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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."
...IT'S A TRAP!!!!!
RFC2119
A planet must orbit the Sun.
t
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?
This study does demonstrate that either the measurements are wrong or our understanding of orbital dynamics is wrong. Knowing the former is important because it tells us we have to alter how we make the measurements and knowing the latter is important because it tells us we have to alter our understanding of physics. So it's the very antithesis of hubris.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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!
Not necessarily. Maybe something knocked it out of its regular orbit and it's spiraling into the star. Maybe we're just witnessing its death.
And it started out a billion years ago much further away...
Why do you think physicists need to visit a planet to be able to make reliable measurements about them? I would expect that they can have confidence in their measuring equipment in the same way that you can have confidence that the sun will rise in the morning. After all, you have never been there, how can you know anything about how it works?
Chuck Norris is a native of the planet, our yellow sun saps his powers.
I am not sure of the method they used to find this planet. If they are using the transit method, then there isn't a heck of a lot of interpretation to the numbers. You see how often the sun "blinks" because of the planet flashing across it. You get several observations, with a minimum of three (this is a reason why the closer planets get discovered quicker. it takes less time to verify). So, basically I don't think it is presumptuous at all. It is basic physics.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
That would fall under "our understanding of orbital dynamics is wrong".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Hmm, I was trying to find a good analogy. This isn't a good one. I was thinking about a prototype jet, and why would one belive that it should fly on its first test flight. Experiments have experimental error. But any researcher who is worth their salt has some idea of how large that error is. Basically, you are accusing the researchers of incompetence. Have you ever used binoculars? Why do you trust what you see, if you haven't been there to see it yourself?
...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.
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)
Perhaps instead of a hot Jupiter what they have found is a cold sun?
"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.
Presumptuous?? Isn't that how science is meant to work - collect data, try and find patterns, make presumptions (hypothesises) about the underlying systems, and then collect more data to see if their presumptions are born out.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov
This sig all sigs devours
Or the third option - the orbit it has now isn't the original orbit. Plenty possibilities here.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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
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
It implies no such thing. Given the evidence, I would suggest that by far the most likely explanation is something that the authors of paper themselves suggest; something has happened since to knock a planet into a close orbit of the star. There are many explanations that don't require a modification of orbital mechanics (pretty much any modification that is big enough to produce this planet with no external influence, would give an effect that is observable within out solar system), why assume that such a modification is required? The slashdot headline is inflammatory, it is a "puzzle" (the article headline), not "impossible" (the slashdot headline).
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?
Probably because the average slashdotter doesn't know anything about science. Scientific facts, maybe, but procedure? No. See any global warming thread for further details.
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!
What do you mean "presumptuous"? This is how science works: based on past observations, you construct a theory of how things should work. Then you make new observations that contradict your theory, and you revise it. That's what we're seeing here.
I'm impressed by the speed at which the WASP team makes these "impossible" discoveries, though. A few days ago there was news about WASP-17b that orbited around its sun in the wrong direction, and now WASP-18b orbits too close to its sun. Cool stuff.
Your news program sucks. 11 is too late. I'm in bed by then.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
This is the problem with science journalism...it tries to jazz up stories to make them more interesting to the layperson, but in the process ends up making scientists look like idiots. I seriously doubt these astrophysicists discovered this planet and immediately ran to the nearest reporter, and breathlessly declared that 400 years of accumulated knowledge in orbital dynamics is wrong because they just discovered an "impossible" planet.
What probably happened is something more like this:
An astrophysicist and a journalist sit at a bar after a long day's work looking through telescopes/making shit up.
Journalist: Anything interesting happen today?
Astrophysicist: Actually, yes. We discovered a planet orbiting around another star.
Journalist: Another one? I said interesting, not yet another stupid gas-ball orbiting around another star...that's page H12 at best.
Astrophysicist: Well, the funny thing is, this star is orbiting closer to its star than it ought to be able to...so it's kind of weird.
Journalist: (rolling eyes) So what?
Astrophysicist: The orbit its in should be unstable...it should eventually fall into the star and burn up.
Journalist: Okay, so we have some planet that might be about to burn up...okay, we're probably page 5C with that one.
Astrophysicist: Sure, that's probably what will happen. Of course, if the orbit its in is somehow stable, which is impossible, that would mean 400 years of understanding in orbital dynamics is wrong...(chuckles)...but of course that's ridiculous.
Journalist: 400 years of physics wrong? Impossible planet? I smell a Pulitzer! To the presses!
Astrophysicist: Hey, wait! Come back! That's not what I said...Oh well, at least I can use his article in my next grant application.
