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New Large Rocky Planet Found
An anonymous reader writes "Discovery News is reporting the discovery of a super-sized rocky planet orbiting a red-dwarf. The star is located about 9000 ly from the sun. The planet consists of rock and ice and orbits at around the distance of asteroid belt. The planet could not grow to Jupiter size because the star is small and the system ran out of gas. The planet is about 13 earth masses and was discovered using the microlensing technique. Since most of the stars in the Milky Way are smaller than the sun, we should expect more of similar findings."
As more of these planets are found using microlensing, perhaps someone could put together the "Rocky Planet Picture Show."
Sorry, had to do that.
I haven't been following this news too closely, so could someone please tell me if they've found any planets that are the size of earth? not 13 earth masses, but somewhere between 0.5 and 2 earth masses would be nice. I know that life can exist outside of conditions found on the earth, but it would be really cool to find intelligent life like ourselves. I'm not sure what evolution did on other planets, but I'd like to see what kind of muscles developed on organisms that lived on a planet with 13 times the mass of the earth.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
-1: Flamebait
Come on, everyone knows science is incremental. 99% of progress is unremarkable in and of itself, but quite often the process involved allows greater leaps to occur. For instance, the microlensing they are using in these systems are a good advance in optics -- now what other uses can we think of? And that doesn't even count what we can't even predict.
Your attitude is just demonstrative of what is wrong with people today, they cannot think past the immediate, and certainly don't understand how we got to where we are today (hint: it's not by only making major breakthroughs).
Westblogs
What the hell does a "super-sized rocky planet" mean?
I really hate the way Discovery channel always takes information and adjusts it purely for their largest target audience - extremely overweight, couch potatoes who dislike going for more than 5 minutes without seeing the words "super-size".
We have found other planets like this before, this is not news.
Sure, to YOU it's just a dupe of celestial proportions.
But some of us are FROM Altair Centauri, and this is the first news item we've had in 9000 years, you insensitive clod.
-1: Flamebait
Hey, hey, hey, just because somebody has a critical opinion on something dose not make them flamebait!
Come on, everyone knows science is incremental. 99% of progress is unremarkable in and of itself, but quite often the process involved allows greater leaps to occur. For instance, the microlensing they are using in these systems are a good advance in optics -- now what other uses can we think of? And that doesn't even count what we can't even predict.
I would agree with you here but, the focus of the story is not the optic technology used in this find; it's the useless planet.
The tech of the find is thrown in the story like packing peanuts, just filling space, and is overshadowed by the icy-rocky-planet-thingy.
Your attitude is just demonstrative of what is wrong with people today, they cannot think past the immediate, and certainly don't understand how we got to where we are today (hint: it's not by only making major breakthroughs).
Nope sorry, didn't miss the interesting optic comments in the story, but this was not billed as a story about how they found the planet.
Plus I am not only looking for major breakthroughs here, just tired of hearing the same story rehashed every 2 weeks.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Go back to your high school physics, g is proportional to the mass and the inverse of the distance squared. Assuming a sphere, mass equals density x 4/3 x pi x R^3. Apply the inverse R^2 term and you end up with g proportional to density x R.
The planet might be 13 times the mass but if the density is the same as Earth then g is only 2.35 times that of Earth (cube root of 13).
ZombieEngineer
This story is anything but useless, as it expands our understanding of the range of stars that can support a habitable planet. Sure, this world is probably too far from the red dwarf to have life, but the finding proves that red dwarf star systems can have rocky worlds like ours, perhaps even close enough to the star.
The previous poster was right -- SCIENCE IS INCREMENTAL. We can't shrug off discoveries like these simply because they don't "excite".
You know this is why people are loosing interest in the space program! Useless findings after useless findings are boring people to death.
They found a new planet, 13 times the mass of Earth, and you're bored?
Sheesh!
We will achieve faster than light travel (of speeds useful to travelling through space) exactly 5 minutes after I die.
Approximately 5 minutes later, we will find the cure for whatever I died from.
"The planet could not grow to Jupiter size because the star is small and the system ran out of gas."
No problem. They'll just coast another few light years, and it turns out there's a Speedway just past the next pulsar. Add a couple chili dogs from the snack bar, and there'll be enough gas in that system for another 5 million years.
You know this is why people are loosing interest in the space program! Useless findings after useless findings are boring people to death.
Honestly what impact will this find have on the scientific community?
No, it's flamebait because you're flaming. "Boring people to death?" Doubtful, considering how much news an event like this generates. There are plenty of people on Slashdot alone talking about this, never mind the thousands of others who don't visit Slashdot.
Having a difference in opinion, even a critical one, is not what makes your post flamebait.
The "wow this is teh ghey! stupid boring scientists, who cares" presentation is what makes it flamebait. Honestly, if you don't care about these stories, DON'T READ THEM. Whining that they don't interest you is pretty boring in and of itself.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
absolutely true, and it's sad that your post was modded "troll".
Welcome the "common man"
So you don't understand the significance of this observation because?
It is the endless stories like this...
Perhaps you could reference these "endless stories Seriously, it sounds pretty cool to me. I don't see in any way, shape, or form how this is a "dupe", if that was your conjecture. Or perhaps by "endless" you mean any scientific study that does not result in a star-trek utopia?
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
They found a new planet, 13 times the mass of Earth, and you're bored?
dude. You can't explain the relevance of the study when your audience does not understand the word "relevance"
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
You obviously never graded any of my homework. As an undergrad or graduate student. Or published journal articles. There's no official abbreviation, but it gets abbreviated 90% of the time. Like with seconds (s, sec, or even " seen frequently. Of course the last IS offical when describing divisions of an arc.) 'Lyrs' is also common.
I thought that was an abbreviation for 'politicians'. As in 'Tony Blair and George Bush are lyrs.'
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Is the fact they haven't visited us.
(Sorry. I couldn't resist)
Splut.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Hi, everyone. I wrote one of the original news releases about this planet discovery, so I'm very interested in the discussion of whether the "super-Earth" is exciting news or not. When I first found out about the planet (I work at Ohio State University; one of our astronomers heads the team that identified it) I knew I had to write a news release (I mean, this is a new planet!) but I also had to wonder how much of a splash the story would make in the media.
Some 170 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the last decade, so there's already been a lot of news coverage. But it's easy to forget that before a decade ago, scientists had no real evidence of what other solar systems are like. This planet is unusual in that it's terrestrial, and its solar system doesn't seem to have any giant gas planets like Jupiter. So the find expands our ideas about what kinds of solar systems are out there, and it also suggests that we're getting closer to our goal of finding other Earth-mass planets.
There's more information in the Ohio State news release, and the one written by my colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. There are also lots of other news stories out there right now, most notably by New Scientist, National Geographic, and Space.com.
Pam Gorder
for summary of discovered extrasolar planets (exoplanets) check
www.exoplanets.org
(it's not updated as frequently as news sites, but it IS maintained by astronomers, not someone making a quick buck...)