Slashdot Mirror
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!
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!
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
The Earth is a very large lump of iron and rock with just enough water for a few puddles to thinly cover 2/3 of its surface. The article is talking about whole planets composed almost entirely of water. Think of a bunch of melted comets that got smooshed together.
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
Attempt no landings there.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I first read the title as:
"Ocean Planets on the Brink of Destruction"
Oh my... were screwing up those too huh?
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.
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?
Minor nitpick, but by volume Earth is mostly Silicon, and by mass it's almost half oxygen. (Silicon makes up another quarter of the Earth's mass total mass).
Earth is called a "water world" because it has a hydrosphere, though. The presence of water on a planet is by no means unique (Europa, Mars, most of the asteroids in our solar system), but the presence of water in abundance in the star's green zone hasn't been seen anywhere else. Earth is the only planet in the solar system where the *surface* temperature and pressure is in the appropriate range to find a lot of liquid water.
There's a difference between a "water" world and an "ocean" world, though. A "water" world has a hydrosphere. An "ocean" world has no surface other than the hydrosphere. Europa doesn't even count, but if it were warmer it would be an "ocean" world.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
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.
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.
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.
Maybe they wouldn't have sent your job overseas if you had basic literacy in English, like knowing the definition of "tautology."