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Potential 'Avatar' Gas Giant Exoplanet Discovered
Luminary Crush writes "A gas giant of approximately 1.5 Mj (Jupiter Mass) was discovered on October 22nd around the binary star system HD 176051B. It's not known with certainty which component of the binary system the planet is in orbit around at this point as both stars in HD 176051B are relatively Sol-sized (1.07 and .71 solar masses). Named 176051B b, this new exoplanet orbits within the star system's habitable zone, and if mapped onto our solar system with relative distance from our Sun it would place the large planet between Earth and Mars. While it's unlikely that such a gas giant could host life as we know it (though it's hypothesized), the location of the big planet opens up the intriguing idea of the realization of some of science fiction's famously habitable moons, Pandora and Endor. Look no further than our own solar system to see moons with the potential ingredients for life — just add heat."
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Estimated time of arrival, Mr. Data?
So, it's a much farther distance (50 ly), has a binary system (instead of a triple system), and the planet is bigger than Jupiter (instead of smaller).
How is this related to Polyphemus from Avatar more, than, say, Bespin? ... come to think of it, both Avatar and this discovery are both overhyped. Objection withdrawn.
Let's go mine the #$@! outta it.
What size does a planet have to be to become a star? Is it 3 x Jupiter?
http://exoplanet.hanno-rein.de/system.php?hash=b28275bb82292a545b8f5cf2aef4b2f9 woot a new scientific discovery for AC
1.5 Jupiter Masses = 2.8479 * 10^27 kg, in case anyone was wondering.
Navi and Ewoks in the same planetary system. That's some really disturbing fan and slash fiction.
Look no further than our own solar system to see moons with the potential ingredients for life -- just add heat.
That's a rather big "just", since gas giants require cold to form. They're made of hydrogen and helium, which simply doesn't "stick" to a small proto-planet if the temperature is anywhere near the melting point of water. Of course, you could heat the environment of an already-existing gas giant, but how would that happen?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
So if we launch all of our nukes now, how long would they take to get there? Goddamn furries.
If intelligent life evolved out of a moon ecosystem where the main source of heat was tectonic stress, and the main liquid was methane or ammonia, you can bet they'd kick our ass.
-- thinkyhead software and media
The Cosmos Series had a very good explanation of floaters and sinkers and some predators etc... /huh huh huh floaters.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
At least some of us might get a quite decent image (puns, et al) - many nearby systems should be close enough for some good interferometer with a way of canceling-out the starshine; even JWST might give something not bad, for nearest systems, especially with some starshade added, flying in front of it in unison.
But yeah, people raised on too much on scifi travels will be disappointed either way...
One that hath name thou can not otter
About 50. However, there is a large overlap and the production of the matter matters nearly as much as the mass, so you can have brown dwarfs at 20 jupiters and massive planets at 60 or more Jupiters.
Note, if we get an efficient engine that can keep accelerating (no "idle flight" period), it would be 60-70 years for earth-based observers, but much shorter for the crew. The speed limit of 1c is relevant to surrounding universe, but from the spaceship crew standpoints, the engine power - acceleration - speed - distance - travel time relation behaves in mostly newtonian way. If they expend power needed to travel at 10c according to newtonian mechanics, it will take (in their perception) 1/10 the time of travel at 1c to get there.
Ok... Now I understand why we haven't traveled to the stars yet.
We must overestimate the power needed, so that we can underestimate the time required.
This is opposite from all engineering projects on earth, where the final design is underpowered and delayed.
Hot Jupiters. We have some that are in mercury-sized orbits.
Where do you and the OP get the idea that you need COLD to form a Jupiter? All you need is mass.
I am an author of the paper in which this discovery was reported. You can find a copy of the paper here.
While the planet probably is near the habitable zone, this isn't the first time a giant planet has been found in the habitable zone of a star, and while it could have moons, there isn't any reason to speculate more about this planet than any of the others.
However, this planet is important for two other reasons:
1. It was the first planet discovered using a technique called "astrometry", which is measuring the positions of stars in the sky, as the move up/down and left/right in reaction to a planet orbiting it. This technique has the potential to find earthlike planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars.
2. It is found in a binary system and the second star is close enough that its gravity would have impacted planet formation. The leading theory of planet formation, called "core accretion", requires millions of year for planets to form, as dust in a disk around the star collides together and clings electrostatically (similar to the way dustballs collect on a hardwood floor). Eventually the dustballs grow large enough to be considered rocks, those collide and grow bigger, etc. But the second star's gravity would cause the dust to be swept out of the system in just thousands of years, far too little time for core accretion to occur. Thus, we need a different mechanism to explain planet formation in this system. This isn't the only such binary, but it this study does offer more controlled statistics of how frequently such binaries host planets, and these facts combined show that some had to form in the binary itself---the chances of a binary interacting with another star (that originally hosted the planet), leading to an exchange where the binary picks up the star, are much too small to explain the high rate observed.
Also, here is another press story covering the discovery (by the way, stars have multiple names---don't be confused that this article calls it "HR 7162" and the other one refers to "HD 176051"---they really are the same system). The third figure on the right hand panel is particularly useful.
