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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."
The Beast is imprisoned there!
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?
The error bars are published along with the data, you know. There's no presumption here. These astronomers are presenting data and then interpreting the results in order to suggest probably implications.
Why is it that every "scientists find something new and try to understand it" article on Slashdot prompts comments that get modded up (why is the parent +4 insightful?!) for complaining that arrogant scientists are making stuff up and leaping to conclusions?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
from TFA:
A second possibility is that the planet hasn't been in its current position very long, Hellier said. Wasp-18b could have spiraled inward to its current position over millions of years. It may have been bumped out of its original orbit by another planet, for example.
"However, that does not solve the problem," Hellier said, because the planet's lifetime should still be very short and it would be very unlikely for his team to find it where it did.
hth
This story appeared in USA Today yesterday. From the article:
Putting aside the sensationalist journalism (calling it a "suicidal planet"), it appears that its proximity to its star is causing plasma tides on the star (similar to the tides we have here on Earth due to the Moon), and those tides are warping the planets orbit.
Best "String" Ever!
Hah, tougher than Chuck Norris, indeed.
Scientists calculated the weather conditions on a similar "hot Jupiter", HD 189733b, and came up with some pretty amazing results. HD 189733b is locked into synchronous orbit around its parent star in the same manner that the moon orbits the Earth, in that the rotational period directly matches the orbital period (which is fairly common for close orbiting planets, it is very plausible that Wasp 18b could be a similar story), leaving one side of the planet perpetually day, the other perpetually night. As the planet is only 3 million miles from its parent star, it was not overly surprising to find daytime highs of 2,000 - 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. What was surprising, however, was the nighttime temperature of roughly 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit! This indicates that the atmosphere is incredibly efficient at transferring heat, which means a lot of "air" (NOTE: The atmosphere of HD 189733b is NOT air, but a completely alien mixture of gasses.) moving around. When they calculated the winds that would be necessary to sustain such heat transfer, it was determined that HD 189733b would need to sustain windspeeds of approximately 7,000 mph, making Hurricane Katrina look like a nice ocean breeze by comparison. The weather conditions on Wasp 18b are likely similar; any beings that lived there would indeed have to be extremely tough, and Chuck Norris would most likely be checking his closet for them before going to bed.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
You are correct. By way of illustration, consider the following. In a bridge game I, as the dealer, distribute the cards resulting in an assemblage of four distinct hands. What is the probability of any single deal producing that particular constellation of hands? The rigorous answer is 1 in 52!/(13!)^4 = 1/53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000. Clearly, it is exceedingly unlikely that I would have dealt those specific hands but, yet, here we are... By the way, this is the precise error that you frequently see Intelligent Design people make when they say things such as: "it would be nearly impossible for a series of random mutations to produce X" which they will often back up with some ridiculous mathematical formula which shows how improbabilities multiply throughout the chain of events. These sort of statements often signal that the speaker doesn't really understand the concept of a priori probability and statistics and when and where such concepts can be applied.
Give a man a match: warm him for an instant. Douse him in petrol and set him aflame: warm him for the rest of his life.