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

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

[rblancarte]

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

RonB

Yes

[nizo]

Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates?

Of course; space is big and there are bound to be tons of great planets out there. I just hope there is no one already living on our soon to be discovered new colony planet so we can move in quicker.

Re:Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates?

[ls -la]

Yes, as long as we don't kill ourselves first. Better hurry up and colonize other planets.

I'm not sure how serious you're being

[benhocking]

However, they do plan on looking for signs of molecular oxygen in the atmospheres of some of these planets. Molecular oxygen is chemically unstable, so its presence is usually considered to be an excellent indicator of life. Not perfect, as it might not be necessary or sufficient, but it's the best method we have right now for detecting M-class planets.

now that we can find them

[niloroth]

What are we going to do about getting there? Unless we can figure out some way to travel faster than the speed of light, i doubt any human will ever step foot on a planet outside our solar system. I think it far more likely that we will have to terraform one of the ones near us, and even then, we seem to messing this one up way faster than we could even start that process. I think hawkins may be right, 1000 years at most left for us. Although that really may have been a bit optimistic.

Re:now that we can find them

[jshriverWVU]

Your view seems 1/2 true. No person in a single lifetime can make the journey. The goal would be to create a ship large enough to sustain many families, and the resulting offspring of a couple generations would make it.

Re:now that we can find them

[StikyPad]

the resulting offspring of a couple generations would make it.

Aside from the lifetimes of "Are we there yet?", you know the offspring would just take the fact that they're on an interstellar voyage for granted, and they wouldn't even appreciate the arrival. "This is the planet my great grandfather wanted to visit," they'd say. "Let's check out Earth."

Re:perhaps not so lucky

[Black Perl]

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.

Yes, but wouldn't there be a certain ring that is exactly 70 degrees? Also, you'd have an endless supply of geothermal energy. The hot-as-lava side could double as an incinerator--no trash problems. Obviously terraforming would be impossible but I'd think you could establish a permanent colony there.

Updated stats

[EvilGrin5000]

The link to Space.com for the 'most interesting extra-solar planets' has a top 10 list with all the new updated data. The article from the summary said that the fastest planet's orbit around its sun is 1.2 days, where instead the top-10 list shows a recently discovered planet with an orbit of just 10 hours! There is a link that leads to this page http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061004_fast_ planets.html that talks about 'fast planets' and shows the new data.

I recommend going to the top-10 list found at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/extrasolar_p lanets.html just click at the bottom link where it says "Number 10: The First" and off you go! It's actually a really nifty countdown :)

Enjoy!

Re:perhaps not so lucky

[jae471]

It should be noted that out the Sun's axis of rotation (and that of the major planets) is NOT with the galactic plane. We can see them, but they can't see us...

Looking for Earth 2.0?

[clovis]

Why do you assume that we are not already on Earth 2.0?

Re:perhaps not so lucky

[Hays]

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.

They don't. See http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?numb er=633

Our own Solar system is not at all aligned with the galaxy. If it were, the milky way would appear more east-west in the night sky, especially during the equinox.

Standard SF options

[geek2k5]

While we don't have the tech in place to make the trip now, we do have ideas of what could be done. We just need to get some cheap Earth to Orbit launch facilities in place so we can start research and development of the tech needed. (Rutan's SpaceShipX ships. Space elevators. Catapult launch from high altitude sites.)

Once we have a lot of people and equipment in space, we could do such things as build generation ships and take the slow route. Whether powered by Sol base lasers, atomic bombs (Orion), ion propulsion, solar sails or other related tech, we can launch something at choice targets without a lot of extra tech. (It would be more of an engineering problem than a science problem.) It will take a long time to get there and the odds of sending people back will be low if it is attempted.

Now with space based research we might be able to come up with variations on the classic FTL drive, making it possible to do such a trip and make it back in a reasonable amount of time. This would require some basic breakthroughs in science, followed by engineering to make the science usable.

At this time those breakthroughs are mostly pipedreams. But in centuries past, things like steam engines, airplanes and spaceships were the same way. While they may seem simple to us, in years gone by they were future technology that needed a lot of research to make it possible.

Re:perhaps not so lucky

[The_Wilschon]

Not so. The plane of the ecliptic and the galactic equator are offset from one another by about 62 degrees. [1] So it would appear that there is probably wide variation in the tilt of the ecliptic planes of other stellar systems.

Or, a naive argument from astrophysics (IANA astrophysicist, although I am a physicist): Perhaps the disk of a new-formed star is typically rather thin (in the direction perpendicular to the ecliptic). Then material undergoing gravitational accretion to form planets would all come from essentially one plane, so the angular momentum would be perpendicular to that plane (Newtonian physics: take any number of masses with positions and velocities all solely in one plane. The angular momentum about any point will be perpendicular to that plane). The galaxy, on the other hand, is quite thick, even out here in the fringes. The nebulae that we can see are not planar, and are not even larger in the galactic plane or anything. They are fairly isotropic. So, as a nebula condenses to become a star, the material comes from all directions and has velocities going in all directions. The angular momentum could be all over the place.

So, if there isn't anything wrong with this naive argument (although there quite likely is, even if it doesn't invalidate the conclusion), then we should expect that stars should have ecliptics lying at all kinds of angles to the galactic equatorial plane. The angle of our own ecliptic is a single data point which would seem to support this notion.


We probably are actually quite interested in planets with rotational axes lying not perpendicular to their ecliptics. Not as Earth 2.0, but for scientific study, they should be rather interesting. How do they form? Are they typically captured rogue planets? Is there such a thing as a rogue planet? Or do they merely form from thicker solar disks? Or, did Aliens (TM) put them there as signals to us for when we become a mature enough species to understand them? :)