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."

Comments

Yes

[mcc]

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).

Re:Yes

[arimeq]

Short story is lot better. I read both short and novel version. Short version tells the story of final few hours before the Nightfall, while the novel begins earlier and ends after Nightfall. I definitely prefer original, short version - it keeps the tension.

Re:Too convenient

[ogre7299]

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.

Re:The effects of 3 suns

[slashdotnickname]

I wonder how different things would be with three suns.

Appearances aside, not much.

If the planet's environment is life-friendly, then it's only a matter of time before life evolves on it. Lifeforms will then thrive on the resources until a resource limit is met and competition (i.e. "survival of the fitest") kicks in.

Because of the survival benifits that cooperation and intelligence have, some lifeforms will take an evolutionary path towards that... more complex behaviors will likely evolve, eventually leading up to societal-type levels of interactions and intelligence.

Somewhere out there's a mass of stuff wondering what a world with only one sun would be like...

Re:The effects of 3 suns

[Infonaut]

Appearances aside, not much.

You seem to be making the argument that essentially a habitable planet is a habitable planet is a habitable planet. Don't you think, though, that if Earth had three suns, life might have evolved in a vastly different fashion?

I don't know the answer, but it does seem to me that many of the assumptions we take for granted about organic life and its development might not apply on a world with three suns. For example, on a "desert planet" like Tatooine, there may be no aquatic mammals. Assuming current speculation about the evolution of mammals on Earth is true, perhaps on a desert planet large-brained creatures might not ever evolve.

My ignorance in matters of biology outstrips my knowledge of the subject by a wide margin, so I am just poking around curiously to see what others think.