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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."
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.
This is a telescope operating in Chile, it is only partially funded by the Chileans.
Funded by
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?
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.