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Ocean Planets on the Brink of Detection
ZonkerWilliam writes "It seems, at least theoretically, that there may be 'ocean planets' out there in the galaxy. If there are, we are closer than ever to detecting them. The formation of such planets is fairly likely, reports the PhysOrg article, despite the lack of an obvious example in our own solar system. We may have a former ocean planetoid in the neighborhood, orbiting the planet Jupiter: the moon Europa. These water worlds are the result of system formation castoffs, gas giant wannabes that never grew large enough. If any of these intriguing object exist nearby, the recently launched CoRoT satellite will be the device we use to see it. The article explains some of the science behind 'ocean worlds', as well as the new technology we'll use to find them."
And on these ocean planets we shall find cloners. And when we find these cloners, we shall find the clone army. Long live the Jedi!
Are these oceans water, liquid methane, or molten iron?
2nd post? 3rd? 1st?
It seems, at least theoretically, that there may be 'ocean planets' out there in the galaxy. If there are, we are closer than ever to detecting them.
Nice to start the summary off with not just one, but *two* tautologies!
It's like water world. Only IRL.
I really hope they don't find any of them. If they do, we'll have hundreds of water world remakes and the level of pain that would bring is too much to bare.
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
I know it's a nitpick, but of course we're closer than ever to detecting them. Guess what, we're closer to detecting them now than when you began reading this reply (by a couple seconds, but still closer).
CRo T. Satellite
Of course, on said ocean planets inhabited by cetaceans one could exclaim:
"Admiral, there be whales here."
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
With global warming, we will have plenty of practice on surviving an "ocean" world when it comes time to send ships out to colonize these strange, new worlds.
The formation of such planets is fairly likely, reports the PhysOrg article, despite the lack of an obvious example in our own
solar system.
Hmm what about Earth then?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It would help when using BIG words to link to their definitions
It would help me and others like me to have to go to endless stupid meetings on a fucking Friday because some jackass superior (even dumber PHP) has to do something to feel superior to me. Even though, I sent this stupid fucking superior PHP the email he fucking requested stating exactly what I'm going to (read) say in this stupid fucking meeting.
I'd go back to coding but they've sent everything overseas.
--Stupid PHP
I'm willing to bet these ocean planets are infested with sharks, alien sharks, alien sharks with lasers on their frickin' heads.
-AC for a reason.
Oh no! Reruns!
But first we gotta make sure it has fresh water. I don't want to have to drink my own pee.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Drone! Drone!
(sorry can't hear the word tautology without thinking about that guy)
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Before the Voyager got to Uranus and Neptune, Dr. Russ Humphreys proposed that the plants were originally made of water, and made very accurate predictions of their magnetic fields based upon that theory.
/ 21_3.html
Look under the section "Water: The Raw Material of Creation" *tranquilizers recommended* http://creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/21/21_3
(Please be sure to actually read is before axing my karma.)
The government can't save you.
It's like water world. Only IRL.
No, allow me to explain:
These things have to weigh less than 10 times what the Earth weighs, or they will become gas giants. Our sun weighs 332,946 times as much as the Earth. Only objects weighing at least three times as much as our Sun can turn into black holes. Only a black hole can suck as hard as Water World. Therefore, these water planets are nothing like Water World.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I was trying to explain this theory about fifteen years ago to an x-girlfriend.
The way I thought about it was:
Heat(scale? strength?)of Star vs Mass of Planet vs Distance from Star
I called it the God Ratio in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. I have no idea what calculations I was playing with and was way off of any "real" science about it, but the basic gist is the same.
put the what in the where?
Okay, everyone listen, this is important...when we get there and raise the city of Atlantis, don't even think about waking up the goth aliens.
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
Attempt no landings there.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
is not a myth - I've seen it!
(sorry)
I first read the title as:
"Ocean Planets on the Brink of Destruction"
Oh my... were screwing up those too huh?
Of course, on said ocean planets inhabited by cetaceans one could exclaim: "Admiral, there be whales here."
Or more likely, "It's a trap"
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Maybe we will someday find such a world- a peaceful pastoral world without war; a world without hate.
Then I can picture us attacking that world, 'cause they'd never suspect it.
After that, we can look at Europa. Just don't touch it.
Prove it.
They have no chance to hide make their time.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
then Ice World, Fire World, Forest World and Cave World, then fight the big boss, view the crappy finale video and bask in the glory of a game well played.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
All your oceans are belong to us....
That's overLADIES thank you very much.
I'm a Merman, you insensitive clod!
There, be Sea Monsters.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If planets 10 x earth turn into planets with oceans a 100km deep it still
doesn't explain how planets like Earth develop.
The "best" theory I heard about that was the collision of Tiamat with Marduk,
that had supposedly taken place in the solar system, Tiamat being one of those
large 10 x Earth ocean planets and Marduk an extra-solar planet that came
wandering in. The remnants of both planets formed the asteroid belt with
huge chunks of water ice impacting the otherwise dry Earth.
More important however is if they find extra-solar water planets whether they
will actually let us know about them. Personally I think they sustainable
development / Agenda 21 would not be too pleased for us know about planets
like that, as they need us to focus on the fragile Earth without no alternative
to escape to. The discovery of earth-like planets could shift our attention back into space and increase interest in faster than light travel to get there.
I, for one, will fuck one in the fin.
You must be new here.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
For a second there I thought it said "Destruction", and I thought of Waterworld. Actually though, the prospect of an ocean planet doesn't seem as far fetched as you might think. Take Star Wars or Star Trek, who both feature worlds that are either entirely or a +90% covered by water, like Mon Calimari or Kamino.
