Slashdot Mirror
Planets Without Stars or Mini-Solar Systems?
iamlucky13 writes "An article today on space.com discusses the discovery of 6 objects by the European Southern Observatory in Chile that are smaller than typical brown dwarfs, larger than Jupiter, and not orbiting any stars. The objects are surrounded by disks of gas and dust possibly similar to the early solar system. In addition to presenting astronomers with a new group of objects to study, the finding also deepens the debate over what makes a planet. The scientists responsible for the discovery sidestep the question by calling them 'Planetary Mass Objects,' or planemos."
Ok, it doesn't really mesh with the whole 'Mass Object' extension but I'm fairly certain the general public could deal with it much better this way. Besides, if you throw something like 'planemos' out to Jack & Jenny Sixpack, Planimals is the innevitable result.
-xski
Looks like crap using Firefox 1.5 on Mac OS 10.4.6.
Crap is defined as:
1. fonts way too small
2. words overlapping each other
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
As the word planet actually means "wanderer".
The problems are horrendous in konqueror too. The text that should be in the boxes on the left is all scrunched up over the slashdot logo.
And the fonts seem off in Linux using Firefox, but no rendering problems there outside of the arrow thing on, on the main page, overlapping the tags for each article.
Out with the old (working) and in with the new (broken).
Could these make up the hypothesized "Dark Matter"? Not these 6 objects specifically but objects like them.
I guess the question is how many of these would it take fill up the "dark matter" quotient we think exists.
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
I've watched every episode of Star Trek, and don't remember these planemos ever being mentioned!
It looks beautiful on FireFox 1.5 running on Slack. I love it.
Sorry for yet more offtopic, but does anyone have the previous slashdot stylesheets saved or cached somewhere? I did anticipate the need for them, but I thought somebody would surely post them in the official "design changed today" story, and I certainly didn't expect the change to happen so soon. Having the real ones would be an improvement over trying to hack something together from the slashcode base and alternative stylesheets.
Firefox 1.5.0.4 on XP is fine.
/. layout but I suppose it will grow on me. Though after being on /. , Apple's site is starting to look a little ordinary. They're updating bits of it, but I think the overall look needs a makeover.
:-)
Safari (latest) on 10.4 (latest) is fine.
Words overlapping each other does sound like a Firefox rendering problem.
Not sold completely on the
Are you reading this random comment, Steve?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
If the Observatory discovered them in Chile, then they are *definitely* orbiting the Sun. Or maybe there's a problem with his sentence structure?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
In IE6, I dislike that the font is too BIG! And a few minor issues with the backgrounds being in the wrong place.... I want my old slashdot back :(
Actually I find it more interesting this isn't more common (or is it? dun dun daan), because it really doesnt take much to escape the gravity of many stars. Planetary formation aside, given that stars whiz by each other they should be slingshotting crap away from each other.
For example, really how large a whack from a body with the right vectors is needed to send pluto escaping off in some mad direction? Anyone care to calculate how much force is needed to do it?
That's no moon....
Wouldn't the correct term be "star system" or "stellar system"?
Solar system refers to the Sun and its planets.
http://iesucks.org
There is nothing deep about what to call by the name 'planet'. Once there was a clear delineation between planets and non-planets. Now there isn't because we've seen objects that straddle the divide set by the old definition. Just define some new words. If astronomers can solve the solar neutrino problem then surely they can solve the 'define planet' problem. Reminds me of Wadler's Law.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Just don't go digging for the underground power source. You don't know what (or who) you might wake up.
The old one was warm, and familiar. This one, feels cold.. I dunno, I wont be back as often..
The old CSS only had a problem on IE and I haven't tried IE enough on this layout to comment on how it handles.
The only problem I've had is that the story got bumped down about half a page length once, but didn't cause overlapping.
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
"If astronomers can solve the solar neutrino problem then surely they can solve the 'define planet' problem."
Well, we could announce some proclamation from the balcony of the IAU's Mobile Oppression Palace, but since it's such a complete astronomical non-issue (what something's called makes no difference to how you study it) don't you think it's nice to let the people who care enough to debate it decide?
So, over to you!
I suppose it makes sense that a planetary system could form in the same manner as ours,
but lack the mass to ignite a sustained fusion reaction in the core of the system.