Aaaaaand...scene!
Absolutely. However, scientists get nervous when they see something this unlikely, especially with such a small sample of similar systems to date. Often, such weirdness means something else is going on that we didn't consider, so the nervousness is justifiable in the general case.
Or maybe that's one fucking badass planet. The lesson to be learned here is do not fuck with Wasp-18b.
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
Yes, except we use slightly different terms. Only the non-scientists need to calm down, though. Finding things you didn't expect is par for the course.
"Well, science knows it doesn't know everything! Otherwise it would stop."
Fox News Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Will Obama's nazi socialist policies tax the good citizens of Wasp-18b until they commit suicide by diving into their sun? Find out at 8pm on The Factor!
MSNBC Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Will Dick Cheney come back to power and invade it on false pretenses? Find out at 8pm on Countdown!
CNN Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Watch our exciting report wherein we will use cutting edge technology to display an image of this planet above a floating pie chart!
Tabloid Journalist: Loch Ness Monster seen again! Read the shocking new evidence that proves she hails from Wasp-18b!
Slashdot Editor: Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet
Different Slashdot Editor a week later: Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
> Queue the 'Killer meteor will come within 100 miles of earth!' too as the
> scientists ramp up their efforts to get funding.
Them getting funding for things like LINEAR is, of course, really silly
compared to:
"Oh look, honey, a shooting star! Quick...let's make a wish!"
"Wow, honey, that IS a beautiful shooting star!"
"I can still see it...you too, right?"
"That shooting star is...farking BIG!"
"Is it just me or is this gettin' creepy?"
"Now I can hear it too :-/"
WHOOOOOOSH........KABOOM!!!!!
[insert earth tremors, tidal waves and general catastrophe here]
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.
mmm ... planet. Tasty.
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.
Well, one in a million chances do crop up nine times out of ten.
which is totally what she said
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
True, but the other question, the one not often asked, how many similarly unlikely occurrences could we see, that we haven't? It may be likely that we see one similarly unlikely event every few dozen planets.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
A DROPDOWN BOX IS A VERY VERY STUPID MECHANISM FOR MODERATION.
Unfortunately not all browsers reliably support the Hot Branding Iron control ...
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Maybe what they are seeing is the Fleet of Worlds. Instead of one planet, there are eight of them, which means that they are actually orbiting on an 8 day schedule instead of 1. That would place them much farther out from the sun.
Or else it is protected by a simple warp field.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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
Al Gore: This proves that global warming exists, and is caused by man!
Internet Journalist: Al Gore claims that he invented Wasp-18b.
GW Crowd: Al Gore, the inventor of the internet, claims that man created Wasp-18b.
Slashdot: Al Gore crates the innernet.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Actual headings
Fox News: Astronomers Discover New, Fast-Moving Planet
MSNBC: Newfound planet may plunge to fiery doom
CNN: Edward Kennedy 1932-2009 (sorry, CNN's science section didn't have any science)
Ironically, Fox had the only rational headline
It's almost certain that the journalists never talked to the scientists at all... Nature comes out weekly and there is an embargoed press release that is sent out to media outlets with a short synopsis/blurb of this weeks articles. Science journalists look it over and see whether there is anything particularly cool for the science section this week (i.e. nothing too abstract like particle physics) and then write up something quick for that weeks science section often just based on the press release (they may or may not read the actual article, which are often aimed at specialists and can be a difficult read at times). Longer form articles in the week-end paper usually include actually contacting the guys who did the study, but if there is no direct quote from the actual scientist who wrote the paper in the newspaper story then chances are high there was no scientist-journalist contact at all, and chances are almost as high that the journalist did not read the actual study, just the press release from Nature (after all the study was just published today).
Note to Slashdot admins: A DROPDOWN BOX IS A VERY VERY STUPID MECHANISM FOR MODERATION. That is all.
Yea! Why isn't it command-line based like other good user interfaces?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Not exactly.
The quote I was responding too suggested the event was so unlikely that it makes our current model suspect.
However, if there are 100,000 different things that are likely to be observed in 1 planet in a million, that, if observed significantly more frequently, would damage the model, then we can expect to observe one of these things in about 1 planet in 10.
