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Kepler Spacecraft Finds System With Multiple Planets Transiting the Star
rhaas writes "NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star. They found two planets almost the size of Saturn, and possibly a third, small, very hot planet with a radius about 1.5 times that of Earth."
The exoplanets search is the most exciting thing in space exploration since the moon landings IMHO for one important reason: one day, a project like Kepler will find an Earth sized planet orbiting within a foreign star's habitable zone. It's the stated goal of the project, yes, but when it actually happens, things will be different.
Imagine what the day will be like when we find something like that. We'll know it's there, we'll know it's the right size and at the right distance from its star, but we'll know little else. We'll know that life very probably *could* exist there, but without getting much, much closer to it, we'd never know for sure.
And we're not talking about the extremely remote possibilities of microbial life on Mars, or some kind of funky aquatic life on Europa's hypothetical subsurface ocean, we're talking about plants and animals. Maybe even intelligent animals like us.
What could possibly be a better motivator for our society to start pushing the limits of propulsion technology again? If we had something *tangibly* interesting to explore in a relatively nearby star system, like the ones Kepler is exploring, we might just get that extra kick in our pants we need to start innovating again.
WWII motivated us to enter a brand new energy age with the development of atomic power and the perfection (I'll use that term loosely ;)) of rocketry. Would discovering a planet in another star system with a high degree of habitability give us the motivation we need to efficiently produce and harness antimatter or some other next-generation power source?
Yeah, I'm being all misty eyed here. Relativity is a pesky little fucker, among other issues. But I can't shake the feeling that we're an amazing species of innovators when properly motivated. And I just don't think exploring other star systems has captured our collective attention the way landing on the moon did.
I desperately want to see us that motivated again some day. And I think finding a reasonably high enough probability of habitability on a planet orbiting a foreign star would give us back what we let slip away from us in the 1970s.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Imagine how Pluto feels. You rotten, cruel bastards. Go on, rub it in why don't you?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's becoming more obvious that planetary systems are the norm, rather than the exception. As our ability to detect smaller companions increases, we'll nostalgically look back on the time when we were amazed that we detected planets at all (like the reports of "canali" on the surface of Mars).
At that point, we'll realize that our situation- and our solar system- is not some snowflake like miracle, but rather a portion of a larger pattern. I think that will be good for us (or some portion of us that does not rely on Specialty for validation).
The first? I thought, that the Solar system was the first.
But How Can I Profit From It?
That's an easy one
1. Find a Solar system with multiple planets transiting the star.
2. ???
3. ???
4. Profit!
Such a shot of perspective might help you profit in the knowledge that profit is really a pretty meaningless and petty pursuit....
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So that knowledge may profit you, is what you're saying? Awesome.
Dude, wtf! You're spamming Slashdot with ads for HANDBAGS? Are you high?
Change millenia for million of year. With current tech nearest solar system is 120.000 years away (250 K round trip). That is 4 something light year away. Since such system are likely much further away than 4.7 LY , then count a million years or more round trip. And before somebody serves me on "propulsion system will be better" you have no basis for this. The way the energy generation, and human space transportation are in forseeable future, it ain't even sure we will visit the NEAREST star system, maybe a robotic probe would.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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Why is this planetary system more confirmed than e.g. HD 10180 ?
The only limits in the 1800s were technological. Given enough development in stronger and lighter materials, escape velocity became possible.
The light of speed limit is an ultimate physical limit of the universe. The first hint of this limitation was found in 1887 and has been confirmed many times in many different ways. Simply put, given all the experimental data we have, if faster than light travel were possible time would be bidirectional; causality would be violated.
This does not mean FTL is absolutely impossible, maybe we will one day find a flaw in our current understanding of physics that will let us travel faster than light. However, the resultant implications would be so huge that travelling to distant stars would perhaps be one of the least interesting things to do with our new physics.
You forgot the "In Soviet Russia"...
I m affraid this not the first, since chillian European telesope (ESO) found the first planetary system on August 2010 the 24th :
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1035/
too late yankees !!
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Kepler Spacecraft Finds System With Multiple Planets Transiting the Star
Is there a special "Star" that I don't know about?
So what would Kepler see if a Ringworld happened to be on edge to us? (yes I know it's dynamically unstable).
Also, in the Ringworld Universe there was also a bunch of nearer orbiting structures that provided power and a day/night cycle. While Ringworld is unstable, these might not (think Kepler Rosette). Or perhaps some large structures in a planet's Trojan points.
What I'm getting at is that we might soon be able to detect passive artificial structures around other stars made by civilizations NOT MUCH MORE ADVANCED THAN OURS. The reason why "passive" is important is because instead of say, a radio beacon, such a structure when built could conceivably last for EONS with little maintenance. So even if the creators are long dead, durable easily detectable indicators will still exist.
And they could be (relatively) cheap! I'm thinking that planetary sized objects, while seemingly way beyond our technology, might not be completely in the realm of science fiction. Several "geo-engineering" proposals to defeat global warming involve the creation basically of solar shields spanning thousands of kilometers, placed in space between the earth and the sun. Who knows, if these were made of ultra-thin opaque sheets (like solar sails), they might be detectable by a device like the Kepler space telescope. Their close proximity to an earth sized object in "the goldilocks zone" would suggest strongly they were not a chance natural phenomenon.
So 1) I'm hoping the researchers have an open mind when looking through their data and 2) eventually the RAW data will be released so that anyone can pore through it!
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This is why I think the IAU messed up when they defined "planet". The worlds in our solar system should have been categorized in a much broader sense so that we could use the same framework for new and undiscovered solar systems.
Plus, why does Mercury (a flaming hot lifeless rock) get to be a planet but Titan (a world with a thick atmosphere and possibilities for life) doesn't? Which one is more interesting?
To give this find some perspective, here are a few details on Kepler-9.
Distance from Earth: 700~ parsecs (around 2000~ light years)
Orbital period of possible Earth-sized (1.5x) planet 9c: 1.6 days
If 9c isn't a planet, and is actually a binary companion to the star, this would be quite interesting, and strange, given its probable mass and composition.
So essentially, with Kepler, we can spot an orbiting body of a star that is 1.5x the size of Earth, with an orbiting period of 1.6 days, that is ~2000 light years away. Granted this was a transient path discovery, but the capabilty of Kepler has come through here, and we should all be excited. Our technology has really shown through here folks. Take a few seconds to recognize this new step in Astronomy.
source: NASA broadcast announcement from 8-26
The Slashdot summary, talking about the objects passing in front of their stars, got me to wondering:
* Is there any probability that there are stars out there whose planets orbit in a plane which is perpendicular to our line of view (that is, the planets would never cross in front of their star, from our point of view, because we are sort of looking at the their orbits top-down? It would seem that this is likely, seeing as their are stars which, from our point of view, are at every degree of latitude and longitude from the earth.
* Is there any sort of 'bias' which tends to cause stars in our galaxy to form their planetary orbits within a few degrees parallel to a common plane? (For example, perhaps most stars have spin which is parallel to the plane of the galactic disc of the Milky Way, because the galactic motion of the matter maybe pre-disposes matter to spin and orbit that way)?
* Can our current extra-solar planet searching activities detect planets which are in such perpendicular planes to our line of view?
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