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Richest Planetary System Discovered With 7 Planets

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hope-they-have-roddenberries dept.

eldavojohn writes "The European Southern Observatory has announced that with the aid of their 190 HARPS measurements they have found the solar system with the most planets yet. Furthermore they claim 'This remarkable discovery also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research: the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets. Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the system.' The star is HD 10180, located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus, that boasts at least five planets (with two more expected) that have the equivalent of our own Titius–Bode law (their orbits follow a regular pattern). Their survey of stars also helped reinforce the correlation 'between the mass of a planetary system and the mass and chemical content of its host star. All very massive planetary systems are found around massive and metal-rich stars, while the four lowest-mass systems are found around lower-mass and metal-poor stars.' While we won't be making a 127 light-year journey anytime soon, the list of candidates for systems of interest grows longer."

19 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Richest? by Skyshadow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At seven planets, I'm reasonably sure this qualifies as the *second* richest planetary system we're aware of.

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    1. Re:Richest? by by+(1706743) · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, we've got a full two more planets than...oh wait...

      [tears up]

    2. Re:Richest? by DirePickle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All of that stuff's actually still here, except for the couple tons of metal that we sent to other planets.

    3. Re:Richest? by Beetjebrak · · Score: 4, Funny

      Our planet will shake us off easily and life will simply continue. There'll always be prokaryotes, cockroaches and RIAA lawyers to reboot evolution. This planet has actually seen a whole lot worse than what we're doing to it.

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    4. Re:Richest? by city · · Score: 5, Informative

      4 years ago today we lost her... anniversarys are hard.

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    5. Re:Richest? by Your.Master · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm right with you on basically everything else you said, but I'd still like to suggest that in modern usage, "its" should be used for the possessive. Yes, it breaks the "rule" that you put an apostrophe for the possessive. It's a standard and useful convention that resolves ambiguity, and I can see essentially no benefit to allowing "it's" for the possessive other than shutting up pretentious douches on forums - which, don't get me wrong, is a noble pursuit.

      I don't see why the rule of "its vs. it's" is any more baseless than the rule I'm inferring from your argument, "an s added to indicate the possessive is always [either allowed to or required] to have an apostrophe prepended". I have, at least, the OED backing me up on this.

      If you go back far enough, you can find very strange spelling, grammar, words, and even letters in the English language, but that doesn't have much bearing on what's easy to understand today.

      Also, insisting that flammable is not a word is a little odd. It's in lots of dictionaries, has latin roots semi-independent of the roots of inflammable, and came into English in the 19th century. Thus, it fits the prescriptivist view as well as the descriptivist one. Yes, inflammable is slightly older.

      I would enjoy a world very much where people stopped getting pissy about starting a sentence with "and" or "because", or splitting infinitives, or other things that are perfectly valid, commonly used, and don't hurt much of anything.

    6. Re:Richest? by suomynonAyletamitlU · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Her"? How one determines the gender of pet rock??

      Obviously you ask, asshole.

  2. Don't start planning that vacation just yet by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    For everyone here who has seen a lot of science fiction movies or lived in a trailer park where hillbilly meth-heads are routinely abducted by little green men, you might want to keep in mind that 127 light years is a very long way--an almost unimaginable distance, in fact. Most people have absolutely no appreciation for interstellar distances in general (when I was a wee lad, for example, I thought that the next solar system began right at the edge of our own). Let's put it this way: our fastest craft take about 9 years or so to go from the Earth to Pluto. At that same speed, it would take about 125,000 years to reach our next door neighbor (Proxima Centauri). And that's a mere 4.2 light years away (right in our cosmic back yard).

    So if you're planning a visit to this newly discovered system, you'd better pack for about a 4-million-year trip, one way.

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    1. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by pspahn · · Score: 4, Funny

      Did you extrapolate Moore's Law in that calculation, Captain Obvious?

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    2. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I will when Moore's Law applies to propulsion.

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    3. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by Gordonjcp · · Score: 3, Funny

      you might want to keep in mind that 127 light years is a very long way--an almost unimaginable distance, in fact

      I mean, you might think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts compared to space.

    4. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by darien.train · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm being snark-serious. What I wrote is clearly a fantasy that flaunts our current knowledge about how the universe works.

      I think it's only a matter of time before a lot of previously held ideas about light, matter, gravity, etc are going to have to be heavily rethought. The emergence principal has been rearing it's ugly head quite a bit recently in unexpected places and it's possible that the speed of light is an emergent property of the universe, not a hard or set one.

      It's just a hunch, not science, and will likely be wrong but who cares. It's a comment board and I can dream of all the quantum proxy robots I like!

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    5. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by pspahn · · Score: 4, Funny

      So you're basing a 4 million year trip on current propulsion technology? Seems pretty archaic to me. I certainly hope that in 4 million years enough new ideas would come out that our ideas of propulsion would be long obsolete.

      When I travel to distant systems, I plan on using some super cool technology that I will call Magnetic Focusing Expansion of Relative Space (MFERS for short). The idea is that we just generate a magnetic attraction between two distant points and turn the thing on. It should also have the benefit of shielding the craft from any inconvenient chunks of matter between A and B. Also, this is science. Science that I base entirely on facts that are not factual (yet). Propulsion is for cavemen. Think of this more like Propullsion.

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    6. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by DJRumpy · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's funny that you should mention that. They are already developing new propulsion systems that no longer require solid rocket fuel. This one for instance can shorten the trip to mars to just about 3 months:

      Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket

      http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/support/researching/aspl/index.html

      The Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory is developing a new type of rocket technology, the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket. This plasma rocket drive is not powered by conventional chemical reactions as todays rockets are, but by electrical energy that heats the propellant. The propellant is a plasma that reaches extreme temperatures 50,000 and above. Some scientists call this the fourth state of matter.

      This new type of technology could dramatically shorten human transit times between planets (about 3 months to Mars). Not only will planetary missions be fast, but the plasma drive will propel robotic cargo missions with very large payloads (more than 100 tons to Mars). Trip times and payloads are major concerns when using conventional rockets.

    7. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by Atryn · · Score: 4, Funny

      How can she already be there if she is just arriving?

      I hope someone can come up with a better example... she isn't "just arriving", the light is "just arriving". If you cannot separate one's "self" from the light representation thereof, have fun in front of the mirror!

      Kinda reminds me of the Joo Janta 200 Super Chromatic Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses...

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    8. Re:Don't start planning that vacation just yet by nacturation · · Score: 3, Funny

      As far as i remember, homo sapiens is about 200.000 years old.

      Wow, that's a damn good memory you have. What was it like back then?

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  3. 7 Planets? Pff... by spike2131 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I know of a solar system that has 8 planets. Used to have 9.

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  4. GTFO by Smelly+Jeffrey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "the solar system with the most planets yet"

    There is only one Sol. There can only be one System Sol. Anything else is a star system.

  5. Master of Orion 2 by DriedClexler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does anyone else remember playing Master of Orion, and finding a planet, where the info-box says "Ultra rich, heavy-G".

    I always thought that sounded like a nickname for a gangsta rapper.

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