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Giant Planet Nine Times the Mass of Jupiter Found
cremeglace writes "In the late 1990s, astronomers noticed a distinct warp in the disk of dust and gas orbiting a young star some 60 light-years from Earth. Now, using new analytical tools, researchers have discovered a giant planet lurking within the dusty haze. About nine times as massive as Jupiter and composed mainly of gas, the planet is only a few million years old, proving that such enormous planetary bodies can form rapidly."
What's amazing about this is that the images taken of the star clearly show the planet first on one side of the star, and then the other, several years later.
Great, they rebuilt the Death Star a second time and now we found it.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
So that's about twice the size of Al Gore.
Ok, IANAA (*not an astronomer) but what's amazing about the planet on one side of the star and then the other several years later? Don't most planets orbit stars at varying rates ("years" to us earthlings)? I'm confused by the fact that it's amazing for a large planet to be orbiting its star.
FWIW, mass isn't the story here; we know of hundreds of planets in that mass range. I would say the story is that two images taken a few years apart show the planet's motion, and that Beta Pic, the parent star, was the first to have a disk seen around it back in the 1980s. This planet explains the warp and other features in the disk, too, that have been known for years! I wrote about this on my Bad Astronomy blog.
*** Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer http://www.badastronomy.com
I thought that the theory was that if Jupiter was just a little bit bigger, it would have turned into a star (brown dwarf?).
How does the discovery of a planet 9 times the mass of jupiter affect that theory? Is it smaller in diameter but denser?
I couldn't help but notice the astrophysicist's last name: Lagrange. Is she related to Joseph-Louis?
The universe is a pretty big place, or so I have been told. Undoubtedly if you look long enough you will find entities that challenge your preconceived label or definition of what something "IS". In a universal sense, everything is in flux, so all we are really doing is classification of temporal slices that we can deal with in our limited capacity. At exactly what point does a X become a Y? Considering the time frame being measured is so long, and our perspective so short, it becomes a point of debate, depending on what you call one thing in terms of the other.
When do we invade?
That's about the mass of yo momma!!
I had an obligation to this comment - sorry. :(
It's a shame the earth is so puny and small - the aliens will never find us!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This mass of this gas giant still isn't enough to get anywhere near minimum star size. Gas giants need to be ~8 times as massive as this porker to even get into the brown dwarf range. Quite amazing when you think about it.
People at NASA must have already started looking for water, life on this planet. Wait for a few days, someone out there must have already set a timeline for posting such news on Slashdot.
Anybody know why they've stopped using numbers for planetary designation? IIRC, stellar companions were supposed to use letter designations (Alpha Centauri A, B, C). Planets were supposed to be designated by their parent star and orbit number, so Earth = Sol III. Moons were designated by parent planet and orbit number, so Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto become Jupiter I, II, III, IV.
So why is this planet called Pictoris b instead of Pictoris I? Are Jupiter-mass planets now considered brown dwarfs?