How many others could be out there that we can't see?
I suggested "Big Ass Balls," which is a concept that I think Jack & Jenny Sixpack could handle, but I got voted down.
Go figure.
KFG
FF 1.5.3 on a fresh Dapper installation is fine. And old Slashdot had display problems for me, so meh.
Maybe the scientists should simply call them what they're already called....rogue planets.
Looks fine on my Mac running OS 10.4.6 and Firefox 1.5.04
Fonts are clear, and I don't have any words overlapping.
... to the question of what's a "planet" is the suggestion that we define it as one of the 9 objects that orbit our sun and are listed in American grade-school science texts.
This would settle the question forever, since it would immediately follow from the definition that there can't be any more planets anywhere in the universe.
Those troube-making astronomers would just have to invent a new term for similar objects elsewhere in the universe. Or in our solar system, for that matter. It's about time they did that anyway, because why do you need a term that includes both Jupiter and Pluto, but which excludes Luna, Ganymede, Titan and Charon?
One reason for such a definition is that the whole basis of the discussion seems to be that a lot of people seem to have a strong objection to calling anything else a "planet", and their sole reason seems to be that they don't like the idea that their grade-school science text might have been wrong.
Also, it might be nice to make up a shorter term than "planemo". That has three syllables, which is more than your typical journalist or politician can handle.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
In other news, Dr. Sven Bronson announced that two of the newly-discovered Planemos may be headed in our general direction. "Mankind may be facing its greatest danger yet," the renowned astronomer said. However, world governments have so far received his predictions with skepticism.
In related news, Chilean astronomers have realized that their cleaning crew has not been cleaning the telescope.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
PWNED
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
...of Deep Space 9... "A Rogue Planet." Lookout! I think its the homeworld of the Founders. You red-shirts better get the hell out of there...
Who did what now?
At the risk of being modded OT, this article reminded me of an awesome little trick an old physics teacher did to help us visualize how we got from the big bang to planet earth.
Take a small bowl, fill it with water. Then, add a handfull of dark sand. Let the sand sort of float in "space" for a bit, moving the water enough to keep everything floating.
Now, to "play God", simply twirl the water counter-clockwise (or vice versa if you live under the equator) and remove your hand. Behold: your universe of sand will form a planet in the center of the bowl.
And, just out of curiosity: has anyone else ever seen this, or was my Prof. a total crackpot?
barack to the future?
Whilst some might say the previous comments by xski assume an air of superiority that would elicit little reaction from the general public, I can imagine the reaction to such by many a "Jack & Jenny Sixpack" to be the advising of the removal of some of the stuffing from his shirt -- possibly to be promptly moved to his hind quarters.
Yeah its pretty much junk on this weeks 9.0 weekly build, and 8.54. I have noticed in increase in the weekly build crashing more under the new layout, but that may also be because they have been rather unstable latley.
It would be funny if they were just using a lower power eyepeice on their telescope and they were just like "hey man... that solar system looks really small... hahaha... silly astronomers, always mixing up their optics.
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
A planemo, short for Planetary Mass Object, is a celestial object which is solitary and orbited by matter as if it were a star, but is actually a planet. Studies have shown that humans cannot differentiate between real active stars and these inert planets, wishing on both equally. Researchers call this the "Planemo Effect"
It doesn't really matter. These objects, while interesting, and theoretically may have some useful information to discover, are going to reflect the same end result. They are what they are: objects in space. Debating the name or generalization we place these objects won't make a difference.
Or maybe I'm just a jerk today.
It's always confirmation bias!
space.com as believable as Fox News.
Shut their mic off !
Regards, Lex
I like it guys, it is much easier on the eyes and I have 20/20 vision.
-Vicki
The Periodic Table of the Elements makes a lot of sense, because you can make a lot of predictions about the properties of an element based on where it is in the table. There are some oddities, sure, but by and large it is an extremely intuitive system. By comparison, knowing that a star is K or G tells you very little. You can make some inferences, by factoring in the abundances of the elements, the diameter of the star, the overall distribution of the electromagnetic radiation, etc, but if you're going to have to add in vast amounts of additional information to get anywhere, you might as well use that information in the name and have done with it.