Any questions? I'll try to answer responses to this post.
It's not known with certainty which component of the binary system the planet is in orbit around at this point as both stars in HD 176051B are relatively Sol-sized (1.07 and .71 solar masses).
Orbits do not work that way. The planet is orbiting around the center of gravity of the binary star/planet system. Since this is a binary star, this very well might be a point in empty space.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
My understanding is that the moons of Jupiter are not human-habitable with any current technology on account of fierce charged particle radiation from the strong magnetic fields. Do I have this right, or does this only apply to Io, which is in one of the radiation belts?
I'm sure a bunch of hater scientists will discover there was a Fern Gully planet found 2 decades before.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
have unobtanium?
AccountKiller
This post is probably going to get modded as a troll... it's certanly got all the earmarks of it, but all I can say is that this is still my sincere belief on the matter. I see absolutely no point to the exercise to finding habitable exoplanets. At all.
What good does it do to know that habitable exoplanets are out there? Can we send people there? And even if we did, in the enormous time that it takes them to reach their destination, would the descendants of the original crew even be the sort of people who might actually want to engage in such a mission? What if, when they get there, they find out it's a bust? We've sentenced generations of people to death in the blacknesss of space, with absolutely *NO* means of ever getting back within their lifetime. We could hypothetically also just send a probe, but again, the sheer magnitude of time that would elapse before a probe actually reached the destination could make it unlikely that any people are actually still listening for the probe to send back any data.
As I see it, scouting around the galaxy for exoplanets that can possibly host life when we don't have the technology to send anything there within a time frame that is reasonable for the purposes of what would have to be just an experiment, is one of the hugest wastes of time and resources that I can imagine.
Now I've heard the arguments that living only on this planet, we *do* have all of our eggs in one basket, and it wouldn't take very much to wipe us out. These arguments are not wholly lost on me, but I can't see sending people to a place so far away that meaningful communication is not just impossible because of limitations on technology, but impossible because of physical constraints on the operation of the universe itself, is going to help matters... the time scales involved are so insanely large that it's unlikely in the extreme that anyone on earth around the time of its predicted arrival would even know or care if the vessel actually reached its destination at the scheduled time. We could not have any comfort that we might endure beyond a global catastrophe because there would be no way to ever know. That said, of course... it's not impossible for people to receive comfort from believing in things that aren't necessarily true, but that's not very scientifically valid is it? It's hardly any sort of real solution to the problem that we are likely to all be wiped out if we stay here when we subject parts of our population to even greater risks just by propelling them off this rock at the greatest velocities that are physically achievable by technology that we have with not even the slightest hope of ever returning.
Now that said, if we could find a way to extend productive and healthy human life to be at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger than how long we have it currently, well then, sending people to other stars might become a viable thing to do. Or, even more unlikely (IMO), if we find a way to break the speed limit that the universe has imposed on absolutely every single thing that exists, then I could see finding habitable exoplanets possibly being something of promise... and of hope. Until then, however, I'm afraid I really just don't see the point.
Okay... I'm done. Mod away.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Go figure ...
The galaxy is really, really, really big. There are lot's and lot's of stars. Really. There are a whole slew of them.
Finding as much interesting stuff as we possibly can now, will help tremendously when we finally have the technology to send probes in a reasonable time.
And developing new techniques for searching for interesting stuff is important as well.
If we listened to you, in 100 years or so when we can send something somewhere, we would just have to cross out fingers, close our eyes, and point somewhere in the sky when picking where to go.
What good does it do to know that habitable exoplanets are out there? Can we send people there? And even if we did ... (rest of depressing post)
Tiger got to hunt
Bird got to fly
Man got to sit and wonder - why, why, why?
Tiger got to sleep
Bird got to land
Man got to tell himself - he understand.
(Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I think humans just like to fantasize about the possibility of life somewhere far away because they know we can't verify it in our lifetimes. Nobody wants to hypothesize about life on a planet that we could go and check within 10 - 20 years and disprove. The truth is wouldn't it be wise to check our own solar system for life first?
I mean, we've glanced at our moon and Mars, the two most dead looking things in our solar system. But, we have a gas giant with moons, one with lots of water on it (Europa) in fact right here near Jupiter. Couldn't we, you know, fly over there and see if there are fish / whales / sea otters swimming around? Everyone sort of writes off our own solar system, but if you don't travel to and investigate our own planets and moons how can you know. Yet, you can suggest there is life light years away on another moon near a gas giant, where's the precedence? Why couldn't there also be that same life next to our own, if we're going to start writing fiction? Why should the massive distance matter? It just baffles me.
If it is that likely that there is meaningful life that many light years away, then let's just assume our own solar system is teeming with life and start investigating. It's easier than travelling light years.
I think the root of the problem is, if we start saying hey it's right here in our solar system let's go find it. Then, they don't find anything at all, everyone is depressed and gives up. But, if they say, he it's light years away, that's something to reach for in the long run. It keeps hope alive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavin ...I mean, in the litany of famous gas-giants, this one certainly rates. Not much else could get between the rebels and the first Death Star.