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32 Exoplanets Discovered By Chilean Telescope
the4thdimension writes "An article on CNN notes that 32 exoplanets have been discovered using a new Chilean telescope. The telescope is capable of detecting movements of 2.1mph (comparable to a slow walking pace). These 32 new planets give the telescope a total of 75 planets it has discovered, out of the 400 discovered using all methods employed by astronomers. This places the HARPS system as the world's foremost exoplanet hunter."
From TFA: They have "tons" more planet they haven't reported yet. Incredible finds
Um, just how long is the trip to the nearest habitable exoplanet again?
If it's less than my remaining life expectancy, get me a ticket.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That's all we need. More planets.
I want to know how many Jovian-mass-equivalents' worth they've got in their backlog.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
the instrument detects movements as small as 3.5 km/hr (2.1 mph), a slow walking pace
So let me get this straight: If this thing were observing a star system 50 light years away, that's 4.7x10^14 kilometres ... and this thing can detect relative movements as small as 3.5km/hr?
Consider me impressed.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Planets seem to be everywhere we look. Right now the ratio between stars to planets in the milky way is about 1 billion to 1(if we use the 400 billion star estimate on the wikipedia page and the 400 stars in the article).
While the ratio will certainly continue to come down as we find more planets, I have to wonder if we are going to end up at the other end of the ratio before too long with a billion planets to a star. It just seems like ever star has multiple planets if we stare at them long enough.
It's amazing that such a small shift in spectrum line displacement can be detected. It doesn't make intuitive sense that a mere walking pace will produce a detectable shift. That's precision stuff. It's amazing what astronomy technology has been able to do with indirect information.
Table-ized A.I.
Well, the "new Chilenean telescope" the summary is referring to is actually the 3.6m telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, which started operation in 1976...
and here is the link to the ESO Press Release
http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/lasilla/instruments/harps/overview.html
The speed is the radial velocity, aka how fast it comes closer and goes further. And it's of the order of 1 m/s, which got converted to car speed. Analogy anyone?
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
I guess it could be possible to isolate certain frequencies in the oscillation to filter out solar storms and such which would easily affect its diameter at a rate faster than walking speed. But you'd have to watch it for centuries to gather enough data. At least. Geez, doing the trig (like 10^-22 radians per second) my intuition tells me you'd have to be watching that star for billions of years..
That "walking pace" stat could be very impressive if it were given with the proper qualification information.
For example, if it could detect an object moving at that pace over the course of a year at 1 light year away... I would probably not be as impressed if it could do it from 50 light years in a matter of minutes.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
More details can be found in the Press Release of the European Southern Observatory. They have been using a new instrument called HARPS on the "old" ESO 3.6m telescope, which has ben around since 1976.
This is a telescope operating in Chile, it is only partially funded by the Chileans.
Funded by
Slow News Day.
Seriously, are any of these 32 new planets at all interesting? It was great that we've figured out how to detect the existence of these planets, but even the chilean team doesn't bother to single out any of them as being out of the ordinary.
Now that VASIMR technology seems to be coming of age, isn't it time to do a survey of everything within say, 20 light years to find stuff that may be potentially habitable?
Deep within the structure of the telescope, someone asked "does anyone know if this spider is poisonous?"
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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Extra Solar Planets Feed @ Feed Distiller
& somehow managed to frig up our perfect environment to a likely beyond salvage state, in less than 300. remarkable, no? the lights are coming up all over now.
this same post was deleted by robbIE's patentdead corepirate nazi hostage censorship devise earlier today. what a pathetic bot he's become.
The larger question is, how many of these are enemy planets? I'm going to say at least half, if not more.
"An article on CNN describes that 32 exoplanets have been discovered using a new Chilean telescope. The telescope is capable of detecting movement 2.1mph (comparable to a slow walking pace)."
Not "Space Organization." It's not directly related to the European Space Agency.
I initially read that headline as "32 exaplanets" and thought "Holy Jesus, how on earth did they find that many planets?!?" It makes a lot more sense now...
Did it find pluto back? I heard we lost Pluto a while back.
let the flamewars begin.
Has anyone seen anything about what percentage of the total stars in the galaxy could have planets, or even of those how many would have rocky planets? I have seen estimates that anywhere between 20% and maybe as high as 60% of sun-like stars could have rocky planets, but then I cannot find an estimate for what kind proportion of stars are sun-like (although Wikipedia indicated that 7.6% of main sequence stars fall into the same spectral category as the sun, but then how many stars are in their man sequence?). I have also read things about how many stars have been found with planets, and how many have been looked at, but I would assume that they are using some bias about what stars to look at in order to save time and work.
freaking earthbounders, always lamenting that there's nowhere left to hide. like they've never seen star trek & believe we're stuck here so we shouldn't wreck the place any further. how narrow mindead they are. at least maybe 100's of us will 'escape' prior to the big flash, maybe.
Do they have stargates on them?
"While that's out of the question, an unmanned nuke-powered probe could possibly survey such a system in one life-time if sufficiently funded".
Nope. To reach the nearest solar system within a lifetime (80 years) and brake to it, you would have to have an acceleration, deceleration and speed such as it make the 4 light year distance within 80 years. Let us imagine this is a 1 kg probe, accelerating at a reasonable 1g constantly, go toward the system, then decelerate at 1g constantly. To make those 4 LY in less than 80 years, you will need to have at least a speed of 5% light speed (5% light speed, so 1 LY take 20 years, 4 LY take 80 years). 5% light speed is 1,5e7 meter.second-1. So you will need to accelerate at 1g over : 1,5e7seconds or over 1/2 year and decelerate over 1/2 years. I will spare you the number of megajoule needed for this, and the fact the reactor will add weight, and so the calculation is far more complex, I am pretty sure we haven't anything technology wise to reach such acceleration over such time.
From the above you can see that before your probe can survey such a system, it will take much much more than a life time to even REACH the nearest system. And that was a very small probe.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
300000 km.s-1 speed of light, 15000 km s-1 is 5% of it, so 1,5 e7 m.s-1 at 1g , or 1 meter s-2, you need 1.5e7 seconds, divided by 3600 this is 4166 hours, divided by 24 this is 176 days. Where am I off by a factor 10 ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'll likely die before the average life expectancy for people born before the year 2000 and still alive is over 150 years.
Yes, for my grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren, 1000+ year lifetimes for their conciousnesses may be a possibility, but not for me.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
which will never happen as long as LEADER can buy votes with a PROJECT. hey, after PAST PROBLEM the PARTY needed a fresh new face on how to get people dependent on a government program so that running for office on the platform of discontinuing that program is political suicide. so we get the mess known as PROJECT that will collapse under its own weight, and soon, if it is not reformed, yet no one has the balls to reform it because it would mark the end of his or her career in politics. nice going. why you guys think PROJECT will be any different when these people have already shown their true colors is amazing to me. it's like that definition of insanity, you keep doing the same thing expecting a different result, because THIS time you're all hopeful and THIS time you want change blah blah blah... idiots.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I was so concentrated on the time calculation I forgot to check the most glaring error : wrong constant :P. It does not change the reasonment tough.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org