For planets, asteroids, etc, it's much the same thing. By using too little information to determine the classification, you end up having to add vast amounts more information later on to produce subcategories, exceptions or new names entirely. That makes no sense to me whatsoever. Even a good naming system will need additions made to it, but it should be consistant with what is already there, and it should be easy to understand the relationships.
Since this is about planets, I'll use those as an illustration. Planets form around stars from the debris in the accretion disk, plus captured material from the stellar nursery in which the star formed, minus material "evaporated" from the system by the solar winds accelerating it, and minus material captured by other stars or gravitational sources. The process of condensing planets is slow, though apparently not as slow as once thought, which means that the material in the accretion disk will be sorted. In our own solar system, it seems to be that heavier elements are more common close to the sun and lighter ones are more common further away. (Mercury is unbelievably dense, for example, whereas Pluto seems to be little more than an iceball.)
However, because you need less energy to accelerate a lower mass, and because elemental hydrogen only forms a solid under extreme pressures, these will ALL have abundances of elements that are skewed (possibly by a lot, for inner planets, as the solar winds are much stronger) from the ratios observed on much larger scales (say, in the galaxy or the observable universe). Stars, on the other hand, are mostly composed of the extremely light elements and fit the expected abundances very nicely. As the gravitational field is reduced, the skew should increase, as it would require that much less energy for something to be ripped away, if it's free. (Obviously, hydrogen that has reacted with oxygen to form water is going to require much more energy than elemental hydrogen alone.) So, the composition tells us a lot about where something forms, how quickly it accumulated mass and how long it took. It would seem obvious, then, that composition should bear a major role in deciding what to call something.
The other "obvious" one would be structure. The "asteroid" recently observed to be 45% empty space (sand is 25%) would probably merit a new classification. Most asteroids probably have multiple "centers" around which they have congealed/collided. Certainly, the two comets that have broken up have had multiple centers, not a single rocky core. By comparison, the gas giants have a single center (duh!), as does the Earth and Venus, probably Mars as well, not sure if there's enough data on the others. But even with that, we can clearly see a logical distinction (as opposed to an arbitrary one) that can clearly distinguish between two very
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)
Must not have been any Spaniards at that observatory... at least none with any clout.
Unless there are and they're planning to name it something else later.
do these planemos as they call it, run linux? now for my sig. www.mymegastores.com -- go there if you really want to move out of your parents basement
Makes sense to me.
Stuff coalesces. Some is dense, some is not. that which is suficiently dense makes stellar systems. That which is mot does not. Pretty simple, I think.
(IAAA - 'I am an astronomer')
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
the finding also deepens the debate over what makes a planet
Hmm, and I was wondering if the finding should start debate on what makes a star or stellar object, silly me
Me too.
These planets wouldn't be in the formation of a Kemplerer Rosette?
To any Pierson's Puppeteer: I'm over here! (though, I do not know how much pure luck was involved in my birth...)
(for those, who still don't get it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld
)
The OP was asking about slingshotting, not impact. It's a very different matter then. And considering that escape velocity is roughly sqrt 2 * orbital velocity, it wouldn't take much at all. Especially considering that Sol is pretty tiny as stars go.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
I mainly use WindowsXP and the fonts are small and look like garbage.
It looks better with Firefox under Linux then Windows. I wonder if I can adjust firefox's fonts with just one domain?
http://saveie6.com/
An article today on space.com discusses the discovery of 6 objects [CC] by the European Southern Observatory [CC] in Chile that are smaller than typical brown dwarfs, larger than Jupiter, and not orbiting any stars. ...
In addition to presenting astronomers with a new group of objects to study, the finding also deepens the debate over what makes a planet.
"You humans, when're you gonna learn that size doesn't matter? Just 'cause something's important doesn't mean it's not very, very small."
run for your lives the cybermen are coming!
"Planet" comes from the greek word "planitis" which means "adrift in a space". The word "plane" also comes from that root. So the term "planet" is correct for these celestial bodies that do not orbit a star.
Couldn't these 'rogue planets' be future stars that are still in the process of forming? If they're surrounded by disks of gas they could be picking up more mass as time goes on, eventually becoming dense enough for nuclear fusion. If that happens solar wind could keep enough of the gas away from the newly formed star to begin forming true planets.
