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Astronomers Announce 5-Planet System
An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers have detected a record-breaking 5th planet orbiting the star 55 Cancri, 41 light years distant. This planet orbits within the 'habitable zone,' where water could presumably exist, but it's probably another gas giant like Saturn, so any liquid water would have to be on a moon. There's still a big gap between this planet and the outermost planet where no planets have been detected yet, so there could yet be a rocky planet in the system. The lead researcher said he's optimistic that 'continued observations will reveal a rocky planet within five years.'"
What Record did this break? The number of planets detected in a single (extrasolar) system record? That shouldn't be too hard considering we're probably missing over half of the extrasolar planets with our current detection threshold. I mean, this is certainly interesting, but by no means surprising. We should be detecting systems with more and more planets every year as we begin to detect smaller and smaller planets.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
assuming systems with more than said number of planets are common, or even exist (other than ours). scientists take nothing for granted. well they aren't supposed to anyway. that makes this newsworthy.
To a very, very close approximation, we're missing all the extrasolar planets. We've yet to discover a single one outside our own Galaxy :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Inherent self-preservation instinct of any successful race will dictate that no one will begin transmitting like crazy to suspect systems. Its too much of a risk. Only idealists with a lot of faith in both humanity and alienity would be willing to take such a risk. The problem here is idealists are usually poor and can't afford to the equipment and energy to do what you propose. Not to mention, I imagine that the people who would even attempt such a thing are pretty credulous to begin with and would just conclude that aliens are here already and point to fuzzy videotapes and tall-tales of area 51 as proof.
No human will set foot on Neptune either, does that make it's discovery meaningless? Thank god no scientist thinks like you.
Come to think of it, I will never meet you in person, so I guess you're meaningless too.
I'll see your what if, and raise you one:
What if 50 years from now we receive a tight-beam laser transmission inviting us to join the galactic survival club and, BTW, whatever you do, don't send out radio signals to random planets, the neighborhood has been littered with alarms by the berserkers.
Uh-oh, the captcha is "deaths".
Downside, they're judging us all by William Shatner.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Extrasolar planet refers to any planet beyond our solar system, not beyond our galaxy.
The Milky Way galaxy (ours) contains ~200 billion stars, each one a potential solar system.
Obligatory wikipedia article listing some of the discovered extrasolar planets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet