Transit Method Reveals Many Extrasolar Planets

eldavojohn writes "You might recall not too long ago the first photo of an extra solar planet or, more recently, the mapping & speculation on these planets that lie outside our own solar system. Long since those first few spotted in the 90s, we're now starting to find them in droves due to the popularity of a method that relies on the planet passing directly between the viewer on earth and the star that it orbits. Be sure to check out Space.com's list of the most interesting extra-solar planets. Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates?"

Comments

Pegs that variable in the Fermi equation...

[It doesn't come easy]

Considering the statistically unlikely percentage of planetary orbits that would naturally line up so that the planet would transit its sun from our point of view, planets must be pretty much common as dust. Either that or God was nice enough to line them up so it's easy for us to find them (possible, I hear God is a very nice person)...

Re:Pegs that variable in the Fermi equation...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the whole argument that Stephen Hawkins uses to "believe in God." Basically that things like this don't just happen randomly.

Which is pretty much the reason for the existence of all gods throughout history; to provide an explanation for something that was otherwise unfathomable. And of course once a thing becomes "fathomed" that particular god is no longer needed, and disappears.

I also might preemptively mention that "this is different, and also he's a really really smart guy way smarter than you wiseguy" is not a compelling argument.

Re:Pegs that variable in the Fermi equation...

[elrous0]

Yeah, now the only question is "Which God?"

perhaps not so lucky

[goombah99]

Considering the statistically unlikely percentage of planetary orbits that would naturally line up so that the planet would transit its sun from our point of view, planets must be pretty much common as dust. Either that or God was nice enough to line them up so it's easy for us to find them (possible, I hear God is a very nice person)... Maybe not so lucky. Most of the planets in our solar system (not all) have their rotational axes mostly parallel to their orbital axis. I assume there's some reason for that, perhaps simply if they are spun off of the sun then they acquire it's angular momentum. Or like the moon where tidal forces lock the orbit. In any case then, the next question is if the solar systems in our galaxy mainly orbit in the plane of the galaxies rotation. I'd assume so.

Given all that then it's not too surprising that there be a preference for this favorable occultation geometry.

Finally I note that we are not really interested in planets that don't rotate in their orbital plane since otherwise they'd be roastingly hot on one side and freezing on the other.

Re:perhaps not so lucky

[Chris Burke]

Yes, but wouldn't there be a certain ring that is exactly 70 degrees?

I'm no expert, but I'd be willing to bet that what you'd really get is a ring that fluctuates violently between the hot and cold extremes of the two sides of the planet and is constantly bombarded by gigantic storms. I mean we're basically talking about a permanent clash between hot and cold weather fronts.

Huge temperature deltas do not result in nice smooth gradients between them.

Re:Version

[Anonymous Coward]

>How about making the current one stable first?

The current one is fine. It was here before us, and will be here long after us.

How about we kick condesending butts like your's into the sun?

Space.com... the worst website in the universe?

[sean.peters]

God, what a mess the "Top 10 Exoplanets" site is! Bright orange background that is absolutely physically painful to look at, requires 10 click-throughs to read the whole article (when each page has about a paragraph of text), the text itself is in little iframes that require you to scroll to get past the first few sentences - and don't get me started about the content (what little there is). If you haven't visited it... don't.

Well...

[Greyfox]

We'd have to work around that nasty speed of light thing first. I seem to recall that it'd take about 450,000 years to reach the one we found that has water, which is 20 light years from here. If that proves impossible then those planets will be forever out of our reach.

Re:Well...

[cswiger]

We'd have to work around that nasty speed of light thing first.

True, that's a big problem compared with the popular "space opera" notion we've gotten from Star Wars, Star Trek, and so forth. But if we could get a vessel up to 10% of light speed, we could get to Epsilon Eridani in about 107 years, which isn't an impossibly long timeframe.

Of course, the fastest we've gotten any space craft going is about 0.02% of light speed (Helios 2 @ 241,350 km/h), if I've done my math right, but that took advantage of the solar gravity well to accelerate into a tighter orbit, rather than fighting out of it enough to reach escape velocity with respect to Sol. The Voyager series craft, for contrast, have managed to reach system escape velocity, but only retained a velocity of about 0.003% of c (62,100 km/h). We'd need to get them going some thousand times faster than what we've done so far to make interstellar voyages to the closer stars doable within something vaguely close to a human lifespan.