Suddenly, observing one in the first 10 planets doesn't seem like such a model killer.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't study/analyze it and try to find flaws, I'm just saying it isn't necessarily going to break the theories because it's unlikely. It seemed to me a couple comments simply jumped the gun.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
sudo mod parent +1 insightful
password: **********
modding.... [35%]
A planet "spiralling into the sun" would be remarkably rare to begin with - it would require a close pass between start systems or somehting equally energetic. This planet has been around at least a billion years, but would die in a million (by current theory), for each case of this remarkable rare event that has happened in the past billion years, there's only a 1 in 1000 chance it would be observable now. We've found less than 1000 exoplanets, so the math doesn't work. Rare events are possible, but handwaving away anomalous data as "just unlikely" is really bad science.
Meanwhile, Venus is still sitting right next door and stubbornly not rotating. Something is off with our models, for sure.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I checked space.com's article on the find, and its totally different stating "If the planet is, in fact, spiraling in toward its star, the demise might not occur for thousands or millions of years, but there should be noticeable changes in its orbital period in about a decade. Astronomers just have to keep their eye on the system."
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.
...there's only a 1 in 1000 chance it would be observable now. We've found less than 1000 exoplanets, so the math doesn't work.
That's not how it works. Suppose I pick a number between 1 and 1000 at random. Then, suppose I roll a 1000 sided die. Odds are 1 in 1000 that those numbers will match, but that doesn't mean I can't roll the die and match those two numbers with less than 1000 throws. I might match the numbers on the very first throw! It just means I probably shouldn't bet my retirement on matching those numbers on any given throw.
Similarly, if the odds of discovering a planet such as Wasp18b are 1 in 1000, that doesn't mean that, "we've found less than 1000 planets, so we couldn't possibly have found such a planet yet." It just means that if I observe 1000 planets, most likely only one of them will be like Wasp18b. It could be the first one I observe, the 99th, the 1000th or any one in between.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Which solar system is this Venus in? The one I know is odd, but it still rotates. It just takes longer to rotate on its axis than it does to orbit the sun.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
Or all the planets 1 through 1000.
The point is that the odds of the next being the "one in a thousand" aren't affected by the results of the previous one.
Absolutely insightful. Too bad that most people don't understand probability and expectation very well. In fact, unlikely events occur every day -- for example, lottery winners are announced every day. The fact that somebody will win is certain; however, that any specific pre-designated person (including me, sadly) will win is highly unlikely.
Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
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.
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?
From math professor in college: flip a coin 50 times. It comes up heads every time. What are the odds (assuming it's a true coin/flip each time) it'll come up heads next flip? 50%.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Ummmm, no. Presumably, we are sighting essentially random plants from some larger population of planets. This is not at all like dealing a succession of highly unlikely hands in bridge because we've seen a single instance of this phenomenon, just like the hand you've been dealt in bridge is a single instance of that seemingly unlikely hand. It's the exact same circumstance.
It's like a genetic disorder with odds of 1 in 10000 live births. If I happen to be visiting the hospital this afternoon and it just so happens that the only child born at that hospital has that disorder, what does that tell me about how rare the event is? Answer: nothing at all. The probability of a single event is not revealed or influenced by whether or not I witness it.
If I see a rare thing happen, all that says is that I randomly was present when it happened. It doesn't mean I should run out and buy a lottery ticket nor does it mean that I should re-examine the models of probability that reveal the likelihood of an event's occurence.
As another poster stated elsewhere in this thread, it may be highly unlikely that any specific individual should win the lottery tonight but, nonetheless, it will happen that someone wins it. The probability of the event is 100%. The probability of it striking a specific individual is small.
And so it is with this planet. The probability of seeing such an event can be small but that does not imply, in any way, that seeing the event means that the probability calculation is wrong and that we need to re-examine our models. I would admit that , if we saw some succession of these events we might be able to say something about the model but a single observation says nothing at all about it -- other than the trivial fact that the probability of occurrence must be non-zero.
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.
C:\WINDOWS>sudo mod parent +1 insightful
'sudo' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
You insensitive clod!!!
Your statistics are better than your reading comprehension.
The chance of seeing this exceedingly rare event are further reduced 1000 times by its short duration. 370 exoplanets is off by many orders of magnitude from being resonable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"We may have just witnessed an exceedingly rare event" is not science. The Copernican Principle is extremely important to science. You have to assume that we are not in a special place, we are not in a special time. Otherwise every crackpot idea is on an equal footing with solid theory.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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?
It really depends on how small is small. If you happen to find a 1 in 10,000 birth defect, that's one thing. If you happen to find a baby born with telekinesis, that is something else. So rare it's never been seen, and it's not understood.
I haven't RTFA sorry to say, but if all they're saying is this would be a rare event, then blah. You would expect to find one of those now and then. But it sounds like the scientists are saying they don't even understand how this event is possible. Which is what I was trying to get at with my freaky bridge hand example.