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Kepler Discovers 'Phantom' Exoplanet
astroengine writes "The Kepler space telescope has spotted an extra-solar planet with a very odd orbit. Sometimes Kepler-19b slows down by five minutes during its 9-day orbit. Other times it speeds up by five minutes. Johannes Kelper's laws of orbital dynamics never said a celestial body can arbitrarily speed up and slow down; another planetary body must therefore be gravitationally acting on Kepler-19b. Enter Kepler-19c, a world that hasn't been observed, but its gravitational effects have. This is an unprecedented discovery, one that could potentially be used in multi-planetary star systems to discover more 'phantom' worlds that would have otherwise gone unnoticed."
Sometimes our measurements were off by 5 minutes and sometimes they weren't.
Unprecedented? Isn't this pretty well the way we discover all extra-solar planets? Through star wobble? Unless we're lucky enough to line up for a full on occlusion?
I mean, I guess in this case it's "planet wobble". But FTFA: "Interestingly, planets in our solar system have been detected through a similar method."
So uh... unprecedented?
But can it find Uranus?
Unprecedented in that we're observing planet-wobble at 650 light-years.Resolution of that kind is sort of a big deal.
This is an unprecedented discovery
Er, no. Neptune and Pluto were both discovered because of the perturbations they caused of the orbit of Uranus.
SteveB
eh, Kepler has planetary laws of MOTION, dynamics are Newton's game...
Sounds very much like Saturn's moons Epimetheus and Janus, which interact and exchange orbits periodically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(moon)#Orbital_relationship_between_Epimetheus_and_Janus
Sounds very much like Saturn's moons Epimetheus and Janus, which interact and exchange orbits periodically. Wikipedia article
We'll colonize those planets too. We'll just build more space elevators.
+/- 5 minutes in a 9 day orbit is a huge variation. This almost has to be a binary planet system, or planet with a massive moon, or something similar. Enough gravitational force to slow or speed up a planet large enough that we can detect it by transit dimming of it's star 650 LY from Earth, that's either a really light planet, or it's got a massive companion orbiting it. The other possibility is that there is a dark star (white/brown dwarf) orbiting the same star, but we should be able to detect that wobble via doppler shift, so the companion moon/planet seems more likely.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
I hope this doesn't mean we'll hear more from those Nibiru folks.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
Maybe it isn't another planet. Maybe it's epicycles!
Evil people are out to get you.
"that's no moon"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First, read the summary. Then read the article. In this article you will see that we have found a planet orbiting a star 650 light years away. The fact that we are able to detect it at all is quite amazing. The advances in optic, the investment in space-based telescope, the ability to process the tons of data that this telescope have produced is plain astounding.
Then you have to factor in the optic advancement to see this planet directly. Then you realize just how freaking far science has come along. Run the numbers and this would be like studying a germ on the moon from an observatory from earth.
Now realize that you can not only see this planet, but you can study its motion with enough precision to notice a five minute variance in its motion. I don't even know what the analogy is here. It is beyond amazing and a testament to the scientific revolution we have witnessed over the past century or three.
Now go up and read the moronic posts above. A couple of twits argue about whether this is "unprecedented"... I'd love to see their resumes and what they have accomplished in their lives. A couple other idiots quote the same futurama episode. A couple aren't even that clever and make Uranus jokes.
Slashdot ain't what it used to be.
Though your sentiment is spot on, you could do with reading the summary yourself. Which part of "a world that hasn't been observed, but its gravitational effects have" sounds like an "optic advancement to see this planet directly"?
Thanks... AC, for contributing almost nothing of value. I agree, but still.
Take off every 'sig' !!
You seem to be remembering a different slashtdot than this AC...
and this same method was used over 150 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune
We still had to see the first planet to notice the orbit change to even guess that there is a second one out there. Try rereading things. You might pick up on what the other person is saying instead of popping in what you think he's saying. While in your head they may be the same thing, I guarantee you they are grammatically and semantically worlds apart from one another.
I don't think it was very much different back in '99 when I started browsing /. regularly. Maybe a little bit. And it's still the best out there. *shrug*
I was unclear on which planet I was referring to. I was referring to the first planet that is the known planet. You would have been able to realize this however, if you read another couple sentences where I talk about studying its motion to notice a five minute variance in motion.
Maybe the planet is slipping out of time because it is so far from the sun, this might explain the speed fluctuations. Perhaps there is an undiscovered solar shelf or drop off into a unknown time dome around our sun. Maybe there is a gravitational dust storm the planet travels through during each cycle. That could be unprecedented or maybe just, unanticipated. :)
They detect exoplanets by detecting tiny variations in star brightness and spectrum, which are caused by 1) the gravitational force of the exoplanet moving the star back and forth by a tiny amount, or 2) by the exoplanet blocking a part of the star's radiation. In order to get a statistically significant sample they have to observe the variations in radiation for multiple orbital period. In other words, they have to estimate the orbital period of the planet in order to detect it to begin with. Detecting 5-minute variations in the orbital period does not require any new observation methods.
"Slashdot ain't what it used to be."
On the contrary, Slashdot is exactly what it used to be.
They have a cloaking device which surrounds the entire planet, and are playing with a huge tractor beam.
It's not a planet. It's really a planetoid-sized space station leaving and re-entering orbit as they test their main engines.
Hmm...Intresting Disocvery