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Kepler Finds Five More Exoplanets
Arvisp was one of several readers to send news of five new exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope. In addition to the new "hot Jupiters" — the easiest targets to find — Kepler's early data has turned up some oddities, including something that is too hot to be a planet and too small to be a star. And one of the exoplanets is so fluffy that "it has the density of Styrofoam." The real news is that Kepler works as designed, and the scientists running it are fully confident that it will find Earth-like planets in some star's habitable zone, if they are out there to be found. Here is NASA's press release.
Yay a new planet :)
Sure, finding habitable planets is cool. But what are they going to do once they've found one? Tick a box? Celebrate humanity? It seems like a waste of money to me. Really interesting stuff - but for what?
something that is too hot to be a planet and too small to be a star
And I'm guessing they've already ruled out the obvious?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
As they get more verified examples under their belts, I expect they'll get a bit bolder. I certainly hope so, anyway. Earth-sized planets will be hard to double-check (Hubble could do it, but nothing on the ground), and large outer planets can't be double-checked at all, since they just make one pass and the next could be decades away.
--Greg
The Clangers home world!
The one with the density of styrofoam actually is styrofoam. Thats the one I worked so hard on my sophomore year for Mr. Nixs earth science class.
It turned up missing and I got a D for the quarter. I actually don't need it anymore so you're welcome to use it as a planet or whatever.
I doubt it will sustain life, but it will hold a hatpin, which I suspended it from.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
aliens and other planets to some day be visited and I want it all now damnit.
Obviously the reason it makes headlines is that the question of how many human-habitable planets there are, and what kinds of properties they have, is tied to the question of whether anything vaguely like earth-like life exists elsewhere in the universe.
However a good deal of astronomers are also just interested in everything about the cosmos: what's out there, how does it work, how does it relate to other things, what kinds of variations are there, etc. From that perspective, this particular kind of thing, "exoplanet", is a class of far-away object we don't have a lot of examples of and can't give particularly confident accounts of (how and how often they form, their distribution, etc.). Even if there was no tie-in to human habitability, there are a number of astronomers interested in collecting more data on and clarifying our understanding of basically any class of "thing we don't yet know everything about".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Kepler? I thought he died back in the 1600s. He's still around, and still looking through telescopes?
Oh, I get it, this must be some new science thing. It was just poorly explained in the summary, which is usual for Slashdot. If they discover more planets, it's really going to screw up astrology (which Kepler studied intensively). Did NASA take these considerations into account?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yale uni has astr160 available Online. Professor Bayiln gives hot inner planets and black holes a good going over and folds them in with dark matter and dark energy to suggest whatever is cooking out there possibly ain't like noth'n we've been served before. It's a low maths, freshman course but doesn't shy away from anything. Professor Baylin is interesting, well spoken and easy to listen to. The production values on all the Yale courses are head and shoulders above that offered by mit and Berkeley, and, the Yale stuff comes with full html transcripts and added resources.
ideopath @ play
"...the scientists running it are fully confident that it will find Earth-like planets in some star's habitable zone"
Good to see that we're keeping a nice and closed mind about any lifeforms that might be outside the box. Just because we're so stuck on the definition of life that works here on our planet doesn't mean we won't find a lifeform that completely redefines "habitable zone".
Play more games.
Didn't he die on CSI?
IIRC the density of the planet is not the same throughout. If that is the case, the comparison is pretty misleading. It could very well be a rocy core with a very thick layer of some light gas.
Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
"....if they are out there to be found." They are out there whether we can find them or not. What I find really strange is why just prior to the fist exoplanet being discovered that scientists bothered debating the existence of exoplanets in the first place.
Now we might actually have a chance of finding intelligent life in the universe!
And if we can get them to come to Earth, we could even have intelligent life on Earth!
wake up and hold your nose
--Greg
They say they know it is hotter than the star because the light curve dips more during occultation than during transit, but how do they know which is which other than by which dips most?
Wait... I guess I see how they *might* be doing it.
But it won't work for an object hotter than the primary. Hmmm.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
A long time in the future, from a George Carlin far, far away on the planet Liked-Their-Coffee-Way-Too-Much
A galactic nuclear waste dump. Well it was, until an alien race known as the Iraliens reprocessed it into the largest nuclear bomb ever.
Just to throw this out there: there are already some known reasonably Earth-like planets out there. Here's the best one. Of course, so far there aren't that many...
I had no idea his telescope was that good, or that zombie Kepler was still doing astronomy after all this time. Also impressive is ... oh, wait a sec.
You see...we're all in a big Christmas tree,and...Nobel Laureate,Al Gore.
Somehow, you knew that there was a planet "just for girls"...
Remember the future...
amazing for a guy who's been dead for 380 years!
"The real news is that Kepler works as designed, and the scientists running it are fully confident that it will find Earth-like planets in some star's habitable zone..." ...whether those planets are there or not.
In the future could we mine this planet for packing material?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Quoting wikipedia:
Jupiter brain
A Jupiter brain is a theoretical computing megastructure the size of a planet. Unlike a matrioshka brain, a Jupiter brain is optimized for minimum signal propagation delay, and so has a compact structure. Power generation and heat dissipation are formidable concerns for a Jupiter brain implementation.
While a rigid solid object the size and mass of a rocky planet or gas giant could not be built using any currently known material, such a structure could be built as a low-density lattice with a mass comparable to a large moon or a small rocky planet but a far larger volume, or as a solid but non-rigid structure with the mass and density of a planet (as long as the internal heat gradient is carefully controlled to prevent convection).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain