Slashdot Mirror
Largest-Known Planet Befuddles Scientists
langelgjm writes to mention that scientists are quite puzzled over the discovery of the largest planet yet. According to study-leader Georgi Mandushev it should theoretically not even be able to exist. 'Dubbed TrES-4, the planet is about 1.7 times the size of Jupiter and belongs to a small subclass of "puffy" planets that have extremely low densities. The finding will be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal. [...] "TrES-4 is way bigger than it's supposed to be," Mandushev told Space.com. "For its mass, it should be much smaller. It basically should be about the size of Jupiter and instead it's almost twice as big." "TrES-4 appears to be something of a theoretical problem," said study team member Edward Dunham, also of the Lowell Observatory. "Problems are good, though, since we learn new things by solving them."'"
...scientists discovered the "puffy" nature was due to its interior being mostly made of a substance remarkably similar to "fluffy chocolate nougat". Mars, Incorporated could not be reached for comment.
I have a theory. Since we have no other explanation for now, it must be a miracle of God.
A few years down the road, once so-called "scientists" do their so-called "research" and determine that there's some perfectly logical explanation for it that fits within the realm of what we know to be true and what can be tested, I'm still going to believe my theory. After all, it's just as valid as all of their "evidence."
I can't wait for one of their crazy theories to be developed and then another so-called "scientist" comes along with more data and tries to refine it to make it more accurate and valid. Obviously, it's just proof that they don't know what they're talking about. Since my theory is 100% right and won't need to be refined or changed over the course of thousands of years, it's obviously the right one.
Don't ask me to provide any evidence. I've been taught that if I question my theory, I'll go to hell. It doesn't matter much, though, because even if you do ask me for evidence, you are obviously going to hell, and you're the kind of person I teach my kids not to associate with. I'll pray for you, but please stop persecuting me as I try to force universities to present my theory as equal to that of those so-called "scientists" once they cobble one together.
(I know, it's flamebait, I admit it. Go ahead and mod it down. I'm just feeling disgusted right now and needed to vent after being on the other end of a depressingly similar conversation.)
Dyson Sphere and all the /.ers rejoiced!
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
This was reported in the Tampa Tribune as a small page-6 blurb under the headline "New Largest Planet Sports Squishy Surface", a conclusion drawn from a quote by a scientist saying the planet has no firm surface. I almost cried.
ResidntGeek
Screw the Space Odyssey diamond in jupiter, this "puffy" planet must be home to the universe's largest marshmallow!
Somebody grab a sun and discover the graham wafer belt already.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Prediction: The gravity 'constant' is not constant everywhere in the universe.
I'm guessing it's bigger than it should be because with a lower gravity constant it isn't as dense for its mass.
As in our theory has a problem.
Isn't this just another in a long line of gas giants that are too young, and too close to the host stars for our theories of planetary formation?
Academy of Baffled Scientists?
Best Slashdot Co
That seems like the simplest explanation, but I'm not an astronomer.
> "TrES-4 appears to be something of a theoretical problem," said study team member Edward Dunham, also of the Lowell Observatory. "Problems are good, though, since we learn new things by solving them."
Dude! This guy should be an adviser to Congress. He can explain science to them.
(And I mean that!)
"TrES-4 is way bigger than it's supposed to be,"
Like, and it's totally dating Pluto, ewwwww!
What's with the valley-girl talk? "Way bigger"?
Please help metamoderate.
Dyson sphere around a now-extinct star. The clouds surrounding it were exhaust gasses that result from their ion-powered generators that scavenged the energy from the star when the star was young.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
It's way too big to be a planet and since small planets are called dwarf planets, please welcome the first discovered troll planet.
I think there's something to what you say, but I'd say consider the tidal effects from the star, not the planet. That is, suppose this "planet" is actually just a large bulge in a ring around the star, more or less a gas giant in the process of being torn to shreds by tidal effects from the parent star. It's very close to the star, and the star is expanding, I think.
I think they've spotted Galactus.
Amachoors!
Is this one of those situations where we are going to find someone forgot to "carry the 1"?
Dr. Raymond Stantz: It can't be! Dr. Peter Venkman: What is it?! Dr. Raymond Stantz: It can't be! Dr. Peter Venkman: What did you do, Ray?! Winston Zeddemore: Oh, sh**! Dr. Raymond Stantz: It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
Dark matter! Maybe dark energy! Even maybe we have to revise theories in astrophysics because we were wrong on something... sigh, why do scientists think they are right now when their forbears were wrong?
Speaking of Astrophysics, if we can look into the sky and only see x millions of years back based off of light years, how do we know that we are not seeing the opposite side of the big bang curve? Here we are -> ( *Bang* )
More dumb observations later.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Extremely doubtful. This planet is literally in our backyard. Stars and galaxies can be observed that are much farther away and those do not "befuddle" scientists.
It's possible, but that's a very extreme direction to go in at this point. There are a number of far more likely possibilities to explain this (eg. the measurements are wrong, our understanding of planetary formation and structure are wrong), no need to go rewriting the laws of physics just yet.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
It really could be anything. It could be that, but it would be really surprising. It could be that its surrounded by dark matter. It could be that we underestimate the mass of its star. It could be that it's made of an exotic isotope, such as deuterium. It could be that our model is just wrong. Who know.
Think about this: Axe and Dove are actually the same company. Vincent L.B.
Ok, it isn't the mass that is surprising, it is the volume. Larger (in mass) exoplanets have been found, sometimes they fall in to the category of Brown Dwarfs. But TrES-4 is hardly massive. According to the article, the density is .2 g/mL and the volume is 1.7 times that of Jupiter. That gives a mass of
1.7*(1.43128*10^15 km^3) * .2 g/mL = 4.866352 * 10^26 kg.
Jupiters mass is 1.8986*10^27 kg. That means TrES-4's mass is only about one quarter the mass of Jupiter ((4.866352 * 10^26 kg)/ (1.8986*10^27 kg)= 0.256312651)
Perhaps we should no longer call it a planet like we don't Pluto any longer, since it doesn't fit the neat little rules.
If it floats on water, then it must weigh less than a duck, which means...
A WITCH! It's a witch!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
TrES-4 is an apt name for the planet. If "TrES" is read as the French word "très," and the digit 4 as the English "four," the resulting phrase is close to the French "très fort" which translates to something like "very extreme(ly)."
Keep in mind that I have next to no knowledge of French and only recognize the phrase "très fort" because of Space Ghost..."Je parle français très fort, no?"
Your brain is not a computer.
It's a big boobie.
I would think the light curve that they used to calculate the density of this planet could be explained by the planet capturing ejected stellar matter, and essentially have an enormous cloud in orbit around it. We see something similar with Saturn's rings (albeit not ejected stellar gasses). The planet has an orbit of 3.5 days so it must be incredibly close to the star...close enough to grab the ejected gasses maybe?
Now we know where all those bottles go. They've formed their own damn planet!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I had a dream that I was devouring the largest planet ever observerd...and when I woke up, MY PILLOW WAS GONE!
Walk with Music;
No self-respecting advanced technological civilization would bury significant amounts of useful matter at the center of a planet. They would instead construct objects filled with fiber optic cables to carry large amounts of data between all of the computational nodes. The compute nodes have to be on the surface because they have to radiate away the heat they generate but the central part of the Jupiter Brain (aka Borg sphere) should have a density low enough that gravitational compression doesn't distort the one-to-many point-to-point transmission over the fibers.
The difference between a Jupiter Brain and a Matrioshka Brain is that the center of a Jupiter Brain is not running off of a gravitationally bound and driven fusion reactor (aka "star"). Most of the energy used by the Jupiter Brain comes from the external solar energy it absorbs (though in theory it could house a number of "small" fusion reactors fueled by hydrogen or helium siphoned from the nearby star).
Side note to the Dyson "Sphere" advocates -- classical "spheres" are impossible (you've been watching too much Star Trek) -- Dyson never used the word "sphere" and made a point of clarifying this in his response to the letters following his original paper. A better term to avoid confusion is a "Dyson shell".
Perhaps its a baby star. Stars dont have to just start from a gaseous cloud, I propose. No reason why a planet cant build up a significant amount of matter that its sucked off of its parent star to start the gravitational collapse that ignites its own fusion process. Just think outside the box a little bit guys.
Are we sure NASA is reporting in inches and not centimeters?
Astronomers have given the planet an official name, "Puff Daddy".
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
made primarily of some material we are not familiar with? Some substance that has high volume and low mass? It seems to me that with the universe as large as it is, there's got to be all kinds of stuff out there we know nothing about.
Maybe this is a stupid question, astrophysics is not my strong point.
btw, how do they know what the mass of something that far away actually is?
and somewhat rare . [Link may not be worksafe if you work with prudes.]
The obesity problem is already spreading throughout the galaxy and all you can think of are chocolate jokes...
.... Y pOrQUe lO nOMbRaRON TreS-4?
Literally?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
That's no planet... It's a space station.
It's a giant alien twinkie. We are not alone.
Just a thought, but couldn't it just be a planet in development? As in, its mass is still pulling it together to the final size. Or given the hot topic of asteroids destroying Earth, something similar has happend to it? Again, could all/most/some of the debri collapse back to form a (new) planet?
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Just because something hasn't been seen before, doesn't mean that it can't exist. Isn't science not about what we already think but learning what could be? It seems that there are many theories out there that get proven wrong every day and there seems to be a lot of hoopla whenever someone is proven wrong. Scientists should keep an open mind instead of becoming entrenched in theoretical zealotry.
The game.
I am picutring some super-advanced civilization who is already bored with making Dyson Shells going
Superbeing A:hey! what would happen if we built a full sized mock-up entierly out of balsa wood!
Superbeing B:that sounds really pointless. where did you get such a stupid idea?
Superbeing A:I heard it in some Fump song....
Superbeing B:Cool! I'll go grab the supervodka and the meta-Dremal!
I saw someone mention a perhaps it has a ring like Saturn and that is causing some false readings. I figure they have presumably run into this before and know how to discount that. I will go one step further and say perhaps the planet has a crazy amount of moons orbiting closely and/or other debris of various sizes swirling around it. This would increase its size mistakenly and decrease its density at the same time (as there would be significate amounts of space between planet and orbits (presumably).
:)
Anyway thats the extent of my Grade 10 Physics, so please don't be too harsh with me!
In any event, how "fluffy" a center are we talking here. What defines a "Planet" from a slight congealing of gas? I say if it isn't dense enough to crush the life out of me as I try and float through on a drunken spacewalk, then I don't think it is a real planet!
Also perhaps we are looking too hard at what it is, and not what is could be or might become. Perhaps look at processes that make up our celestial bodies. I am not sure how concrete our science is as to the creation of various kinds of planets, perhaps this is part of the short (in space/planet creation terms) phase of planet construction. The gathering of a bunch of lose material that is slowing coalescing due to gravity into a rough planetoid. If the phase if brief in galactic terms perhaps this is why we haven't seen it before. The coalescing material not having totally solidified nor compress due to significant gravity and space could account for the light density and great size. A sort of proto-planet if you will, a huge glom of material just swirling around falling in towards itself slowly, just hasn't reached the stage that is it really recognizable as a real planet yet.
Ok now I am really just wasting work time...
"These people deserve the verbal beatdowns they get. They are stupid zealots."
There is no such thing as a "stupid zealot". Foolish zealot, perhaps. But calling another person a stupid zealot indicates that you are a zealot for your position. All of us are stupid at some time or other, and (hopefully) all of us are zealots at some time of other. Calling someone a name is an easy way to write them off without considering first just how similar you are to them.
And over there we have the labyrinth guards. One always lies, one always tells the truth, and one stabs people who ask t
...but Will it Blend?
That is the question.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
...and all of us are foolish at some time or another. Your point isn't made through your attempt at semantic wit. Your point is made and should have been contained in your last sentence. Most /. posters are zealots, from what I can tell, including me. I don't shy from that fact, I am proud that there are things that I feel so strongly about. It means that I have a certain amount of passion, giving my life that much more meaning. To your parent, I submit that being fervent about something does not preclude rationality.
"Little is much when little you need."
Our method for measuring the mass and size of distant objects may not be as accurate as we think it is.
So no, no you haven't, or if you have you still haven't shown us.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
The planet has now announced that it wants to be known as "P. Planet" instead of Puffy Planet. Future name changes may involve dropping the P because "it's getting between him and his fans."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
This is easy. We know its mass because of its orbital period and its size because it occludes its parent star. It isn't too big, it LOOKS too big. It has a highly inclined axis of rotation and an extensive ring system like Saturn.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
It doesn't even mention the possibility that this planet was observed in the middle of somekind of transformation.
Maybe it's losing mass. Maybe it's coalescing.
As we like to say around here, "only God knows, but the Devil has a theory."
Don't know a whole lot about this stuff but I wonder if the unexplained volume could be from abnormal creation. Say perhaps instead of forming through the standard "celestial disk" accretion method that I think planets are commonly considered to form through, maybe this is a long extinct, small, Red Dwarf that's been accreting matter during its dormant travels. This kind of composition difference may explain why the gravitation forces of its mass are not creating the volume that it should (maybe the red dwarf core, as opposed to something like metallic hydrogen - assumes gas giant -, would instigate some strange EM afffects that are limiting gravitational compaction?...) Don't know if this is at all plausible.
Sorry, I could not resist
This post was not intended to make fun of any religion. only to amuse and perhaps poke fun at the English language. I did not intend to offend.
While the title is "Scientists Puzzled" and emphasizes the lack of knowledge.
Why is it that the obsession is with confusion rather than learning. At a time when many people are turning to stupidities like Intelligent Design because it claims to have "answers" perhaps some of the blame can be put on horrible reporting which seems unable to distinguish between finding new info and being "confused" "lost" or "puzzled".
Maybe God just likes puffies, you know?
We all have our fetishes. I know I do.
It seems the simplest explanation is one of the estimates or both have a large error. Measuring the mass and volume of things like this isn't easy, especially when it is so far away. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them is off by 50%. For example, they measure the mass by the effect of its gravity. This could be perturbed by another object(s) in the vicinity yet undiscovered. That seems more probably than a planet made of a compression resistant spongy material IMHO.
Sorry, but I have to jump in here.
;^)
Right now the distance to an "astronomically" far object is really just inferred. Most folks use the red-shift/blue-shift (so called velocity dispersion spreading of the spectral lines) vs the apparent size of a similar object in conjunction with the theory of expansion (aka Hubbel's law) that relates the apparent average red-shift to the assumed distance consistant with expansion. The distance in time is reversed from this theoretical distance using the assumption of the speed of light.
IF some the theories that make up the basis of this chain of reasoning are shown to be not consistant with the observed universe (e.g., some of the theories of astrophysics turned out to be wrong), THEN it would be safe to say that we really didn't "know" how long light took to reach us, we were just mistaken in our estimation.
Of course today, it is safe to say that we are currently just using a chain of reasoning based on current astrophysical theory to infer how long light took to reach us based on how far we think the object is away from us and the speed of light is constant in the universe (but it could all be proven wrong when we know more about astrophysics). But maybe that kind of equivocation doesn't make for a good headline
As an example, we could find that quantum mechanics were somehow time dependent so that the spectral lines we are using to infer distance are somehow different in the past and hubble wasn't quite right about expansion factors and the galaxies are really as far as we thought (or maybe they are further than we thought), or perhaps the speed of light really isn't a universal constant or gravity doesn't really work the way we expect it to. Today, we can hardly explain observation about the heliopause or the pioneer anomaly and these are pretty near to us in astronomical terms...
Maybe its not a planet at all - maybe that solar system had a binary star and the inhabitants built a dyson sphere around the second star ???
Don't they measure mass by the effect the planet has on the star that it orbits?
Couldn't that be explained by a synchronized orbit of another planet/asteroid mass/collection of lost pens?
As unlikely as it is that they are perfectly synchronized, it seems like it could be close enough over the period of time we were observing the star.
Then again, it could be Magrathea, which is hollow if I recall correctly.
The television will not be revolutionized.
Could it be a planet that was impacted by another large body? That would account for a diffuse mass as the matter settled back into a coherent form. I really don't know how long it would take to reform but it's possible.
It beats the hell out of some of the other stuff I've been reading here...
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A bit of gas + a bit of heat due the proximity of the star = simple expansion. Why could not be this the explanation? How much the uncommon proximity, who knowns what kind of gravitational cataclism can have occurred in this solar system, even the asteroids of our system are yet to be perfectly explained. Sorry the bad grammar, I used Babelfish to help me.
-x- Sorry my bad English. I'll have him tarred and feathered. -x-
This so-called "puffy" planet is none other than Vergon 6.
Vergon 6 used to have a large core that was nothing but extremely dense Dark Matter. But when the DM was mined away, only a thin layer of unsupported crust was left.
Clearly we need to follow the teachings of Fry, and mount a rescue mission to save all the animals before the planet implodes.
That would give it a low density. Maybe a playgroup, a housing development, or a temple - its your imagination.
It's bound to be able to get some sort of state funding to help ....
A bit of a wild guess, but if the heat from the planet's star isn't enough to explain it's puffiness, maybe the planet formed around some kind of post-nova stellar fragment?
Do stars loose enough mass in a nova/supernova that the remains could end up forming something as "small" as this planet? And if it did loose all that mass, would there be enough risidual heat stored to explain the puffiness?
Course, if there was a stellar fragment in the area for the planet to coalesce around, wouldn't that be too much competition for the early stages of formation? (I mean if the star has to begin as a tiny slighty more dense cloud, and this planet had a ready-to-go core, wouldnt that be so much of a head start, it would end up the domanant mass in the system?) Unless of course the star also formed around a similar object.
The planet's proximity would obviously drive up temperatures, I'm sure Jupiter would swell a bit if it was within Mercury's orbit.
The star being more luminous would just add to surface heating of the planet.
But it is probably the age that will be the main determinant. An F-type star ages much more quickly than a G-type star like our own. While our sun has a main-sequence life of 10 billion years, the average F-type star has only about 4 billion. Since TFA says that the star has only about a billion years left. The planet is probably only 2 to 3 billion years old (about half the age of jupiter). This means that it has retained more of its formation temperature than jupiter has.
I think a combination of these factors will increase the size
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
If the 'planet' was composed almost entirely of ionised gas particles with the same charge, then wouldn't the electrostatic repulsion be far greater than the gravitational attraction until a certain average distance between particles is achieved? Might this explain the inflated size? The electrostatic force might even be strong enough to maintain a near constant density through the entire 'planet', considering it's many orders of magnitude greater than gravity.
It could be a smaller, denser planet with a great big artificial roof. A planetary equivalent of a Dyson Sphere would expand the apparent volume and lower the apparent density. Maybe we should look for a chimney.
I would doubt that this is still under formation. The star is close to the end of its life, which means it's been around for at least a couple of billion years, whereas from most accretion theories I've heard of say that planet formation is pretty much done within 10 million years or so. So I think the system is a bit old, by a couple of orders of magnitude, to still be forming planets.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
Although I think many people do not have a particularly strong grasp on the nuances of English,
I suspect in cases such as this the issue is instead brevity and punchiness over specificity.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Really... They should call it Your Mum!
signature is pants
Maybe it has an exotic proportion of light and heavy elements, like a collision of a mercury and saturn or something.
Let's elaborate on this theory. You're on the right track with the gas + heat. The source of both is the alien civilization's addiction to McZworfua burgers. Millions of grills produce a significant percentage of the heat, and source of the gas output is the digestive byproduct of vast herds of domesticated alien ruminants.
Good job checking your facts CNN. They obviously spoke with several astronomy experts before publishing this article. "New exoplanet 20 times Earth's size" And here's a little taste of the win and awesomeness contained within: "PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Scientists have discovered the universe's largest known planet, a giant ball made of mostly hydrogen that is 20 times larger than Earth and circling a star 1,400 light-years away." http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/08/09/exoplanet .discovery.ap/index.html
Where's Jenny Craig when you need her?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Anyone else encounter an MSN shopping ad for plus-size clothing?
Also, what's interesting to me is that puffy planets are highly correlated with fast-burning stars; I think that's a good clue right there. Perhaps, because of the faster speed of formation of these kinds of star systems, the planetoids don't sweep up as much material as a 'regular' planet, and thus don't have as dense a central core, thus leading to less gravitational load.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
There are several very interesting videos on this page, but the videos titled "Creation Astronomy", in two parts, deals particularly with astronomy. Dr. Lisle talks about distant starlight, large planets, internal heat of planets, magnetic fields, galactic temperatures, etc.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/video/ondemand/