Two Earth-Sized Bodies With Oxygen-Rich Atmospheres

tugfoigel writes "Astrophysicists at the University of Warwick and Kiel University have discovered two bodies the size of earth with oxygen-rich atmospheres — however, there is a disappointing snag for anyone looking for a potential home for alien life, or even a future home for ourselves. These are not planets, but are actually two unusual white dwarf stars." The objects, 220 and 400 light-years distant, are believed to be remnants of stars between 7 and 10 solar masses. Such stars, the largest that evolve to white dwarves, have been sought for years. If the stars were a little more massive they would collapse to neutron stars, or so the theory goes. Here is the paper on the arXiv.

Comments

That's okay.

[palegray.net]

I bet life forms from these environments would be really hot.

Re:That's okay.

[turing_m]

And Captain Kirk would still find a way to pork it without spontaneously combusting.

Re:That's okay.

[palegray.net]

[insert Chuck Norris joke here]

Re:That's okay.

[Virak]

Better yet, don't. Please.

Re:That's okay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they're talking about two Earth-sized bodies, so I guess the other one is ur dad. Take that!

Re:That's okay.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a matter of what is best to focus our efforts on. We looks for life in environment similar to ours for two reasons:

Short-term) Life that developed in an environment similar to ours may be similar to us, and therefore we may actually have a chance of noticing it.

Long-term) If we ever do spread out from this planet, then we will be focused on environments most suitable to us.

Posting AC because I've already spent mod points in this thread.

Re:That's okay.

[mhall119]

All known arrangements of life either consume oxygen or produce it, either way we will find free oxygen anywhere we find such life.

All known arrangements of life depend on liquid water, even in those under-glacier lakes or deep ocean thermal vents, liquid water is necessary. Therefore we will find liquid water anywhere we find such life.

Unless there is some arrangement for life than is fundamentally different from ours, on a molecular level, then oxygen and liquid water will be found anywhere life will be found.

Re:That's okay.

[blincoln]

Unless there is some arrangement for life than is fundamentally different from ours, on a molecular level, then oxygen and liquid water will be found anywhere life will be found.

There are a number of other options that have been theorized. I don't know about the alternatives to oxygen (some gaseous form of sulfur, maybe?), but the main ones I remember are substituting silicon for carbon, and ammonia for water. A quick Google search turned up sulfuric acid as another possible solvent. I'm not a chemist - is there a set of two gases based on sulfur that would fill the spots of oxygen and carbon dioxide in a respiration cycle if sulfuric acid were the solvent used by that form of life?

Deceptive headlines

[prakslash]

This is a perfect example of how deceptive headlines get created.

Original paper title: "Two white dwarfs with oxygen-rich atmospheres"
The newspaper headline: "2 Earth-sized bodies with oxygen rich atmospheres found- but they're stars not planets"
Slashdot headline: "Two Earth-Sized Bodies With Oxygen-Rich Atmospheres"

The submitter could have simply stated "Two white dwarf stars with oxygen-rich atmospheres" but then who would have clicked further.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[prefec2]

Feel manipulated? Watch the news on TV or read a newspaper when you really want to be manipulated.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[Alsee]

In related news SETI Has Detected Intelligent Radio Signals From Space.

They are currently working on better methods to filter out the earth TV broadcasts being reflected back from the moon.

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Re:Deceptive headlines

[ozbird]

I prefer a chiropractor.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[Gerafix]

I don't see how TV broadcasts could be considered signs of intelligent life.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[AniVisual]

Pish, putting a spin on things is old news. If you own a NIV Bible, congrats, you already own a book where theologians twist the source material to censor embarrassing verses.

Take Songs 5:4 for example:

Young's Literal Version My beloved sent his hand from the net-work[probably something with threads], And my bowels were moved for him. New International Version My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. The Interpretation Read it yourself here.

It's like taking "You idiot, you aren't wearing a condom!" and publishing it as "Dear, your pen is uncapped." on the virtue that "pen is" remotely looks like "penis" which, when substituted, gives a meaning similar to the original.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[Alsee]

It was a Fox News with a ShamWow commercial.

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Re:Deceptive headlines

[Daniel Dvorkin]

the estimated masses are around one solar mass, which means they are no where near earth-sized

From the Wiki article: "[White dwarfs] are very dense; a white dwarf's mass is comparable to that of the Sun and its volume is comparable to that of the Earth."

Be very careful about calling other people stupid when you're about to say something demonstrably false.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[ericbg05]

The radius is not explicitly stated in the paper, and the estimated masses are around one solar mass, which means they are no where near earth-sized.

