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Multiple Asteroid Belts Found Orbiting Nearby Star
Kligat writes "Scientists have found two asteroid belts around the star Epsilon Eridani, the ninth closest star to our solar system. Epsilon Eridani also possesses an icy outer ring similar in composition to our Kuiper Belt, but with 100 times more material, and a Jovian mass planet near the edge of the innermost belt. Researchers believe that two other planets must orbit the 850 million year old star near the other two belts. Terrestrial planets are possible, but not yet indicated."
for future Earth Force pilots, before the civil war.
It's one possible location for Star Trek's planet Vulcan!
Looks like the builders of The Great Machine inside Epsilon 3 are just dumping their debris in orbit.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
epsilon eridani only 850 million years old? there is no way a race as ancient and wise as the vulcan could have come from such a young star system
look, i am an avid supporter of scientific progress as much as the next slashdotter, but when these so-called astronomers report something that contradicts well-established star trek canon, i have to put my foot down and wonder at the agenda of these propagandizers
yours,
star trek fundamentalist
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For those of you who dont want to RTFA but want some reference on why this is important, let me put a quote for you:
"Studying Epsilon Eridani is like having a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young,"
Do we have time to assemble a crack team of oil-rig roughnecks to land on them and nuke them? More importantly, does this mean another terrible Aerosmith song?!?
This one actually gives some information on how they detected the belts (short version: it's based on infrared emissions that could only come from rocky debris).
And here is the actual paper on arXiv, if you want the full technical details of their methods.
He's right, it'd have to be at least 851 million years old.
All kidding aside, it's very hard to try to figure out just how long it would take to come up with life (almost as we know it) under circumstances even marginally different than our own. That said, the Vulcan are very similar to us because humanoids originate from the same planet. For more on this, see TNG episode 6x20.
This star (rather, a fictional planet orbiting it) is a central feature in a very good series of books by Alastair Reynolds. I suggest people take a look at the Revelation Space series (although the first book is a bit dry, his writing matures quite nicely through the series.)
Sorry, I'm re-reading the series now, and this just jumped out at me. Word association = yay.
What was the method they used for this discovery and how does it work?
Yeah, fire up your reefersleep casket, we're goin' .9999c for a while!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
To be fair, Epsilon Eridani is featured in quite a few works of fiction.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
In a hundred or so years when we have the technology to get there. Might even be the ideal place for a colony someday.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
never tell me the odds
Table-ized A.I.
Construction of the rustbelt is far ahead of schedule then. They've made incredible progress.
Research into ion engines is humming right along.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
From TFA:
Two rings of rocks, and one of ice.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I bet they can't even accurately predict what the odds are of successfully navigating through this asteroid belt.
(It'd take me only 10 parsecs to figure it out. That's how good I am at).
Sometimes I amaze myself..
I record my sleeptalking
While talking about Sci-Fi, it might be worth noting that this system is the home of Babylon 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_III
Huh?
Hope there isn't any Veldspar in them thar rocks!
http://www.eve-online.com/
... that's not a moon!!
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
In a hundred or so years when we have the technology to get there. Might even be the ideal place for a colony someday.
Look, I agree that it's a nice place to go visit, but if you looked into things, you would find that it is 10.5 Light Years Away from earth it would take close to an eternity to get there with current rocket technology and certainly what is being developed. And not to rain on the parade again, but before anyone goes touting ION ENGINES will get us there, no, they really won't. You see Ion Engines need large amounts of power to run. Really large amounts that are generally limited to the amount of juice that can be generated by huge solar panels. Short of putting a nuclear reactor on this ship to get us there, we simply won't have enough sunlight to make the engine run once is starts to fade away from the centerish part of our solar system.
In short, I would love to agree, but I really think that you would need to change the "hundred or so" part of your post to be "many hundreds or so".
That's assuming we can deal with the massive solar winds that are 30 times as powerful as the ones in our system. Did I forget that part?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Nowhere in the Halo novels do they mention these belts around Epsilon Eridani.
Maybe those planets showed signs of dangerously uncivilized behavior and the Martians decided to off them.
http://www.tenjou.net/
A co-worker and I were discussing this story today. He had a very poor education growing up and I had to explain a great deal for him to really 'get' what's going on at Epsilon Eridani.
Can anyone recommend a good basic astronomy/cosmology book that I can give him to bring him somewhat up to speed? For reference, I had to explain that all the stars in the sky are just like our sun; that's his level of understanding. He's very smart and motivated to learn, but has very little background in science.
Thanks!
CONCORD reports heavy inbound jumpgate congestion caused by gangs of Hulks, Skiffs and haulers on their way to get some sweet, sweet ore out of those roids.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
Surak tells Kirk "Stop peeking!"
just FYI; in the Trek universe, Vulcan orbits Epsilon Eridani.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Sorry, I'm full up on ore.
Can you point me toward a sizeable gas nebula?
We don't talk about relativistic speed, we talk about fractions of relativistic speed. Say we use "c" for the constant speed of light. If we can get to even .1 light speed (something which is pretty much impossible at this time, even with an Orion pusher-plate nuclear ship), we'd get to that star in 100 years. So you're talking either a probe or at best a multi-generational starship. And good luck getting data back over such distances!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
It was going to be part of at least one more that never got made.
Back in the 80's the team that produced the Galaxy Rangers cartoon was working on a new show called Eridani which was going to be set, guess where.
The show never got past the concept stage. A few feeler ads (high-tech police and ride-on dinosaurs from what I remember) were placed in trade magazines but the bottom had fallen out of cartoons and the show never got made.
Shrug. I bet nobody else remembers this but me. I should just forget it too and let the memory die in peace.
True, you probably won't be able to keep the engine going, but you certainly don't want to build up speed in the inner solar system. Odds are you want to slingshot around Venus (or maybe Sol), gain speed, and then slingshot again around Jupiter or Saturn, and THEN light the main engine. It's all about conservation of fuel and getting the biggest bang for the buck. It really doesn't matter if you're using nuclear pulse, ion or any other engine technology humanity might invent any time soon.
IMO, what's more interesting is dealing with the Oort cloud. It's about 50,000 AU out (1 AU = distance Earth to Sol), and that's quite a long way, given that Neptune is 30 AU. For a little perspective, Voyager 2's been moving at ~3.3 AU/year since 1977 and is 86 AU out. This star is 632,396 AU away.
Anyway, the Oort cloud may well be like the Alps were to Bronze Age man: impassible except in certain locations and conditions.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
> ...we'd get to that star in 100 years. So you're talking either a probe or at best a
> multi-generational starship.
Assuming lifespans continue to be limited by aging.
> And good luck getting data back over such distances!
That's what lasers are for.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
> Anyway, the Oort cloud may well be like the Alps were to Bronze Age man: impassible
> except in certain locations and conditions.
That's silly. The density of the Oort cloud is very, very low. It consists mostly of kilometer-size objects seperated by tens of millions of kilometers. It does not form any sort of a barrier.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
> Anyway, the Oort cloud may well be like the Alps were to Bronze Age man: impassible > except in certain locations and conditions.
That's silly. The density of the Oort cloud is very, very low. It consists mostly of kilometer-size objects seperated by tens of millions of kilometers. It does not form any sort of a barrier.
Given that we are going to moving fairly fast and the depth of the Oort cloud is large (wikipedia has the depth between 2000 and 5000 AU and in some places 50000 AU deep). That chances of hitting something more significant, and who knows what other objects are between us and Epsilon Eridani.
So i think we need to map the Oort cloud before we even think about leaving our own solar system. And something else to think about is I remember hearing awhile ago that the trajectory of the Voyager is changing because of some unknown mass (dark matter???).
Its too risky to fire a ship into the unknown and expect that it will survive.
While it is low density, it's also full of smaller bodies which have questionable movement characteristics. Quite simply, we cannot be sure at this time if it will be an issue or not. Being in a ship going (say) .01c and getting bombarded by a dozen basketball sized objects per hour for days would be an issue!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
According to Wikipedia and tina-fey.org, she's married and has two kids.
You may now return to your regularly-scheduled Palin jack-off session.
Let's estimate some numbers. Assume the ship has a 10,000 m^2 frontal area, is moving at 3x10^6 m/s and hits a 10 kg object once an hour.
(3x10^6 m/s) X (3600 s) X (10^4 m^2) -> 10^14 m^3 volume swept out by the ship in an hour
Therefor (10 kg)/(10^14 m^3) -> 10^(-13) kg/m^3 is the density of your Oort cloud
The Oort cloud is estimated to extend from 5000AU to 50000AU so let's assume a sphere of radius 50000AU.
An AU is about 7.5x10^15 m so:
50000AU -> 4x10^20 m so that sphere has a volume of about
(4/3)(3.14)(4x10^20)^3 -> 2.5x10^62 m^3
(2.5x10^62 m^3) X (10^(-13) kg/m^3) -> 2.5x10^49 kg
The mass of the Sun is about 2x10^30 kg. I don't think the Oort cloud masses 10^19 suns.
Current estimates of the mass of the could run around 3x10^25 kg. Thus the risk of hitting something large while passing through it is much closer to once every 10^24 hours than to once per hour. Not much of a risk. The average particle size would need to be on the order of 10^(-20) kg for there to be significant risk of hitting one, but stuff that small is not hard to shield against even at .01C.
There is considerably less to hit in interstellar space, but even if the density there was the same as in the Oort cloud the chance of hitting something large on the whole trip would be on the order of one in 10^18.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
See my comment above. Your assumptions lead to the conclusion that the Oort cloud has the mass of a galaxy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.