a solar system with three stars. What in the hell does that have to do with making the planet "Tatooine-like"? That's like calling every other planet in our system "Earth-like".
*sigh*
Excellent points, of course. This all makes me think of an exercise that my Physical Anthropology prof in college used to run each year. He'd invite anthropologists, artists, psychologists, writers, paleontologists, historians, engineers, of all stripes together for the creation of a mock species.
The group would start out with a skull, created by one or two of the participants. Then everyone would extrapolate the creatures form, it's level of intellect, and how its society would have evolved based on its physical characteristics. I don't recall, but I believe the assumption was that the critter evolved on an Earth-like planet.
It would be interesting to create a gathering akin to this, but postulating the creation of a world instead. Describe its relative solar position, the number, proximity and size of its moons, and so on, then theorize as to how evolution would have proceeded on such a planet, and take that evolution to the point of human-level intellect. The resulting world could be pretty amazing - moreso perhaps than the vast majority of the worlds we are exposed to in run of the mill sci-fi.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...
Because Lucas finally has the technology now to create the movie he originally wanted to make.
...
And you all know it could happen.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
It must have a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarlacc
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
This planet is like Tatooine like Jupiter is like Earth. It has the same number of suns in the star system but that's about it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think science does demand healthy sckepticism, however, you are making some comparisons that don't quite match up.
For instance, detecting planets within our own solar system is far different than detecting one many lightyears away. In our solar system, all you really need is a good earth based telescope and a little luck. To detect extrasolar planets, one must observe things like star wobble. IANAA, but considering that we've not even photographed the entire sky using orbit based long range cameras (so I've heard), the chances of an actual photo of a planet is extremely remote, even knowing where one is, because of brightness issues.
I've often thought that it is equivilant to trying to see a moth flying around a lone streetlight 2 miles away with the naked eye. Unless the moth is extremely large, and far enough away from the light itself, you'll never see it. Though, you may see the light wavering as the moth flies around the light. Thus, you can know that something is flying around it, but not actually make out what it is.
On one hand, you state that we're in for disappointment and that the likelihood of a real direct observation is small. I agree 100%. But, that the evidence is thin, I would disagree. Gravitational pull (and wavelength shifts) on a star, while certainly not concrete evidence, has been used long before other planets were reported discovered. The foundations of the theories are solid, in as far as using credible contemporary science.
Now, if they found these planets using Seti, claiming to have uncovered a prime number sequence transmittion encoded with a 3d schematic of a machine who's purpose is unknown, but looks like possibly a gyroscope... I'd say they've been watching too many Jodie Foster movies.
I8-D
Isn't it possible that the planet got knocked away from its original star and got grabbed by the new one? Now if more such planets are found then its time to look at other theories but one doesn't mean much.
Dude, I wouldn't name these three suns after them, but I hear ya... I'm a big Rush fan, too. Is there any news of a new album from these guys? I haven't looked over rush.com in a while (need to do that... I love Lifeson's KISS sketch).
With the exception of the one rock planet observed, ALL are gas giants and virtually all many times larger than all the Gas Giants in our own solar system combined. We are NOT talking something the size of Venus, here, we are talking something closer in size to our own sun. This does make a bit of a difference.
To directly observe a planet the size of Earth at a resolution of 1 pixel at a distance of 100 light-years would require a radio telescope with a 1 Km diameter. The proposed Km radio telescope array would do this. Nobody has such a telescope (yet) so nobody is making this sort of claim (yet). But it could be done, it has been designed and (last I heard) it was being built. Once it is finished, planetary discoveries will be made much more rapidly and much more reliably.
It is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but such an array, in space, would be able to scan a lot of absorbtion frequencies, allowing you to not only detect such a planet, but know the composition of the atmosphere as well. A 1 mile diameter array in space would give you 6.25 pixels-worth of data - certainly enough to detect the existance of weather patterns and possibly enough to detect large moons (provided they are radio objects).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It never ceases to amaze me how little people seem to know about Astronomy, it must be the culmination of mankind's reasoning powers, combining a large number of academic disciplines, yet still allowing the spirit to be lifted in awe and pure delight. Sorry I've been a Stargazer all my life can't get enough of it.
You never catch me alive
....that's a Death Star in orbit.
Table-ized A.I.
