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Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet
SpuriousLogic writes "Scientists have discovered a planet that shouldn't exist. The finding, they say, could alter our understanding of orbital dynamics, a field considered pretty well settled since the time of astronomer Johannes Kepler 400 years ago.
The planet is known as a 'hot Jupiter,' a gas giant orbiting the star Wasp-18, about 330 light years from Earth. The planet, Wasp-18b, is so close to the star that it completes a full orbit (its "year") in less than an Earth day, according to the research, which was published in the journal Nature.
Of the more than 370 exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than our sun — discovered so far, this is just the second with such a close orbit.
The problem is that a planet that close should be consumed by its parent star in less than a million years, say the authors at Keele University in England. The star Wasp-18 is believed to be about a billion years old, and since stars and the planets around them are thought to form at the same time, Wasp-18b should have been reduced to cinders ages ago."
How presumptuous is it for these physicists to make claims about exoplanets, when no one has been able to visit them to confirm anything that our measurements are telling us *might* be out there? How confident is astrophysics in what they're seeing and interpreting?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
where is my guide and my towel ?
...IT'S A TRAP!!!!!
RFC2119
A planet must orbit the Sun.
t
Queue the 'Killer meteor will come within 100 miles of earth!' too as the scientists ramp up their efforts to get funding. At least these guys have some facts to back them up.
Does anyone else feel that this planet might be able to defy conventional orbital mechanics through the power of Concentrated Evil?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
You should meet the aliens living on it.
They're tougher than Chuck Norris (and that was supposed to be impossible too).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's Disaster Area's stage in a parking orbit.
Perhaps it was thrown from a different solar system and captured by its star.
Free Martian Whores!
The Beast is imprisoned there!
Science doesn't already know everything, learns something new today it thought was impossible yesterday, news at 11.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
And it started out a billion years ago much further away...
It's closer to 6600 years? :)
global warming isn't so hurtful after all?
Perhaps they should reconsider their evaluation of its age...
perhaps it's spiraling to its demise after billions of years in a decaying orbit.
Its the Impossible Planet tell him to look for The Satan Pit
So if the orbit is decaying, we'll be able to measure it in 10 years, otherwise there will be useful data to refine theories about tidal forces in the surfaces of stars.
Interesting how in the article, they never use the word "impossible". Infact, they actually put forward a handful of possible (although unlikely)ways that this may have occurred.
There's bazillions of things that are unlikely to happen, but the universe is a big place. While we can't predict which particular weird thing we might observe next time, we shouldn't be all that surprised that weirdness is out there.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
...formed one billion years ago, but originally much more distant from the star. But its orbit was not stable, approaching quickly (in astronomical time) to the star; and we're just lucky to have found it in the final stage of the death spiral. If this is the case, it may even be possible to watch the final spectacle in a timeframe reasonable for human scale (a few thousand years, perhaps centuries, or even less).
Wild speculation of course... but just to be safe, I'm immediately canceling all my plans of space vacations near the Wasp18 system. I never liked wasps anyway.
Perhaps instead of a hot Jupiter what they have found is a cold sun?
There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy. If we look at enough of them then at some point by the laws of probability we're going to find a planet on its final death spiral into the star. I don't see what the issue is. Ok , if in 50 years time the planets orbit hasn't changed *then* we start to worry and revisit our theories.
"Oh wait, I just forgot to add resistance." - Quoted by my high school physics teacher. There are plenty of human error involved with not applying the laws of physics correctly. Let's not all get on the bandwagon just yet that we have broken the laws of physics. I doubt even the scientists involved believe this, it's just another slow news day at the LA times and they're trying to make something big out of something little.
for that planet.
we're actually watching the planet in the process of being consumed
which would be highly unlikely, to get that timing right, as there's a window of only a couple thousand years in which we could see that happen, but maybe that's what we're really seeing
in which case, rather than revise orbital dynamics, this planet could contribute to our understanding of astrophysics/ michael bay style thermodynamics by allowing us to watch a jupiter sized planet ripped to smithereens in real time
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Nothing unreal exists."
It may be a teaching from a fictional teacher...but it's a good one.
Funny how people will spout out "so we don't really know, do we" and ALSO "huh? why do you have such huge error bars in your working???".
I, for one, welcome our new Flame Resistant Planetary Overlords!
We have filed notices to build an intergalactic highway through that planet. Notice can be perused in a nearby star, hardly 4.5 light years away in a dark unlit basement without stairs in a filing cabinet in a disused toilet, with a "Beware of the Cheetah" sign on the door.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm going with the "a bunch of fraternity aliens pulling a practical joke" theory.
To be serious, hasn't science had a history of finding "impossible" things, then turned out to be 1) a mistake 2) something new that changed some thinking 3) a weird-ass anomaly 4) the platypus? Let's all just calm down until we find the platypus alien pranksters!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
It's a baby!
I wonder if [big round celestial bodies] have a 'sex'? Probably, though I have no idea how to tell. .. I'm not being sarcastic folks, it's new, really.
I got your orbital physics right here! Badabing!
-Hot Jupiter's Lover
Just like man-made global warming is settled, I thought orbital dynamics is settled! I mean... 400 years, c'mon.. of course it's settled! Obviously these findings go against the overwhelming consensus among astrophysicists and is therefore wrong!
Clearly the orbit is artificial, the planet has been moved by an Alien race hiding under the thick atmosphere.
So every day(year) after lunch, those guys are talking about how this is a HOT summer this day. The idle banter about the weather must get really repetitive there.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Or maybe that's one fucking badass planet. The lesson to be learned here is do not fuck with Wasp-18b.
Quick! To the Space Shuttle!!!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
WASPs always look old for their age!
BADA BOOM!
I'll be here all week. Please tip your waiters...
In Soviet Russia the red star orbits You!
Cowboy Neil's mom should have created a black hole and pulled in the earth years ago.
It's amazing that we can barely find planets 300 light years from here, and scientists have already drawn conclusions about how the universe works - so much so that an "impossible" planet is found. Who's to say that this is not a normal happening around the other 99.999% of the universe that we cannot see?
Since universe is full of such marvels.
I may get lucky and find the impossible woman ?
One that is not supposed to exist but suits me.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
As the Universe was created 6000 years ago, its still has 9 994 000 thousand years left before it is swallowed by its parent star.
Which is driven by the desire for validation through possession of "secret knowledge."
Therefore, NASA faked the moon landing, auto makers have suppressed the 200mpg carburetor, and scientists are all glory seeker publishing dubious results that they make up as they go along. /. has a large tin foil hat contingency, so this should come as no great shock.
Think of the coin donation containers that have a curved funnel and a ramp for the coin. You drop the coin in, and it goes around and around the funnel. It's orbit slowly decays, getting closer to the hole with each orbit. As it gets closer, it speeds up. By the time it hits the neck of the funnel, it's going extremely fast, and takes much longer than one would think it should to finally disappear down the hole. Is it not possible this is the same phenomenon? Imagine if Jupiter had a decaying orbit, such that it would take a billion years to reach the orbit of Mercury. It would be going pretty damn fast by then, no?
"That's no moon... It's a space station!" -Obi-Wan Kenobi
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
You know, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Maybe is the proof we need of existing (underground?) alien civilizations. And could be cheaper than a Dyson sphere or a ring world.
Of course, also could mean that that planet wasnt in that orbit more than a millon years ago for some natural causes. Occam rulez.. and shaves.
"The star Wasp-18 is believed to be about a billion years old, and since stars and the planets around them are thought to form at the same time, Wasp-18b should have been reduced to cinders ages ago."
That's the beauty of science. Things can be hypothesized about and theories can be made, but as we go deeper into those ideas and actually take a closer look, we discover they can and do change (the way things work, in our eyes). So I guess that either the Wasp-18 star is not a billion years or maybe planets simply do not necessarily form at the same time as the star does. We can't know everything right away, but it is definitely fun to find out as we move on!
Actually the orbital dynamics discovered(?) by Johannes Kepler (or Newton) was never in doubt regardless of what the article says. That's because what they're really talking about here is the rate of drag caused by the star the planet is orbiting; this needless to say was never conceived of let alone formulated 400 years ago. Without these stellar winds coming from the star, the planet would keep orbiting just fine forever (unless the star was a really dense object in which case general relativity would come to play but I digress).
The astronomers think that some (relatively new) theories regarding the amount of stellar wind from the parent star could be wrong, otherwise the planet is due to fall into the star in ~1 million years, a time too short on the scale of the lifetime of the system to be chalked up to coincidence. Doesn't have the same sound bite as claiming that 400 years of science could be wrong though.
That's ok, from its perspective at 330 light years away, it's only 70 years since Kepler... if we just give it a few more centuries I am sure it will catch up with the new laws of orbital dynamics.
The finding of this impossible planet clearly means that the infinite improbability drive is in existence. Shall we name the planet Magrathea?
I once managed a junior programmer who would insist that the compiler had a bug in it when she couldn't get her program to work.
We eventually fired her.
Why do I mention this? Because, as a programmer, when I get results I don't expect, I tend to assume that I have made a mistake somewhere. I don't assume that the underlying theory of how computers work is in error.
Are they even sure that they're looking at a planet? My first assumption would be that they are not seeing what they think they were seeing, rather than there is a flaw in the theory of orbital dynamics.
I'm not being accusatory here, just skeptical.
Proverbs 21:19
Though in that case it orbited two suns.
So be on the lookout for alien, sentient oceans.
So.. 400 years of orbital mechanics thrown out from a sample of... one?
Perhaps we've stumbled across this planet during the last million years of its billion year life-cycle. Sounds like a one in a thousand chance that we'd do that. But the summary says that over 370 exo-planets[1] have been found ... so (waves hands as if doing actual math) its about a 1 in 3 chance that one of the planets we've found so far will be in some one in a thousand situation.
Wait until Kepler starts kicking in a few thousand more exo-planets to the database. Then we'll see even more "impossible" situations.
[1] http://exoplanets.org/ says the current tally is just 358
These planets were used as some kind of Precursor dump. If we find more, we might be able to form a pattern out of them.
we need to fire up the smelloscope and figure out if this WASP smells like the rest!
Good people go to bed earlier.
Everyone knows that the universe will only last another 6000 years!
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
It's only a model.
Can we get an actual scientist to talk about this instead of the freaking LA Times, and Yahoo news? What does space.com say about this thing? There are possibilities that the article doesn't mention. It could have been an interstellar body that wandered by and got pulled in recently. Or on a more radical shift of thought, it could be non-human intelligences, causing this phenomenon for whatever reasons. Whether you believe aliens visit Earth, or not, anything could exist at that range. There's the possibility that the body is composed of an element we've never seen before with properties we don't know about. All sorts of things could be going on here. Its stupid, and illogical to get people riled up saying stuff like 'We fudged up Orbital Dynamics! Adjust your worldview of the universe at large!'
That's UNPOSSIBLE!!
Hey, remember the old video game called "Mad Planets?" That was cool.
Sounds like this might be a chance for a reevaluation of Newtonian Gravity and General Relativity.
Since that's a lot of work, perhaps we should chalk it up to a Halo of Dark matter just outside this planet's orbit which is holding it back from falling into that star.
(Or perhaps a whole bunch of Dark Energy between the planet and star holding it up)
but that would be be, in a way, admitting defeat. i'm obviously defeated, but am too hurt by how difficult the whole thing has been to admit that. instead, i'll live with occasional comment barbs like yours to egg me on to get the f***ing thing done already
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You just forgot the dimension of time!
What I mean is, that you say that the planet should be consumed in less than a million years. Well, what if it simply got closer right now, and just started to get consumed. So we will see it being consumed in less than a million years. And the theory still is correct.
Just wait and see... after all it's just a million years. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
a Solaris-like entity?
The planet will remains for more time.
It just does not burn because turning so FAST around of the sun, it is is cooled by the wind.
Information technology means all information.
"The star Wasp-18 is believed to be about a billion years old, and since stars and the planets around them are thought to form at the same time, Wasp-18b should have been reduced to cinders ages ago"
Could it be possible that the age estimates are grossly over-exaggerated? Could it be possible that the creationist scientists were right all along? This fits their model much better than the evolutionary model scientists. Surprisingly, even Scientific America has claimed that the "big-bang" theory isn't plausible (March 2003).
"The Satan Pit / Impossible Pit were really great Doctor Who episodes. Maybe we should appreciate them for that, instead of taking apart the physics?" - by Cassini2 (956052) on Thursday August 27, @10:45AM (#29216903)
Agreed, 110% - 2 of my favorites (if not my all-time favs really) from the 2005-present day series (alongside DALEK, & Doomsday).
I loved the part when the "Good Doctor" said:
"IF YOU'RE ESCAPING, THEN I'VE GOT TO STOP YOU!"
(AND, also later when Rose states (as the rocket is falling back into the black hole sun's gravity well) "That's what the Doctor would've done!")
Good stuff! Most especially @ the end, when the character named IDA SCOTT says:
"Who are you 2, really?"
& the Doctor replies:
"Oh... the STUFF OF LEGEND!"
LOL!
APK
P.S.=> Nice to see another "Doctor Who" fan here... but, I think you realize this: /. is like many forums - FULL of "nitpickers" is all... I think they mean well for the most part though... it's their "brand of humor", IF NOT "analysis", is all (most of the time, that is)... apk
Any Gallifreyan worth his salt knows that Impossible Planets are held in orbit by a super-strong gravitational well generated by the ancient evil daemonic entity imprisoned within. Geesh.
The highly advanced life forms on this planet are preventing, with all their technical measures, their planet falling into the star and destroying their home.
Michael Rennie was ill, the day the Earth stood still, but he told us where we stand.
ON OUR FEET!
And Flash Gordon was there, in
EDIBLE.
silver underwear.
KINKY!
Claude Rains was the invisible man.
BUT HE DIDN'T SHOW UP.
Then something went wrong, for Faye Wray and King Kong, they got caught in a
SEXUAL
celluloid jam.
YEAH JAM!
Then at a deadly pace, it came
ON JANET'S FACE!
from outer space. And this is how the message ran...
FREEZE!
HAND JOB MAN.
handyman. He's just a little brought down, because when you knocked, he thought you were the Candy Man. Don't get strung out
ON COCAINE!
by the way I look,
SAME THING.
don't judge a book by it's cover. I'm not much of a man by the light of day, but by night I'm one
SICK MOTHERFUCKER.
hell of a lover. I'm just a sweet Transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania. Let me show you around, maybe play you a sound. You look like you're both pretty groovy. Or if you want something visual, that's not too abysmal, we could take in an old
KEANU REEVES'.
Steve Reeves' movie...
This reminds me of that episode of the new series of Doctor Who, The Impossible Planet. Scientists were studying a planet that was somehow kept from getting sucked into a black hole that it was next to. To me, it was definitely the best episode covering the nature of deep fears. Oh, and if you starred through the "sun roof" at the black hole for too long, it would drive you insane.
So does this mean the universe is only 4000 years old? :)
Hmm, I thought the moon was considered to be slowly spiraling AWAY from earth, because of the effects of tides on it's orbit. Maybe I have that wrong? (ie: Is the moon heading right for us?)
Or does the net effect of tidal forces depend on some factor, so that in this case, it spirals the plant inward, yet in other cases, a moon could be spiraling outward? Perhaps if the spin of the parent body is faster/slower than the orbit of the smaller body, then the tides would either be tugging the smaller body to slow it down, or pulling it forward?
I remember hearing something, from a scientist once, about how as you get deeper into the gravity well of a black hole (that is, nearer to it), that time slows down relative to the 'outside' Universe - that is, what seems like minutes for you might be 10,000 years to everyone else.
So, if that is the case, wouldn't it take a very long time for *anything* to fall into a Black Hole, relative to outside observers?
There could be other explanations. . . maybe the planet wasn't originally part of that star system, but was a rogue planet that got 'captured' when it got too close to that star, relatively recently?
I'm no astronomer but...
It could have impacted with a moon or other planet recently and became that large not to mention had its orbit altered from the impact energy
It may have formed a lot later than planets typically do
It may have some unusual sized moon(s) with strange orbit(s) that keep it stable at that distance
I mean come on, there are things that could cause this exact condition. It's not "impossible"
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Since we have already determined that the origins of the universe, stars, planets, life, etc. can all be categorized under "chance", stuff like this shouldn't surprise us. Maybe we should be surprised when we look at something and aren't surprised.
But honestly, destroying mankind with massive space rocks must be illegal or something.
That's the reason the Puppeteers created their "Fleet of Worlds": Their own industrial heat generation warmed their homeworlds well enough that they neither needed solar energy, nor desired it.
<pedantic>The Puppeteers created their Klemperer rosette to have more living space. They turned it into a Fleet of Worlds so that they could run from the exploding core of the galaxy. Some of the Puppeteer worlds were not industrialized but agricultural, to feed the Puppeteers on the other planets. The agricultural worlds needed artificial light sources for the crops to grow.</pedantic>
So that's where I parked it... Now where did I put my keys...
>^_^<
they have their positives and negatives ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It is due to UFOs;they are hold the planet back from falling into the star and they are researching how to reverse the process. More anal probing of humans will reveal the solution quickly!
Statistics 101 - is the sample of 300-something planets representative for all (1000000000000000000000 or something) planets?
No. Only this is the kind of planet that is unusual enough to be detected using current methods.
Conclusion: We know how to find weird planets. They will likely be a drop in the ocean when methods improve.
Maybe the way they think to calculate the orbit, size, or even longevity of a planet might be wrong, lending to the assumption that this SHOULD NOT BE. But it is...here is a plain fact...many variables in the universe have yet to be figured out...and many still have room for change. The fact remains, this should not be, so it isn't either they saw wrong or calculated wrong, but which ever it is, we are FAR
from being close to having a good science to judge what is "OUT THERE"!
ps- How about we develop the capability to travel out into space without costing billions each time, and then maybe we can start looking at getting a clue how to calculate distances of planets belonging to another solar system 400 light years away...eyh?
Add a typo in the headline of the dupe story, and you've got it spot on...
I've heard that hamsters do this.
Is it possible there's some sort of link?
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
"This planet should spiral inwards on such a short time scale that the likelihood of seeing it is very low," said Coel Hellier, an astrophysicist at Keele.
Oh ye of little faith ...
Maybe we're just getting better at observing our surroundings?
Maybe it's not possible by natural causes, but we can think in artificial causes.
We could have here a proof of foreign inteligence.
We have to solve why a civilization would keep a planet so close to their star, I could suggest one:
Power. When we increase our power needs we need to innovate on the power sources. We are doing that right now. Our main source of power is the SUN, it's here in each of our activities. It's consuming tons of hydrogen and if we could use them we would be a new type of civilization.
So, we could find here a new civilization getting their power.
Nobody thought that this could be a dual star system in with the "planet" a failed star that didn't had enough energy to start burning or didn't had enough hydrogen. I thought that two body in space that had the same mass could orbit a central point in perfect equilibrium without ever touching themselves. If the star is light and the planet has a lot of heavy elements in its composition, than it could explain this.
It is now mathematical proven that the decelerating force that affected the Pioneer probes and the accelerating force that had caused many Fly-by anomalies:
1.) Both affect the Earth (and the planets) as well, - and with full force.
2.) Automatically equalize each other (when affecting the planets).
3.) This explains the cause of the WASP-18b mystery and all the probes anomalies as well.
http://www.science27.com/english/the_pioneer_anomaly.html