I propose we call it the "Pupeteer Fleet Worlds" and be done with it.
It seems to me that there's no need to make the distinction... either something is gaseous, or solid. And either something is massive & gaseos (stars) or small & gaseous (gas giants). Same with planets... massive solids (planets) tiny solids (asteroids, interstellar dust). Its all a matter of how much... matter there is, and the more matter there is the more gravity, and hence different forms that matter takes, eg stars vs brown dwarfs vs gas giants.
Why not just keep a non scientific classification calling these things gas giants, planets, stars and then a scientific classification like gaseous class 10 for stars, gaseous class 1 for small gas giants... etc etc.
just what I was about to say, more or less. Pluto is really light and far from the Sun, I guess (without basing this guess on any fact) with a Neptune sized object on a pretty excentric orbit getting close to Pluto might do it, but idk what it would take to achieve such a thing tho.
However for achieving that on an object such as a kind of brown dwarf, I'm not sure but I think it would have to be from a binary system to have been slashdotted away like this.
You just got troll'd!
The problem here is that people want to put everything into neat little boxes where all the objects are alike and they are all different from objects in other boxes. This discrete nature of thinking is the root problem, and some people spend way too much time trying to figure out which box to put it in instead of trying to understanding the object.
This applies to every endeavor of human thought, not just science.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
An older definition isn't a more true definition.
I've always wondered, why is the average American (or Earthican) called "Joe Sixpack"? I mean, looking around me, I would say very few people have a sixpack, and most sport some varying degree of potbelliness.
Hmm...unless you mean a sixpack of beer or some sort of non-nutritional beverage? I guess that explains the potbellies.
BEN: That's no moon! It's a space station.
HAN: It's too big to be a space station.
LUKE: I have a very bad feeling about this.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
There's no word planemos in Spanish. A similar one could be planeamos, meaning "we plan" or "we planned".
--
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They're missing some vital informtion from their observations........what's the damned weather like?
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
From the "experts" @ About.com
Planetesimals refers to a phase in the build-up process toward planet formation in a young solar system. Generally, the term is equated to "asteroid sized bodies" (0.5- 25 miles across) that coalesce or "accrete" to larger sized bodies, on the way to planetary objects. This definition, of course, means that one would only find "planetesimals" in a young solar system still in the process of formation. One would not find them in an already formed solar system such as we inhabit.
Seems to fit the description.
Planetoids http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetoid
My personal favorite designation for tiny planet-like objects ..... Planettes. [TM]
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
There aren't any serious suggestions, at least in modern times, that Pluto came from outside the solar system. There are many more objects like Pluto in the Kuiper Belt and beyond, in the "scattered disk", and perhaps even in the Oort cloud. But all of this is still part of our solar system. Pluto falls within the Kuiper Belt and is classified as a Kuiper Belt Object. Its orbit might have changed since the solar system was formed, perhaps as a result of gravitational interaction with Neptune, but that's about it.
The mystery around Pluto dates from before it was found that the Kuiper Belt is full of similar objects which range in size up to Pluto's size, and in one known case, larger. The Wikipedia link in the parent post has links to pages which describe all of this.
u know from Star Trek 1: The Motion Picture.
voyager finally wandered out far enuf to be picked up by an alien civlization that extended it and replicated it.
and we thought there was just one VYGER...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Well, the wormole reference was obvious, but actually I had no idea that Ancientese was supposed to be related to Latin. I just figured the writers weren't very original in coming up with alien-sounding words! ;)
Just call them Mini-Stars, or Mars for short.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
When I build my ship I will use gas & orbiting spacejunk-looking stuff to throw off prying Earth people. http://www.newpath4.com/2006stepsintothenonfuelfut ureofspacetourism2025ifmanisstillalive.htm
I think the basic laws of physics do just about anything, and any relevant object is going to attract the available material around itself and create an object and slowly collect material.
..too lazy to make an account...
Our current solar system from what I gather is kinda a second generation system from a previous system that was in the same place. All the material was a large gaseoous/material mess rotating and everything gravitated into the system we see today. Apparently lighter gasses got to the center,maybe the gasses were easier to attract to the center than heavier metals.
So this wandering planet without a star soaked up material that it ran into and couldnt produce a star.
The cosmos is a large and varied thing.
-dinwitty-