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Kepler Finds Bizarre Systems
RedEaredSlider writes "The Kepler Space Telescope has run across some truly bizarre solar systems. Among the candidates: a system with full-on planets orbiting in a Trojan configuration, one with planets that all orbit their planets in less than 10 days, and one in which resonances between small and large worlds essentially keep the thing together."
>one with planets that all orbit their planets in less than 10 days
Yeah, that is bizarre.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Any Klemperer rosettes?
planets orbiting in a Trojan configuration
See! I knew it would finally happen to those Mac guys who think they'll never get a ........
Oh, wait.
For KOI 500 which has small orbits, Kepler must have seen each planet cross the star 10-50 times each. What more confirmation do they need?
no astronomical observations required, it's US. plus, there's no where left to hide. see you at some of the many scheduled million baby play-dates. the bips will be unarmed, so no funny stuff.
We're going to find so many alternatives to what we thought was normal solar system behavior. Perhaps we should have named the spacecraft Kinsey instead of Kepler.
Have gnu, will travel.
Whedon was right? Hundreds of worlds?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_Firefly_planets_and_moons
A system with "planets that all orbit their planets". Now that's what I call truly bizarre.
blah blah" Douglas Adams
I was having trouble imagining the 8:6:4:3 resonance pattern, so I dug out this very cool visualisation: http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/WebGL/KOI-730.html (needs a WebGL-capable browser, for some reason FF 4 doesn't work though).
Yo Dawg, I heard you like orbits, so I put a planet on your planet so you can orbit while you orbit!
make you wonder if some of them might have been engineered? Let's survey those systems with SETI equipment and see if we can't pick up some text about advanced economics... we sure need some help in that area.
We are not sure if the Solar System is typical or not. With 1200 planet candidates so far and a possibility of 10x more in the next few years, kepler should build a statistical database of what is typical and atypical. They systematically watching a fixed region of space of 155K stars for planetary transits. This region of he galaxy does have a bias toward our type of Suns. And the technique is biased toward large, fast, close-in planets.
It seems like every press release about the Kepler mission is about how bizarre and unlikely the systems it discovers are. Since it never directly observes these systems, and since it infers the existence of these planets from various models and indirect observations, I'm starting to wonder if these models accurately reflect the realty of these systems.
It's getting to the point where the likelihood that our models are wrong is almost as believable as the likelihood that these systems exist as described. Perhaps there are some other factors in play here that could explain the observations in a simpler manner. (disclaimer: I am not a scientist)
10 days around our Sun:
2.43 million miles per hour
365 days around hour Sun:
66.6 thousand miles per hour
Purdy quick either way I'd say.
NASA, you guys have it pointed backwards.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
... one with planets that all orbit their planets in less than 10 days
Yo Dawg... I heard you like planets. So we put a planet in your planets so you can orbit while you are resonating!
have a nice day
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
For some reason I was reminded of Asimov's "Nightfall". It's sounding just a little less far-fetched now.
I think that we will find that all solar systems are strange, including our own. It appears that planetary formation is a fairly chaotic process.
The way I figure it, the more bizarre the better. We learn a lot more from the systems that challenge our conventional definitions than ones that tend to fit what we already think we know.
What good is the article without pictures? (Well, an artist's conception doesn't really count.)
Is there an award for this? Because someone's a strong contender...
TFA states "The Kepler Space Telescope observes stars to see if they show a planetary body transiting in front of them. Thus far it has discovered more than 1,200 planets and candidates. It has found the first evidence of a rocky body, and seen the first multi-planet systems."
Even the first ever detected planets were in a multi planet system (albeit around a pulsar, certainly not somewhere you'd necessarily expect to find intact planets) PSR B1257 and Gliese 581 was found to have six planets before Kepler was even launched.
Still a great telescope and a great project. Hopefully its results will get the out of mothballs.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
and one with worlds so tightly packed that one orbits its star in a single day.
Doesn't Mercury do that? I know it's something like 88 "Earth-days", but pretty sure it is only one Mercury-day.
I have a feeling advanced economics = no economics. At some point we will have to evolve beyond our petty selfishness and just start cooperating.
Where are all these IBTimes submissions coming from now? I can't recall any IBTimes references at all before a few months ago, now all of a sudden can't seem to go a day without seeing one. This seems like a deliberate planned campaign.
You can call them planetary systems or even star/stellar systems if you refer to their stars, but they are definitely not "solar" systems since they are... well... extrasolar!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Forget the horrible summary.
I set the comment slider to 2.5 (what the heck does that mean, anyway?). At this threshold, I'm supposed to see four comments. Instead, there's only one.
Can someone please fix this?
Yes, I know I'm off topic, but where is this on topic? I'm finding /. less readable with the new style, which breaks the usability of the site. Therefore, I just go to /. less frequently. :-(
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
That is that many revolutions of the galaxy since condensation. So any parental object or cloud may be long lost. Maybe not: astronomers are a clever bunch.
The Kepler statistics so far have constrained a "minimal radius" of orbit. There is a big decline below that. I presume the planets are either eroded by the super-hot corona, or tidally broken in too close an orbit.
I just checked my Bible, and there's nothing in there about any of this.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The post consists of one sentence with 53 words! You can't expect him to look at all of those words before posting!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I'm surprised this isn't getting more coverage. This is one of the biggest advancements in astronomy we've seen in years.
Given the indirectness of the method, I'm worried that these discoveries might someday go the way of the Martian Canals.
"one with planets that all orbit their planets"
My, that IS excitingly confusing news.
The idea of evolving past economics sounds like a nice idea, but I doubt it'll ever happen. Economics is, at its heart, all about the exchange of resources: You have something I want, I have something you want, so we make a trade, and right there's economics. So, unless someone comes up with some kind of infinite resource that can provide all needs to everyone, there will always be a need for exchange of some sort.
If the submitter is in the employ of IBTimes he should probably get a better grasp of the English language before posting any more stories for them.