Wrong. WDs are *ridiculously* dense, with a rho of about 10^6 g/cm^3, so a 1M_sun WD has a volume of like 2*10^31 cubic meters, which means the radius is around 8000 kilometers. R_earth is about 6400 kilometers, so Earth is actually really useful to get an intuitive picture of how these guys look.

The cool thing about WDs is that they shrink in volume when you add mass. Which means they get denser the more mass you add. Even cooler is that lots of them are in a co-orbit with other stars in a binary system, and they steal mass from the other star, so it's not so strange to see WDs gaining mass and getting denser over time.

It turns out there is one special mass at which the electron degeneracy pressure holding the star up is not enough to fight the force of gravity pushing it inward. (This mass is about 1.4 times the mass of the sun, depending on whether the star is rotating.) At that point the thing collapses from the size of earth to about the size of a soccer ball in less than a second, generating one of the most spectacular explosions in nature. I mean this thing is blown apart at around 3% of the speed of light and is 5 billion times brighter than the sun.

This is called a "type Ia supernova" -- a pretty boring name for what is, technically speaking, the awesomest thing in the universe.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[trytoguess]

I watch the news on occasion. Problem is, this headline is on par with the worst sensationalism mass media has to offer.

Re:Deceptive headlines

[pavon]

Naw, dense would imply large amounts of muscle mass and little fat, so they can't be American :P

Re:Deceptive headlines

[h4rm0ny]

I prefer a chiropractor.

Try an osteopath - they've really studied their subject and are practically specialist doctors. Chiropractors are masseurs that like to take risks.

Re:bummer...

[palegray.net]

There's already one rule 34 response to your comment; I anticipate more are on the way.

white dwarfs not white dwarves

[AstroMatt]

"White dwarfs" is the proper plural form when talking about more than one white dwarf star.

Re:white dwarfs not white dwarves

[Anonymous Coward]

The real historical plural of dwarf is dwarrows. Dwarves is bad grammar, but is in common enough usage that it's pointless to argue. "Dwarfs" just makes you look illiterate, as if you spelled the plural of fish as "fishs."

The preference for Dwarves instead of Dwarfs is actually fairly recent. In the foreword for The Hobbit, Tolkein comments that in English the only correct pluralisation of Dwarf is Dwarfs, but that he uses Dwarves "only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged".

So either Dwarves or Dwarfs would be correct, as both have been in common usage in living memory, but Dwarrows wouldn't exactly count as modern English.

Re:white dwarfs not white dwarves

[Kjella]

No, astromatt's understanding of the rules of grammar is correct. Because "White Dwarf" refers to an entity unrelated to a "dwarf", it's pluralised as a proper noun (which generally ignores suffix manipulation). If you knew two people named "Dwarf", you wouldn't say "the two dwarves" (which would only be valid if Dwarf and Dwarf were very short and you were intentionally pointing it out), you'd say "the two Dwarfs".

I'm not a master of the finer nitpicks of the English language, but "white dwarf" is not a name - it's a class like being a star, pulsar, planet, asteroid, meteorite, comet or whatever. Try reading something like a Star Trek science report to yourself "Three pulars, two supernovas, two neutron stars and five white dwarves." No way are those "White Dwarf", "White Dwarf", "White Dwarf", "White Dwarf" and "White Dwarf" as in the "five White Dwarfs".

Re:white dwarfs not white dwarves

[siride]

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED12891

Re:Earth sized stars?

[mister_playboy]

Do you mean bigger? White dwarfs are all fairly close to the earth in size. They are still far more massive, however A white dwarf probably retains 70-80% of the mass of the original star... 5-7 solar masses in this case. These are apparently near the border area, not quite massive enough to crush the space out of their atoms and become a neutron star. A neutron star is way smaller... with a radius of 10km or less.

Re:nomenclature

[CarpetShark]

Shouldn't we call them blue dwarfs

That was the initial idea, but unfortunately there were already numerous related trademarks held by the porn industry.

Re:When We Finally Find Them

[Exception Duck]

Yes, this is causing a huge strain on news stories and an overall problem to humankind.
Please let us find new planets so the stories about false positives can stop.

Schwarzschild radius

[mangu]

At that point the thing collapses from the size of earth to about the size of a soccer ball in less than a second

Not quite so small, as the Schwarzschild radius of the sun is about 3 km.

Actually, it's believed that type 1A supernovae do not reach gravitational collapse, they explode in a runaway carbon fusion before reaching the Chandrasekar limit. It's type II supernovae that explode the way you mention.