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A Planet Literally Boils Under the Heat of Its Star
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have found what appears to be a planet so hot it's literally vaporizing, boiling away from the heat of its star. KIC 12557548b was found using the transit method, periodically blocking some light from its star as it orbits around. But the amount of light blocked changes every transit. Given it's less than a million miles from the surface of the star, astronomers interpret this (PDF) as the planet itself turning to vapor, and the expanding cloud of rock-laden gas is what's blocking the starlight. The planet is most likely somewhat bigger than Mercury, but losing 100,000 tons of matter every second it'll only be around another few hundred million years."
Not a good alpha site?
Seems like a good place to send all those Lawyer wannabe Astronauts.
Hey, it would be a good start.
I already purchased a lot there to build a vacation bungalow. How can I sue my space real estate agent?
"but losing 100,000 tons of matter every second it'll only be around another few hundred million years."
Is that 100,000 tons at Earth-normal gravity or at this much smaller planet's (although possibly denser?) gravity?
It's numbers like this that really make my head spin.
Yes, I get that planets are big items, and space is big and vast ... but I can't even begin to imagine the sheer amount of material we're talking about in even just a few hours, let alone the next "few hundred million years".
Anybody got a car analogy or something which might put these numbers into a little better perspective for those of us who don't work on scales like this?
I can't even begin to wrap my head around it ... a google search for one of the biggest things I could think of says that a Nimitz class aircraft carrier is about 101,000 tons. I saw one once, and it was utterly huge.
The idea of something that big boiling off every second for a few hundred million years makes my head hurt.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How do they come up with star names? Are they named after some Microsoft OS update.
If it was that close to begin with, how'd it coalesce into a planet in the first place? Either this planet has been spiraling in for eons, it's a victim of a collision, or the star has been getting warmer since planet formation.
Don't trust any concentration of power.
Where the hell did this come from? I agree a lot of baseless accusations flying around but what does this have to do with the parent post or the comment by Aeros? Even if Aeros was one of the many accounts you mention I don't see how it is relevant to the post about. I'm confused.
Anyone else got the planet Crematoria in it's mind?
The title of this article currently is "A Planet Literally Boils Under the Heat of Its Star".. It should probably say "A Planet that Literally Boils Under the Heat of Its Star".. To clarify that not every planet boils under the heat of it's star..
This space for rent, inquire within.
It didn't get first post so it was posted in the next best place, the first reply to first post. More easily seen than the second top-level post.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
And really, it applies not just to distances, but masses, speeds, etc. As a rule of thumb, if it even deserves being mentioned in astronomy, it's frikken mind-bogglingly big.
The Earth, for example, is 6x10^24 kg, so basically 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. Or about 600,000,000,000,000,000 Nimitzes.
Or more to the point of the planet being discussed here, they say it's a little bigger than Mercury, which in turn is 3.3x10^23 kg. I.e., 330,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
Yeah, that's the kind of numbers that astronomy is about. Well, not really. These are small planets. Now stars and black holes and galaxies, that's the real bread and butter. And you can pretty much stick the zero key down and go brew some coffee, if you want to write the weights for that.
And then come the distances, yes. Douglas Adams was certainly up to something there.
You know where in Men In Black, agent K says, "You want to stay away from that guy. He's, uh, he's grouchy. A three hour delay in customs after a trip for 17 trillion miles is gonna make anybody cranky." You'd think 17 trillion miles is half-way across the galaxy, right? Actually the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 25 trillion miles away. So that alien would have had to make a stop at some cosmic gas station in between, if he only had a 17 trillion miles trip.
It's things like these that... well, let's just say they seriously put the kibosh on most nerds "we should totally do some SF thing right now" scenarios. E.g., since we talk mass, there are all the "oh, let's terraform [insert planet]" stupidities. Yeah, I don't think any of those actually calculated how many trillions of tons of ice comets they'd have to divert into Mars to make oceans and whatever their fantasy scenario involves. (There are 1.4x10^18 tons of water on Earth for example.) Nor where they'd come from, nor what the energy budget for that would be.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This universe is the beta version; God had to rush it out because the PHB promised the customer a bunch of features that weren't in the original design. He'll work these bugs out when he has time, right after he finishes commenting all the code for the benefit of the next guy who works on the universe.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I strongly recommend reading the abstract, it's very descriptive and easy to understand I wish more abstracts were like that.
By the way, what's the deal with describing them simply as "astronomers"? Better than the all-too-often-used "scientists" I suppose, but wouldn't it be even nicer to write "a team of astronomers led by Saul Rappaport from M.I.T."? Scientists are people with names, and the more we use them the more we raise the status of pursuing a scientific career. Science needs more superstars!
Losing mass does not change the orbit unless the process of losing mass applies a net force on the planet. And it would only cause it to spiral inward if that net force was in the correct direction.
I would put all the planets in a egg carton like container and have a heating lamp on them at just the right temperature. I would have to remember to rotate them every 12 hours so people can get some sleep :3
If this planet were a hot car driving down the highway, the boiling mass would be about a 100 bacteria falling off it every second. And each and every one of them is of the very finest British manufacture.