Or something like that anyway.. Oh wait, superbowl is on TV.......
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"under such a crushing weight, water has no choice but to solidify"
Ocean planets will do our bidding and solidify their peoples god given right to a democratic government OR ELSE
OR ELSE what?
OR ELSE they will become the oppressors forbidding or enjoment of BBQ, bourbon, and boobs. Forcing upon on use instead, their favored burka, bombs, and buggery
If you know how far away you are from an object and how quickly you're orbiting it (assuming your orbit is roughly circular) you can use simple algebra to get a rough idea of its mass.
...where a is the accelelration, G is the gravitational constant, and r is the distance between your two objects. Note that we're ignoring the acceleration of the sun toward the earth, which isn't technically correct, but this answer will be close enough.
:)
.00592 m/s. That's a. Now we just plug all that into the original equation:
:)
Acceleration due to gravity is calculated as follows:
a = G * (m / r^2)
Since we're looking for the Sun's mass, we solve this equation for m.
m = (a * r^2) / G
The first thing we need to figure out is the value of a, or how fast things accelerate toward the sun. The earth is 1.5e11 meters from the sun, and travels in a (roughly) circular orbit once every 365.25 days (or 3.16e7 seconds). If you calculate the circumferance of the earth's orbit given the radius, you get 9.42e11 meters. The earth is moving at roughly 2.98e4 meters per second.
The next step is to figure out how far the earth falls toward the sun every second. We can do this (again, roughly) without using calculus. Let's say that, for one second, the earth continues to travel in a straight line instead of a circle. If you subtract the earth's real orbital radius from this hypothetical one, you end up with the number of meters that earth falls every second, or a. Note that this isn't an exact calculation -- I would need to use calculus to do that -- but it's still "close enough". I'm an engineer, not a scientist, so be happy I used 3.14 for pi, as opposed to "about 3."
The earth's new distance from the sun, if it travelled at a tangent for sone second, would be calculated using the Pythagorean Theorum, as follows:
d = sqrt(1.5e11 ^ 2 + 2.98e4 ^ 2) = sqrt(2.25e22 + 8.88e8) = 150000000000.00296
Subtracting the original distance from the sun, the earth has fallen about 2.96 millimeters in one second, which means that the earth is accelerating toward the sun at
m = 0.00592 * 1.5e11^2 / G
According to Google calculator:
((0.00592 (m / (s^2))) * (1.5e11^2) (m^2)) / gravitational constant = 1.9961037 × 10e30 kilograms
Now, looking up the mass of the sun:
mass of the sun = 1.98892 × 10e30 kilograms
Voila, I've just calculated the mass of the sun with less than 1% error, and I didn't even need to remember any calculus.
Tell me over again, my friend... you don't believe we're on the eve of detection?
I'd rather find desert planets... only there will we find the Spice.
Wil
Wil
wiki
If you'd like simulate a water world yourself, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
It is a very general GCM so included in the download are paleo-earth configurations. You can run a simulation of the earth from 750 million years ago when it was mostly covered in water (but also very cold) to see one possible scenario. As mentioned above, you can add CO2 and turn up or down the sun or any other GHG to see other scenarios.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
... attributed to Quayle were made up by liberals.
Entire worlds filled with smart-assed killer whales called "Shamu", "Namu" and other oriental-sounding made-up names ending in "u" who all think it's jolly hilarious to splash you with water...
Don't trust those sly, beady-eyed orcas - they've even got us all believing that they're mammals when we all *REALLY* know they're just bloody big fish!
Wibble!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Corot sounds like another space based IR telescope with an incrementally better mechanism to reject glare. The output is going to be an intensity graph over time, with small dips from planetary transits, the same thing we've been doing for many years.
The real breakthrough is when we finally have enough magnification and resolving power to see living things on other planets. The great barrier reef is a living thing that can be resolved from beyond Mars orbit with today's technology. The first extrasolar life we see is going to be something like a great barrier reef.
The trick is going to be making a telescope the size of the solar system. The mission is probably going to use 2 Hubble size telescopes on opposite sides of Mars orbit, with incredible magnification well beyond the diffraction limit of each telescope, and the highly diffracted images from both telescopes being combined in software to produce a corrected image with a virtual aperture the size of Mars orbit. Only with that kind of mission are you going to "detect" habitable, extrasolar planets.
When I hear talk of ocean worlds I am always reminded of the amazing speculation about them that Stapledon did in his books.
In Olaf Stapledon's book "Star Maker" (see here also) he describes one water world .. I'm thinking of the world of the living ships, not the that of the dolphin-crab symbionts or the avians. Living ship-like beings, think a cross between a whale and a squid with natural deployable sails. The symbionts eventually develop technology and starships because there are a few islands that become the site of research. But even the world of the living ships have a few islands. However there are also avian races on true water worlds where flying fish have evolved into bird like things ... small bodies, small brains but group minds. Been a while since I've read it. Hmmmm ... must read it yet again. Bliss.
Bitter and proud of it.
I thought there was some FOSP stuff going down for which I missed my ticket.
Yeah, I could almost see it - a Free Open Source Planet...
No taxes, free beer (as in free beer). Pi*d^2 virgins for every geek ("d" can be enhanced, check your email for details.)
Everyone would have unlimited funds, thanks to a PayPal account, linked to a Nigerian bank account.
Oh, forget it, humoring the masses is too tedious right now, the phone is ringing.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
They're very pretty, but they have a terrible, terrible flaw. Listen to these guys' explanation.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If were're talking about H20 I just can't see how there could be a core of ice. Core of rock sure, maybe ancoring down some ice but I don't see how a core could be mostly ice. The ice would immediately try to float to the surface.