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Three Neptune-sized Planets Found Nearby
WillAffleckUW writes "CNN reports the discovery of three Neptune-sized planets found in orbit around a sun 41 light years away. The star they orbit is similar to our Sun, and the planetary distribution is probably similar to our Solar System. Recent observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope last year revealed that HD 69830 also hosts an asteroid belt, making it the only other sun-like star known to have one. No word on if they have habitable moons, or monoliths yet."
For those of you not immediately familiar with exactly what a Neptune-sized object is, it is about 12.645679 sextillion Volkswagens (go ahead, look it up. I have time). Now, as to why they would categorize an object that is 41 light-years away as 'nearby' is another question.
(Go ahead, tell me the tale of how immensely huge the universe is and how 41 light-years away can only be described as nearby. Then tell me you won't mind helping me move if it's 'nearby')
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As opposed to something that is over 7,000 - 10,000 light years away, 41 isn't very far. I mean it's no Alpha Centauri, but it's close in astronomical terms.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
ba-dum-cha. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.
There could be sentient being living there. Odds are 50/50 they have more advanced technology than we do. If they can travel at near light speed, they could arrive here 82+ years after we started beaming massive amounts of radio and tv into space, which would be soon. Maybe we should prepare a "reception" for them or something.
It's only a matter of time until somebody picks up our signals and comes to crash the party.
Nearby, like many words, is not an absolute term. It is relative to the scale of the things involved. No, 41 lightyears is not nearby if you're talking about the distance from your house to the nearest gas station, but when you are talking about interstellar distances, 41 lightyears is much more near our sun (i.e., nearby) than say a star on the opposite side of the Milky Way.
Think of it like this. We'll use another word whose meaning is varaible in a similar way: close. A scafolding platform collapses and a pile of bricks comes within one foot of crashing down on you. You might say, "Wow! that was close." You throw a pitch in a ball game and you throw wide one foot left of the strike zone. No one would call that close. You'd need to be in a range of, say, a centimeter from the plate for a pitch to be called close.
my pet machine
We might not have the technology to travel there physically in my lifetime (or lifespan, whatever) but that should be close enough to warrant some refocusing of more than a few SETI dishes. And for the longer term maybe a satelite designed to last 500 years to send there. This might be a project worth investing in even though we will be long gone before it would achieve fruition.
We are all just people.
It is if you consider it is theoretically possible to get there within one's lifetime. Heck, if we sent a probe with our current tech which has a top speed of about 1/3c (assuming I remember correctly), it could get there in about 124 years. (It takes ~6 months to get up to top speed with an ion drive if I remember correctly. Yes, I know that's not quite right because it does travel at some speed while accelerating, there are galactic orbit considerations, depends on the mass of the probe/output of the engine, etc.) So, we could see results from the probe in 165 years from launch. With todays technology.
If the curiosity factor isn't enough to justify such a trip, well, then you should consider that your great grand kids may be in circumstances where they can not survive on this planet for much longer, for some reason or another, and may need to find possible alternatives. Consider it not putting all of one's eggs in one basket.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
welcome our new-neptunian overlords
Can't we all just get along
Ehm, cosmology has allowed rational people to do away with bronze-age tribal myths in favour of actual science.
Yeah, some might consider this a possible life site. But how can we know the planets are indeed distributed as they are in our Solar System, with a rocky planet with the right elements located in zone around the star that can support liquid water for billions of years?
Also, three Neptune sized planets probably would not protect such a terrestrial world against frequent life-exterminating collisions as our Jupiter and Saturn (and to a lesser extent Uranus and Neptune) have done. Neptune is no where near Jupiter's size, and Jupiter has almost certainly saved us from death.
I'm really impressed by the speed of progress here. I'm hoping that in ~30 years, we'll actually be able to SEE these planets. That's really exciting!
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
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if you can get the truck to get there.
I would also help you move here on earth. Assuming the distance you want to move is the same percentage distance of the earth that 41 light years is to the galaxy.
Seriously, it about context. What was the article talking about, finding something in the galaxy. There for nearby will be relative to the size of the galaxy.
Man, nobody understands context anymore.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Space is big. Really big. You might think it's a long way to the chemist on the nearest non-Milky Way Nuptune-sized planets 41 light years away, but that's peanuts compared with space
Good luck sometimes arrives disguised as bad
Yeah? And I'd like to know why this country spends HUNDREDS of billions of dollars on unnecessary wars. One gains knowledge for all mankind, the other pisses off the rest of the world and generates more enemies for us to have to fight down the road. I'd say the billions for space study is much more worthwile than many of the other things we do.
From the Article:The newly discovered planets have masses of about 10, 12 and 18 times that of Earth and they zip around the star in rapid orbits of about 9, 32 and 197 days, respectively. Based on their distances from the star, two inner worlds nearest the star are rocky planets similar to Mercury, the scientists suspect.
The significance of the distinction is that rocky planets may be much more likely to harbor earth-like life than are gas giants. Of course, being so close to their home sun that they have a 9 or 32-earth day year, it seems likely that the "earth-like" life may be mere bacteria living in subsurface water, rather than human-like meat-bags getting suntans on the surface.
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Assuming we can spot Neptune sized planets, if we were looking at our Solar System, we would see four planets well outside the "habitable" zone. Here we see three big rocky planets where only one is "just inside" the habitable zone--and I rashly assume it's just within the too-hot side (the outermost planet has a year of 197 days, compared to Venus's 224).
How is this "similar"? Seems pretty different to me...
after we started beaming massive amounts of radio and tv into space
What with dispersion, atmospheric absorption, and general background interference from the sun and other far more powerful sources of radio waves, I reckon aliens would have a hard time picking up TV stations from mars, never mind light years away. I mean in real terms, what are the odds that anything except a very, very powerful radio telescope pointed directly towards earth and listening on the correct wavelengths is going to pick up anything but background static? Fairly minimal I reckon.
Besides which given another 200 years or so we are probably going to invent or discover some entirely new and far more efficient means of communication than radio, and the first scientist to turn it on is going to be blasted out the window by the storm of alien TV and radio he just tuned in to.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
People who complain about the government supporting people who are incapable of working is really quite inexpensive, since there are very few people who can't work. It's things like the military, health care, and public works that suck up all the tax revenue. Welfare is insignificant.
I'm so sick of compassionless conservatives bitching about the couple of dollars per year that they pay for welfare, while at the same time endorsing the wars that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars paid per person for wars.
Here's an experiment, to convince you that the myth of the lazy jobless guy is just that -- a myth. Approach someone without a job (preferably one who isn't insane, as so many homeless folks are). Offer them a fulltime job (no benefits necessary) at minimum wage doing something that is within their capabilities. I guarantee that 90% of the welfare / disability recipients you make this offer to will accept your job offer. Of course, no one will ever make those offers, since most people are profoundly bigoted against the jobless -- which in turn is what KEEPS those people jobless. And disabled people are, for the most part, simply incapable of doing enough useful work to justify a salary that would keep them housed and fed. And so no one offers them jobs either. It's nothing to do with laziness. And if you don't believe me, just try my experiment. Go down to the local homeless shelter and try it (but avoid the schizophrenics -- they don't really count, being too crazy to know what's going on).
Hey, at least the war is making jobs for Americans again. For the last few decades, the billions that the US spent on wars mostly went to people like Saddam Hussain and Bin Laden. Just goes to show how bad an idea outsourcing war is. But finally, it's AMERICANS dying for America's stupid inane goals, not foreigners. In the long run, that will produce fewer enemies, and will turn Americans into pacifists as everyone who likes war gets the chance to die young in one...
It wasn't that long ago (err, wow, 10 years, maybe that's long) that the first extrasolar planet was discovered. I still remember that news announcement I watched on TV...
Anyway, since the discovery of those 3 planets, another planet has been found. Check out the exoplanet encyclopedia (my favourite exoplanets site). It has a catalog with all the data of those planets, some with uncertainty factors. Discovery method, size, catalogue number, the whole lot. Try chucking all that into a spread-sheet, and plot some scatter graphs. Should be a lotta fun. The last time I tried this, it was a bit problematic because the masses are not really known (for planets discovered using spectral shifts), but are merely minimum (maximum?) limits only. But still, an order of magnitude plot could be fun.
Anyway, the 3 planets are already in the catalogue under HD 69830. Don't forget to check out this one as well. Exciting times. I look forward to 200 planets!
Wait, did you just say radio waves don't travel at the speed of light? Hmm, yes you did. FYI, radio waves are light.
I always have to laugh whenever someone says somehting along the lines of "A single Shuttle launch could feed a million people for a year."
My answer: yeah - if you could get them all to the Cape, and have them all eat Aluminum and LH2 and LOX!
You need to understand that governments do NOT work on the principle of monetary equity: if they saved 500 Million dollars here, NO ONE says "OH, that means we can send 500 Million to the staving people in _________ (place country name here)!"
There is no political will in any nation to EVER do this kind of thing. Also, money spent on this kind of "research" invariably tends to spin off into all sorts of other areas. The benefits to mankind of non-obvious-payoff research is incalculable (and no, not because the number is "0"!) and humans are curious by nature.
So, it is entirely disingenuous to try and match X dollars spent on "space" to X dollars NOT spent somewhere else. The world just does not work like that.
Tree-huggers and people-feeders still don't seem to understand this though - and thank fuck none of them are in power anywhere on the planet!
Remember: give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. But teach a man to fish, and he will spend all day in a boat drinking beer.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Assuming that Bode's Law applies there, it's a reasonable assumption that a planet resides within the habitable zone around that star.
However, unless it has through some miracle of coincidence a large moon to provide the environment of constant change via tides and crustal flexing, I doubt that Darwinian processes would have had the time to produce an ecosphere like ours. Maybe something along the lines of the Paleozoic era might be possible.
But then, with an asteroid belt comes catastrophic encounters, and maybe that would be the larger driving influence for Darwinian change.
But in any case, I doubt that the coincidence would be strong enough to extend to a similarity of geography that would support an ecological mechanism similar to ours, that regulates climate change between two quasi-stable regimes.
Quite possibly, once life developed on such a world it might quickly drive it into a greenhouse state like Venus, without the mechanisms that switch us between greenhouse and icehouse that we have.
We spend more on foreign aid in the US than we do on NASA. And I'm not counting any of the goings on in Iraq or wars as foreign aid, either.
Space travel is a fraction of the budget. The RIAA makes more money every year than the NASA budget for any given year. And they've contributed nothing to man kind like NASA research has. Just, you know, for some perspective: We waste more money on shitty music than the government spends on NASA and research.
Yes, there is a limit.
That limit is 6 solar masses. Think about it: 6 times the mass of our sun. Made of rocks.
Why the limit? Because that is the mass of an object, after which it will collapse in on itself to form a black hole. I don't know enough of the science to be able to state at what point the center of the planet begins to form neutronium, but the surface at least, will remain rocky, until the object does completely collapse.
Rocky is just "rocks" and rocks are happy to sit in a very high level of gravity. Your 5 solar mass rocky world might have mountains that reach as high as 3 or even 4 millimetres, and fantastically deep trenches up to 2 mm deep might form during "earthquakes".
The only questions in my mind are:
1) How long after the thing stops accreting material does it take to form a rocky surface?
2) What is the surface gravity of a 5 solar mass rocky world?
3) At what point does the interior begin to form Neutronium.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I reckon aliens would have a hard time picking up TV stations from mars, never mind light years away.
Assume that the aliens have a radio telescope that is comparable to the one at Arecibo. I don't have numbers on its sensitivity after recent upgrades, but a ball-park figure I have heard is that it can pick up a cell phone transmission within a sizable part of the solar system near earth.
A rough calculation reveals that perhaps a 10^14 W source at the centre of our galaxy (2.2 x 10^4 light-years away) could be detected by Arecibo. Compare this to terrestrial television (~10^6 W) and radio (~10^5) stations, and you'll find that it could be on the edge of possiblility for Arecibo to pick up TV transmissions from a planet 41 light-years away.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
From reading the article, it seems the planets have semi-habitable climates, possible liquid water, that's interesting...
Perhaps these planets contain intelligent life, advanced far beyond our own. Perhaps they have learned the better way of pacifism and build technologies directed toward bettering life rather than destroying it.
If that's the case, I vote we conquer them, enslave their kind, take their technologies and patent them as our own, and propel ourselves toward a new age of luxury. It will serve as a witness to the galaxy that No One messes with Earth!
Suppose one light year is 1 km. Then the tinyest speck of dust on the monitor is about 5 times bigger than Earth (1 micron), Sun is about half the size of the dot above i (0.1mm), distance from Earth to Sun is the length of the word "length" (1.5cm). The size of the Solar system (Pluto orbit) is about the size of your computer - 0.7 meter. The most distant objects in Oort cloud are probably within your room (a few meters). The nearest star - 4km away, like a gas station. The new planets are 41km away - the state border :-). Our Miky Way galaxy is a few times larger than Earth, maybe half way to the Moon. The nearest spiral galaxy is not too far - just 8 times more distant than Moon. The edge of the Universe (12 bln l.y.) is about the size of Sedna orbit.
So, 41 light years is relatively near :-).
Basically, the human body atrophies during Space Travel from SAMENESS AND LACK OF PHYSICAL STRESS. My Fountain of Youth Temperature Oscillation Health System brings back the stress to ALL BODILY SYSTEMS. When you're on the hot side of the AC unit, the circulatory and lymph systems get reamed out & pumped, pores open wide, while on the cold side of the system you begin shivering as hypothermia is quickly achieved in 5-10 minutes from the induced rapid cooling. Shivering exercises every muscle group in the human body, all the way through.
