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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."
Fact: Dumblecore dies in the new Harry Potter book. Fact: Snapes is the Half-Blood Prince. Proof: http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/2197/dumbledore dies0wl.jpg
Here's a closeup of the planet, fwiw: image
I don't know how many people are just a little bit skeptical of all these extrasolar planetary systems. I'm not denying that planets exist and there are probably a lot of them, but to observe them directly seems like a bit of a long shot, considering their orbital planes have to be edge-on to us.
How unlikely is such an observation? Last June, the planet Venus transitted the disk of the Sun from our viewpoint. The last time this happened was in 1882. The transit lasted six hours. Mercury transits are more common, but still years apart. Yet extrasolar systems are being discovered weekly, sometimes several per week.
It seems more probable that these discoveries are based on thin evidence in order to justify grants, or, on the case of the exoplanets discovered by amateurs, an attempt to gain notoriety. And mischaracterizations such as the headline which suggests a Tattoine-like planet has been found will only lead to disappointment. Unless someone wants to write science fiction about a planet with a thousand degree mean temperature and surface gravity 10 times Earth.
how about Fedora Core? When is it going to die?
Space.com has some images of the new planet system http://tinyurl.com/e2j7z.
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