There are enough alternate explainations to what these scientists are detecting that I also doubt the convenience of these planetary discoveries.
I understand what they are looking at, the wobble and doppler shifts etc, but to say without a doubt that they are detecting planets is pushing things a little. This new one, a jupiter sized gas giant orbiting every 80 hours a mere 8 million k from the star is moving at a pretty reasonable 10.5 million m/s or about 1/30th the speed of light.
These scientists may just be observing some odd gravitational effect. Maybe these stars they are looking at rotate a little off center. Maybe it is just interesting tidal effects from the other stars. etc etc.
It does however really capture the imagination to say that these interesting readings are actually planets.
It never ceases to amaze ME how little people seem to know about ANY science. At least the vague lack of comprehensive education and reflexive skepticism that one seems to find amongst slashdot posters is preferable to the blindly gullible misinformation or total disregard for science of any form that is typically found in the non-technical and ineducated teeming masses (especially politicians).
All your sun's are belong to us.
Don't tell him about all the walkie-talkies they have there.
And even worse was a movie based roughly on the ideas in the story. I walked out of the theatre after about fifteen minutes. David Birney (almost as talentless as a Baldwin) as some kind of weird priest, using a hawk to blind a pretty volunteer so she could understand the coming darkness. Or something. I can't remember if Asimov was still alive at the time, but if he was, I suspect this movie killed him. Bleh.
I had forgotten how much cooler teenagers look when they are smoking. Oh, wait
If we could get a hold of some of that "spice", we could fold space and go anywhere without moving! Dang worms though, keep swallowing the spice harvestors! Baron Harkonen might yet beat us to it!
If Tatooine was as big as Jupiter and orbited 3 suns. You must be thinking of the gas giant that causes the eclipse in Pitch Black.
So Lucas is just another reality show producer?
Mmmmm, you spell me in CAPITALS and mention little people, all in the same sentence. Very interesting...
You never catch me alive
Er, capitalizing occasional words is the easiest way in an informal text medium to convey which parts of a statement carry the strongest emphasis. I'm not sure what your point was...? :\
...a solar system with... three suns!
No, but it will be in the Star Wars superspecial edition 2023.
...how we have NO clue how the universe came to be. We can't even figure out how planets came into existence! We get all these theories going, and then find stuff that shows that we actually have NO clue whatsoever.
Seems like the more stars we look at, the more planets we fine. Maybe we can start to make educated guesses as to what at least one of the values in the Drake equation is, instead of the wild ass, pull a number out of my butt, guesses we had been using.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Yeah, it was in my pants all this time. I was going to mention it, but I didn't think it was such a big deal. My bad.
fish and pipes
It's pretty much like Tatooine, except that it's a gas giant around three stars instead of two. Still, I must admit -- it got me to click the link. I was expecting spaceships and stories of magic and heroism.
We already got the spice here on earth. Look up on: prana.
Yes, science fiction has a better grip on reality than the mind-bent sceptics.
... but only in a certain village in tunisia.
Free as in mason.
Bah, humbug. Just wait 'til I get the fusion reactor in my basement up and running! Then you'll be sorry! Bwah ha ha ha ha.
Oh, wait. I don't have a basement. Fuck.
fish and pipes
More details here: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/news/7_13_images.h tml.
Nice animations too.
A more appropirate example is the Skedar Fanatic's home planet in Perfect Dark.
Yes, Nightfall the movie was one giant piece of dung. Even the reviews for it gave it only one star. I have no idea how that film got released. It should've been thrown into the incinerator. You at least had the sense to walk out. I lingered on in the hope that it would getter better.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
"Konacki found a new way to identify planets by measuring velocities of all bodies in a binary or multiple star system."
I thought this was computationally impossible. Can some mathematician enlighten me? I seem to remember continuous failures when trying to handle the earth/moon/sun combination in the 1800s?
If there is gas around a single star, then there is gas around three stars...anyone knows why existing theories are in doubt because of this?
CNN is reporting that a planet has been discovered in a solar system with 3 suns.
Then evidently some sort of primitive lifeform must exist on that planet. How joyfully they shall welcome us, when we arrive bearing the gift of Linux.
The observation brings into doubt the theory stating that planets form from the dust orbiting around a single sun.
