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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."
That's all we need. More planets.
As soon as we find a habitable exoplanet, we'll let you know.
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?
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
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.
Table-ized A.I.
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
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Extra Solar Planets Feed @ Feed Distiller
Right now the ratio between stars to planets in the milky way is about 1 billion to 1.
That's a ridiculous statistic. By that measure, the ratio between Diet Coke drinkers and humans is 3.5 billion to 1, because my wife and I are the only people in my group of friends who drink the stuff, and there are 7 billion people on the planet.
And yet somehow the Coca Cola company keeps making it, just for us...
A better statistic is the ratio of the number of planets discovered and the NUMBER OF STARS SEARCHED FOR PLANETS. As of 2003, this fraction was at least 10%, and given observational limits may prove to be as high as 100% -- it could well be that ALL sunlike stars have planets.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306524
Tell me, is there any kind of physical sensation associated with having an abnormally low IQ? Is there like a numbness or heaviness inside your head? Or is the affliction completely transparent to the sufferer?
The larger question is, how many of these are enemy planets? I'm going to say at least half, if not more.
They're not measuring the side-to-side motion of the stars, that's impossible^H^H^H^Hvery difficult to measure, as your trig suggests.
They're measuring the Doppler shift of features in the star's optical spectrum, as it moves toward us and away. It's the world's most impressive police radar gun.
Not "Space Organization." It's not directly related to the European Space Agency.
Clearly the parent poster was commenting that the ratio is currently stars/planets > 1 (more stars than planets) and he was wondering if the ratio would invert stars/planets 1 (more planets than stars). If we continue to find planets at some point we may find that 90% of the stars we CAN see well enough have more than 1 planet and it would be a safe bet at that point to say that there are more planets than stars.
I don't think he was suggesting that each star could ever have more than a billion planets. Sorry if you were just being sarcastic or trolling and I didn't get it.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
This is interesting: planet inside habitable zone, perhaps with liquid water
To be fair stop signs don't seem like the most stimulating conversation.
*snore*
To borrow a phrase, on what planet do you spend most of your time?
It was big government that put a man on the moon.
It was big government that built the interstates. You're welcome.
It was big government that gave you the police department and firemen. You're welcome.
It's big government that puts men and women in uniform to go off and defend this country, but I don't hear Fox-News-watching sheep like yourself railing against the incompetence of government-run programs like the US Marine Corps or the socialised medicine that they receive.
This "all government is evil" bullshit is really getting tiresome. Why don't you take a look at government run health care systems around the world before you foam at the mouth with your anarchist hatred for the institutions of civilisation? Why don't you open your brainwashed eyes and see that there is only one industrialised country in the world (the USA) that thinks it's okay to leave people without health insurance or to let people go bankrupt because they get sick? Why can't you get it into your pointy little head that health care is as fundamental a human right as protection from the police or fire department? Why can't you see that Glenn Beck is bat shit insane?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The only reason to send an unmanned craft, is to scout out the habitable planets.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Its not going to happen. planets orbit stars
So what would you call a rocky body the size and shape of (say) Earth or Mars that doesn't orbit a star? The IAU's inane mal-definition aside[*], I suspect most people would call it a planet (possibly with the qualifier "rogue" tacked on). I don't think we have much idea how many such bodies exist, but it's not beyond the bounds of reason to think that there's are many, many times as many as there are stars.
[*] I don't really give a rats ass how they classify Pluto--it's clearly a different type of body, and I'd be happy if they called it a Megacomet instead of a Planet, but the IAU's definition is still idiotic: there's no classification for bodies which don't orbit a primary, just to start with, and we can't tell if exoplanets are planets or not without going there, and most damning of all, they define Mercury as being more like Jupiter than it is like Ceres, which is simply brain-dead.
We are collecting data points like mad and its not looking good for extraterrestrial life.
This news is all about revising a term in the Drake Equation upward. That can't make ET life less likely.
As for spectra, the vast majority of planetary IDs give no information about the planets apart from their orbits and masses. And as far as I know, the few spectra we have are for Jupiters, not terrestrial planets.
So your dreams of bug-eyed-monsters are as alive as they ever were.
Cold?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."