Someone here mentioned it would take a long time to reach all those desperate women in the Neptunian ("greener pastures") Worlds but really, it will not take nearly as long as you think. I have developed an engine that can be adapted from producing electric current to making plenty of thrust for Light Speed. I have theorized a way to make a Quantum Leap (upon achieving Light Speed) that goes beyond the Speed of Light. How fast I don't know but Speed of Thought? Maybe. But there wouldn't be any way to know for sure you wouldn't come out in the middle of the Neptuninian aphrodite women's Sun... so maybe I'll pass on the 1st expedition.
btw, when you set up the Fountain of Youth System, use the Low Setting on the air conditioner. IT IS NOT A TOY. Cooling and warming the lungs and muscles in the inner chest walls overly much and too fast is enough to kill you. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. The system will strengthen the lungs of the wheelchair bound, the crippled & bedridden & disabled as well as recovering their heart health, but it will take months & a good deal of nutritional supplements is strongly advised. It will speed the healing process. For young bucks who are already healthy, the temperature oscillation will take you to a higher physical condition but you still NEED TO START OUT SLOW.
Another beautiful thing about letting an air conditioner exercise you, much like a hyperbaric chamber or an iron lung, is that NO WILLPOWER IS NEEDED; the willpower comes from the wall socket (electrical outlet). If there was a way to make you fall into a deep sleep while lying inside a temperature oscillation chamber you might not suffer the effects of ice crystal formation from suspended animation. In which case, you would arrive on Neptune 41 in great shape AND not have aged. Your mind would function perfectly, not suffering from Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease or strokes nor any heart atttacks from sedentary sleep, because your body was being exercised constantly during all the "(pdf) long trip" (@3-5 years Earth Time) there.
As I have mentioned before on SlashDot, my health system will reverse many diseases in the elderly & it is The Cure for American Obesity (American Poor Health, American Diabetes to some extent, and American children failure in school due to poor circulation & proper brain oxygenation). By bringing so many Americans returned to a better state of health we could save many billions of dollars and reduce national debt by removing the load from our healthcare system budget. Unfortunately the major wire services and television news reporters are refusing to print this lifesaving information, possibly because
Dude, you could at least give some attribution to http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/ques tions/question19.html
My business: Farstrider Studios.
I dont know the speed of an Ion Drive but if you read his post, that is what he is talking about, not a chemical rocket, but a drive that spits out ions.
Well guys/gals, a stargate will surely solve our distance woes. Let's call the Ancients!
Get your ACKs to Mars!
Not only will every civilization you encounter have rougly your level of technology, their ships will also have their top side the facing the same direction as yours when you meet them.
IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist), but my bet would have been on the Chandrasekhar limit there, which puts the limit at a little under 1.5 solar masses. (Admittedly, that does change with the chemical composition, so no idea how that works for heavy enough elements associated with "rocks".) Since we're talking a planet, not a star, I'll assume there was never nuclear fusion in the centre to generate extra pressure, so the limit would be purely and only the limit at which degenerate electron pressure is no longer enough.
Also, rocks (solids, metals, whatever) may be happy to sit in high gravity, but not _that_ high, or not without remaining the same kind of thing one calls a "rock" in casual conversations. A mass supported by electron degeneracy pressure isn't quite the same as the mostly crystalline structure you'd have in mind for a "normal" rocky planet.
I'm also not sure if it would form mountains or trenches (even 3 to 4 mm high) at that point, since the whole thing is held together by the quantum pressure of a "gas" made of electrons. It's, so to speak, some atoms "floating" in that electron gas. What keeps it from collapsing at that point isn't a crystalline structure that can be re-shaped to form a mountain or a trench, but just the fact that getting any denser would force the electrons to occupy even higher energy states, thus increasing the pressure, thus pushing it back into shape. So at a wild guess, that thing couldn't form any long lived mountains any more than you can get mountains on Jupiter.
I'm also not sure if you can get just a little neutronium in the centre, while leaving the surface intact. The way I understood it (but again, IANAP) once it does start to collapse into neutronium, then it goes all the way. (Maybe also blowing a part of itself into space, supernova style. The fast collapse will produce enough energy for that.) If the pressure is enough for the centre to collapse, this will just produce an avalanche reaction where the collapse both increases the gravity (less R --> more g) _and_ takes out some of the electron gas that supported the star to start with. So basically it's like puncturing an inflated balloon: it won't stop at losing just a little gas.
That's why we talk about the Chandrasekhar limit as a hard limit. In fact, hard enough to use Type Ia supernovae as a standard candle for really long range astronomy. You can know pretty exactly at what mass the star went *BOOM* and exactly how bright that explosion was. Because it happened as soon as the star went even a just a tiny little bit above that limit. When that happened, it didn't just get a little neutronium in the core, but started the final countdown.
But again, IANAP, so I'd be curious to hear about it from a real physicist.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Their response could come in 2018. Cool.
I should point out that using the Doppler techinque can only provide an estimate of the MINIMUM mass of the object. The masses of the planets are not smaller than that of Neptune. It depends on the inclination of that solar system to our line of site. Only when we see the system edge-on, is the actual mass the same as the minimum mass. Since we can detect the asteroid belt with Spitzer, it's a pretty good guess that the system is close to edge-on in this case. But in most cases, you can't tell. Press releases of exoplanet detection tend to neglect this issue.