Well, duh. If there were really that much dust, the air in the server room would have to be so filthy you wouldn't be able to see the screen as you type.
three PENISES, or 3 vaginas, or 3x3 breasts (would they be udders, or an "udder shame"... is this to be an udderly shameful commentary?)
Now, imagine the rules saying one man and one woman. They'd have to be rewritten to accommodate ten nuclear/molecule-like "attachability" of reproductive organs. Hell, they'd NEED a planet that happens to be "slightly larger than Jupiter" just to have expansion room for the offspring.
Of course, if the first few paragraphs described above are occurring now, then wouldn't that "udderly" turn on its head all the various Earthling-originated, mass-organized religions? Maybe, but it could mean the saying "God works in mysterious ways" means it's time for humans to stop invoking the name, foisting the beliefs (which WON'T be provable to the living unless "God" allows the living and dead to freely transposition themselves. Since that has a snowball's chance in hell, so much for that.
Relations and relationships would be hopelessly confounded as reproduction could conceivably (pun not lost...) be geometrically complex. Rather than the female reproductive organs as we know them (or, organ as we know it), a simply all-in-one tele-tracting (telescoping/contracting) HUSK could be quite sufficient, leading to sanguine.
Maybe ants would have three bodies side-by-side, but skyscrapers as we know them would be monstrously large, perilously inefficient, and hopelessly subject to derision by oil industry lobbyists seeking funding to break the addiction to tri-sun energy delivery.
Perhaps, on planets having 3 suns, the beings we'd liken to humans might be vegetarians, telepathic, telekinetic, and able to leap 25-foot trenches.
Ground transportation would be a veritable bitch.
3rd degree burns as we know them would be 30-degree burns, and maybe racism as experienced on this dismal blast-deserving Earth humans might never be an issue on Tri-Star Planet.
Water would be held together by extremely strong gravity, but then the multi-ped near-humans might grow only as tall as 3.5 feet to 4 feet, or might grow tall and scoliotic as do vines. Physical relations could be as if the "Day of the Triffids" met "Bamby in Heat" sniffing for acorns and daisies-- one for entry and two for slapping extensors/penetrors... A tri-penetron-bond just to reproduce.
On Earth, people could be hung out to DRY. On Tri-Star Planet, people would be hung out to FRY. Maybe Fry's Electronics would be TRI's Electronics... or worse: Fly's Erectronics...
Naval warfare might be difficult. Radio Direction Finding might be trebly painful. Aeronautical navigation would be nearly impossible, and campfires sing-alongs might never exist-- unless campfire covers were patented to protect the concept of "singing in the dark"...
Now, imagine what could be written if humans discover a planet zig-zagging/orbiting among 4 suns.
Imagine what could be written if humans discover a planet zig-zigging or zag-zagging about 4.2 suns.
Imagine if if Slashdot were in existence on such planets. Imagine the commentaries posted on THOSE pages...
Tattoine? What's that? =)
Txurlo
observation brings into doubt the theory stating that planets form from the dust orbiting around a single sun.
The observation doesn't necessarily call into question this theory - there has long been a theory that rogue planets (i.e. planets that have either been knocked from their own solar system or where their star has exploded) can be taken into the gravity of star(s) that it wasn't formed around.
What does call the theory into question is the paucity of information on extra solar planetary formation. Simply, we don't have enough data to start making convincing general principles of planetary construction.
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
... Tatooine-like planet discovers YOU!
When scientists were asked about the significance of finding a planet with three suns they said, "The future is so bright that we gotta wear shades..."
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
orbital circumference (let's assume it's circular; it'll be close enough):
8,000,000 x 1,000 x 2 x 3.14 = 50,240,000,000 meters
Orbit time:
80 x 60 x 60 = 288,000 seconds
Orbital speed = 174,444 m/s
http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus /Iapetus-Color-High-Res.jpg
Tatooine doesnt exist, does this?
I'm just waiting for the first DS9 like wormhole to the delta quadrant to be discovered. Hell I'd settle for the most nasal starship captain that doesn't have a clue.
Don't worry, your parents do.
This is, in fact, more proof that norton truely does suck. Sorry, I've never used norton myself, but I've had to work with people unfortunate enough to be troubled by norton's incessany whining.
