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Youngest Exoplanet Discovered
astroengine writes "We know that the planets in our solar system were born from a dusty disk surrounding the sun billions of years ago; wouldn't it be amazing if we could see another star system going through the birthing throes of this protoplanetary phase? Today, a team of astronomers using the awesome power of the twin 10-meter Keck Telescopes atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have announced just that. Meet "LkCa 15 b", the youngest proto(exo)planet ever observed."
Perhaps this is where SETI should be looking for life.
Not on the planet- but observing the planet.
Planet formation is bound to attract the interest of sentient life. Wouldn't be too unexpected if nearby there is sentient life that they have seen it too and have sent a probe.
If we had the technology- I bet we would send a probe there... so other sentient life might too.
Of course- if that probe is communicating back to the home-world, chances are any signal it sends back won't be pointing in our direction so we may not be able to intercept the communication anyway.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
On the scale of time, development of planet (into something habitable) is an extremely long process compared to the observer's lifetime. We get very little more than a miniscule timeslice of what things were for a a very brief moment. Couple that with the fact that we not even getting a current, realtime view of said planet I wonder how useful any of the data is going to be.
There are ways around such things, such as observing multiple planets at different stages of evolution and putting together the pieces. That is for example how we learn about the formation and evolution of star clusters, or the way stars evolve. You can't observe 1 star go through it's entire evolution, but there are lots of stars and you can piece it together. This is how much of astronomical science is typically done. We don't get it right first time every time either. That does not mean it is not worthwhile.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
FTFA: "LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder," said astronomer Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy.
WTF is 5 times younger? Does he mean 1/5 as old? At the moment the planet first started to form, was it infinitely times younger? You'd think a scientist would know better.