When single shines the triple sun, whats been sundered and undone, shall be whole the two made one, by Gelfling hand or else by none.
* You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
* The womp rats are about 2 meters in length.
* The sand is coarse and rough and irritating, and gets everywhere.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Interesting point about women's cycles, is it really related? Would a woman have her period if she was suspended in zero-gravity? Does the moon force her to drop an egg from gravitational forces like it affects the tide? If we inhabit another planet will women's cycles change?
Why do we have to sensationalize everything? It'd be a good science story if they just prsented the facts. Is this CNN or the freaking E chanel?
Morans.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
In a related story, another small moon has been discovered near Jupiter. Wait. That's no moon, it's a $$#%${NO CARRIER{
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
... that lucky bastard.
Tatooine three suns has. The article very cool is (Yoda) Be what... be real?
- This can't be... - Be what? Be real?
a dust clud can decompose into one star, a group of, or a galaxy.
... and who read Perry Rhodan knows this system already...... ;-}
Where is this dumb thing coming from that dust clouds develop only into single stars?
I know this for a fact, because I am living on the rim of a dust cloud that decomposed into an entire galaxy!
(guess the model of a dust cloud always decomposing into one star was made on some desktio using VB script?)
or it's more like the planet Trisol from Futurama's episode "My Three Suns"
I hate to break it to you, but telescopes don't work that way.
Go look up "diffraction limit."
To see how you can combine multiple telescopes to give the effective resolution of a telescope with a larger aperture, look up "interferometers." In particular, look at how radio interferometers like the VLA and VLBI are designed. The systems are simpler at long, radio wavelengths.
Imagine if if Slashdot were in existence on such planets. Imagine the commentaries posted on THOSE pages...
Well, it certainly couldn't be much more incoherent than yours.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
We may never find a more wretched hive of scum and villiany...
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
IIRC the planet from Pitch Black had 3 Suns
Or was that moon of a gas giant
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
where are the dark crystal referances ones..
"when singles shines the tripple sun, what was sundred and undone, behold the two made one, by gelfling hand or else by none"
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
When Herve died, he left a lot of money to a charity he set up. Their goal is to make travel easier and more acommodating to little people. They have set up small condos all around the world, where everything is scaled for people his size. They have a trust fund set up so that any adult under four foot six can stay there free of charge. Do you know what they call them? Herve Villachez's Stay Free Mini Pads.
Badump cha. Thank you, I'll be here all night. Try the veal, it's to die for.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Speaking of gravity (I know this would be a big rehash), isn't it funny that every planet the intrepid explorers (in most of the Sci-Fi movies) land on has a permissibly breathable atmosphere and a gravitational pull equal to that on earth (or home planet)? Even the 'small planet' of Tatooine or Naboo has the same gravity. Even the same ambient temperatures (except for the snow-filled planet, of course, where the native animals' innards are surprisingly warm, and it snows - I wonder how the water evaporates).
The native creatures aren't usually scared of the aliens. They don't welcome them open-armed either. You can find palatable (and hopefully non-toxic) food everywhere. (Yechch, I am a born vegetarian).
Oh, by the way, I am a big Star Wars fan - I watched the first two releases when I was too young for such observations.
-clueless Nick
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
Pentium, Celeron (for the red giant candidate), Xeon? And Opteron for their nearest 0 magnitude neighbour?
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
Knowing us, we'll probably bring them 45 different distros which will start a war over which one to use. I see the Debian and Fedora factions fighting it out. The Debian side has really old tech but keep up the fight with time tested strategies. The Fedora side is more technologically advance but their equipment crashes at key points in their battle plan. The battle goes on for decades, at which point the Gentoo faction is finally done compiling their software. The .004% performance increase from all that source compiling allows them to make easy work of the other factions. Shortly after the Gentoo faction comes to power, their leader announces he's defecting to the Microsoft side, which has flooded the planet with low priced copies of their software that runs all the latest games. The MS side quickly dominates the planet because all that an advanced civilization really wants is to play all the latest games without any problems....
News flash. You mean *star system.* Our star system is referred to as the "solar system" because the name of our sun is, drum roll please (Doc on the drums), *Sol.*
Something you could've actually learned in five seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, despite the failings of the K-12 education system in this country.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Let's see, Tatooine is a fictional planet. So this article is about scientists discovering a fictional planet? Hey, I could do that!
First the Deathstar, and now Tatooine! ...*reaches over and smacks George Lucas before he can start snickering*...
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
Plenty of folks have noted that Tatooine only had two suns, but nobody seems to recall that the planet depicted in The Dark Crystal had three, which reach close conjunction every thousand years or so:
When single shines the triple sun,
What was sundered and undone
Shall be whole, the two made one,
By Gelfling hand, or else by none.
You know, despite all the advances in CGI effects, 1982's The Dark Crystal still looks pretty darned good. Of course, a good story trumps fancy SFX every time (I'm looking at you, George "add some more banthas" Lucas).
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I agree completely, but let's not allow a runaway imagination to lead to conclusions that are just plain wrong. For instance, in stating a (possible) gas giant too close to a sun is Tattoine.
Another example was the impact the other night on Tempel 1. You needed a half-meter telescope just to see a smudge, yet people reported seeing 2mag brightening. My ccd sequence showed no brightening at all, and we were in the best position in the United States to see it.
For life to evolve, you need a stable environment to evolve in. Studies done in the 90's showed that without the Moon, the tilt of the Earth would be chaotic leading every few tens of millions of years to it being tipped over like Uranus is, which would almost certainly end evolution.
Someplace to escape from the Dark Lord and his Empire!
any day now I expect to see him age dramatically before he makes his monkey grin, after he uses his Sith lightning in GITMO.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
yeah right . . . I have posted things to /. that were rejected and then 3 hours later accepted when some other asshole decided to submit it.
Since this is the planet that it's farthest from... ;)
Well, maybe it would be as dry as the dearth of humor?
Finnish people wouldnt see a problem with having 2 suns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandworm_(dune)
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
"If the planet's environment is life-friendly, then it's only a matter of time before life evolves on it."
what time scale are you talking about? as far as anything we know of, life has appeared spontaneously ONCE. every life form on our planet is related by the same genetic componenentry. but whenever you slap a mosquito, the result is a glob of "primordial goo" far more fertile for the spontaneous appearance of life than anything available on earth prior to the RNA/DNA based life forms we know and love, but we don't see new types of creatures popping up on our wind shields. we can't even force new types of life to appear in a lab. you really need to lay off the sci-fi for a while.
(apologies to True Fans if I get these wrong)
"If there's a bright center to the Universe, Tatooine is planet that it's farthest from."
"Yeah, there are some people that call this planet the, uh, `ass-end' of space. But I like it here, I like the small, home-town feel. We know everybody here.. _eeverybody_."
Tatooine is basically just a dark future (drought) version of Kansas on a planetary scale. *shudder*
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Vin is tryin' ta git in...
... it orbits the main star of a triple-star system known as HD 188753 in the constellation Cygnus. The stellar trio and its planet are about 149 light-years from Earth and about as close to each other as our sun is to Saturn.
hmmmm... So THIS is the planet where Canadian power trio Rush came from.. They musta crashed into the blackhole of Cygnus X-1 in The Rosinante and somehow ended up in Toronto. That explains a lot... I always thought Geddy Lee's eyes were too close together to be human.
The article said:
The new finding could upset existing theories that planets usually form out of gas and dust circling a single star, and could lead scientists to look in new places for planets.
Even though our current theories of planetary formation were designed primarily to explain our own solar system, there isn't any reason why the same general ideas don't apply elsewhere in the universe. The scientific theories of how our solar system formed usually begin with a rotating interplanetary cloud of gas and dust (a nebula) that contracts gravitationally.
Since our solar system only has one sun, the theory says that a single proto-sun condenses at the center of the nebula. The energy for the proto-sun initially comes from the conversion of gravitational energy into heat as it contracts - a process called Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction. Eventually the proto-sun becomes hot enough for nuclear fusion to occur and it becomes a star.
Terrestrial planets form from the nebular material when tiny bits of dust collide and stick together to make a bigger clump of dust. The clumps start sticking together to make bigger, and bigger clumps. Through collisions and accretion of material due to gravity, planet-sized objects can eventually be formed. There are different theories about how the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, etc.) formed. They may have formed when a slightly more dense region in the nebula began to contract gravitationally, in much the same way the proto-star formed. However, in the case of Jupiter, the planet never reached a large enough size for nuclear reactions to occur in its core. This is probably because there just wasn't enough material at that location in the nebula to be pulled into Jupiter. Jupiter's Galilean moons probably formed from dust and gas orbiting around Jupiter during its formation, much like a miniature solar system. Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Callisto are almost as big as the planet Mercury.If the composition of the nebula from which our solar system formed was just a little bit different, Jupiter could have become another star, rather than just a really, really big gaseous planet. This star would have formed a binary system with the sun, and would have had its own planets orbiting around it.
The discovery of some of these extra-solar planets doesn't necessarily bring the theories of how our solar system formed into doubt, but it does mean that sometimes we need to consider other possibilities. Some of the extra-solar planets discovered are in orbits close to their stars that are more consistent with a terrestrial planet than a gas giant. This is a big puzzle to scientists. One theory suggests that maybe these giant planets formed further away from the star and gradually spiraled inwards as they lost energy through collisions with gas and dust in the nebula.
The article wasn't necessarily wrong about this discovery's affect on our theories, but it didn't exactly tell the whole story either.
Tattooine? Christ, will you Star Wars guys just shut the **** up for a few years?
... It's a FILM for godsake ... not life ... a movie!
Does everything have to be compared to some children's science fiction MOVIE?
We're all really tired of this crap. Move on
g
You've overlooked one thing: only Debian and Gentoo will run on their three Suns.
Puny Earth Mortals! With your "ONE" sun!
"CNN is reporting..." You mean "Reuters is reporting..."
...because it has "my 3 suns"...guess you gotta be over 40 to get that one...
I kinda miss those comments more on the weekends.
I think that because of physics, there probably was not a dust cloud around those stars for long, not long enough to form the planet, so pehaps it was captured. Just my 2 cents, unfortunately I only get a penny for my thoughts. :p
What were those two white dots and those flashing lights right next to the planet? Must have been a star battle. Either that, or two starships refueling.
Alderan is peaceful, they have no weapons! Like Greedo! ...
Crap...
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
It's good having all kinds of Laws and Rules. Thermo Laws are necessary. Some people say I'm a law breaker. But here we have just another example ((http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07 /15/0415230)) of people letting their pre-conceived ideas -of what they believe HAS TO BE- that then serves as a wall so high it stops them from seeing something new. I know many people have difficulty understanding my engines ((http://free.seekon.com/CarSizeSteamEngine/)) and the easy reaction is calling me a name. It seems I have stepped over a wall others don't see. The inability of others to see over a hurdle I jumped doesn't make me wrong. It just means I, like those astronomers, have stopped accepting blinders, begun to look over the walls http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/14/planet.su ns.reut/index.html . I'm not asking anyone to trash the Thermo Laws. Just peek around them some, kick the tires, look at the other side of the wall. It's there. It's there waiting, just like anti-gravity, just like a new type of engine that doesn't need a giant fuel tank to hoist into Space, just like a power source that can run every machine we have without combusting anything... They're all there waiting for us to look over the wall.
Bad proofreading on my part.
"more so"
This one seems to be changing a bit, but I still consider your correction to be valid.
"run-of-the-mill"
This is open to interpretation. Check out The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, page 301, item 7.88, which discusses multiple hyphens.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This the key thing to remember about films. It's as they've always been: a movie is more like a diorama than a play.
In a play, you need good actors because "remembering lines" is the easy part. Convincing the audience of a new reality on an artificial platform thirty feet away is the hard part.
In a movie, the audience can be visually much closer to the actors. This suggests an immediate trade-off that must be done: You need the "best-looking" actors you can find because you're zoomed in the whole time and the show is exactly the same every time its played. It doesn't matter as much if they can't act because you can keep filming each scene and molding actors into the scene you want until it's good enough, then just use the best one. It's sort of the "Million Monkeys" approach to filmmaking, only separate "models" for monkeys.
If your pool of actors is limited to the set of {Models who have talent} you're going to have to pay the more than if you use the much larger pool of {Models}.
I have no good explanation for the phenomenon of "stars" in this framework. Their tendancy to be typecast suggests that some branding is going on here, but there's no good reason to pay someone $20 million to look good in a 90 minute film when there're plenty of people capable of looking good for 90 minutes for much less money.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!