I'm no rocket scientist so maybe I'm missing something here, but if a planet loses mass in this way it should not affect its orbit. Take as an example, lets say some supergiant transformer takes out his sword and slices the moon in half. Each half has 50% of the mass of the moon. That doesn't cause both pieces of the moon to plummet toward the sun.
(circular) orbit is the equilibrium reached when the gravitational pull toward an attractor is balanced by the inertial energy of the mass which is trying to move the object away from the attractor. Both have a linear relation to change of mass of the object in orbit, and the two contribute an opposite force, so if you change the mass, the object should remain in the same orbit. (if you lower the mass, you lower the gravitational attraction and lower the inertial energy)
This is the same reason astronauts don't get hurled off into space when they step out of their spacecraft. And the spacecraft also remains in the same orbit when the astronaut leaves it.
If you want to make something fall toward its attractor, you need to slow it down. That lowers its inertial energy without affecting the gravitational attraction. Or let it collide with a mass that does not have the same inertial vector. (increasing the mass attraction, without an equal increase in overall inertial energy)
I suppose another basic way to view an object in orbit is to view all the particles of the object as independently in the same orbit. Group them any way you want, they are still in the same orbit. Even if some of it turns from rock to gas. The gas remains in the same orbit along with the rock.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
That is my favorite part about astronomy. "We think there is a planet there because the star is somewhat blocked regularly" Maybe its just an alien in a space ship somewhere in-between Earth and that star, and every so often he sorta blocks out that star and giggles to himself about how crazy the Earthlings must be going thinking that there is a planet there.
"One can not truly appreciate Shakespeare until you have heard it in it's original Klingon" -Star Trek
Using telescopes to peer at super-hot stars stripping their companions usually gets you arrested.
Think of it like Huffman coding, except with spam.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I can't think of a polite way of saying this, so I'll just say "bollocks".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
i prefer to think it's being strip mined
You are aware that once our planet spun far faster and that far away moon practically skimmed the tree tops? Things change, the world we know as earth would have been unregonizable a few hundred million years ago, which for astronomy is yesterday.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I also hate 'mall utility vehicle' drivers. They are almost as lame as hybrid drivers.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The H2 is a chevy blazer with a different body, tires, and suspension. Like the H2 is a suburban. They share the same frame.
I know you're joking, but I can't help but think, "Wait. That wouldn't work. Unless his spaceship is absolutely tiny, he'd be too far away to realize that we've started looking for planets in this manner in the time it takes to for the light from our planet to reach him. At least for most of the stars involved."
If the mass is boiling away then it has to be in a spiral orbit and will intersect with the star soon.
Imagine a candy bar in orbit around a star. Now break that candy bar in half. Are the pieces going to fall into the sun suddenly?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'd have left it as a Zen rock garden. Sentient beings seem like an amusing hobby till you realize how boring and superfluous they are given that perfect omniscience means that you'd already know every action they would ever perform. Granted I suppose the rocks in the garden are no less predictable but hey, that's just me. I'm sure there are other gods that would get off on other kinks.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
A large quarry might extract 5 or 10 million tonnes annually. Lets say 10 million tonnes for ease of use.
That is about 10/52, meh call it 200,000 tonnes a week.
200,000/7 about 30,000 a day.
30,000/24 about 1200 an hour
1200/60 about 20 a minute
20/60 about 1/3 a second.
0.33 x 100,000 tonnes/sec = 33,000...
Sooooooo its like about 33,000 very large quarries digging up the planet.
No idea how many we have currently operating on Earth. Of course we aren't vaporizing it and ejecting into space either.
You know I just want to say that I'm really disappointed in just how close to their stars a lot of these exo-planets that have been found so far are. And it just seems to keep on getting worse. I mean - now they're boiling away for Pete's sake!! Isn't there something that astronomers can do to halt that kind of nonsense? I mean at this rate we'll never find another suitable planet to move to and then what happens to us?
>Imagine a candy bar in orbit around a star. Now break that candy bar in half. Are the pieces going to fall into the sun suddenly?
I take it that is either a rhetorical question or a potato.
And continuing on the meta-train, I should like to bring up the associations taking place in my brain upon reading the headline.
I doubt that many people would have taken "boil" metaphorically if the headline didn't point out it was literally boiling.
I mean, what would it entail for a planet to be boiling figuratively instead of literally?
Wouldn't that imply there was intelligent life on the planet, outraged because of the heat and drought or some other nasty thing their star might have wreaked upon them, presumably?
In that case, I think the news of there being an intelligent civilization out there would be the big news, not that they'd be pissed off about the weather. Or have I missed something?
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
From TFA, the reason why the gas was leaving the planet was because of it's small size. Presumably, the (similary gaseous) atmosphere of Earth doesn't float off into space because the gravity here is much higher.
Duh. The also cost about $15K more and still have _lame_ front axles. Never seen one on a trail, only in mall parking lots.
Unimogs are awesome though. Kind of pricy. Best thought of as Mercedes-Benz four wheel street legal tractors.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
don't believe this guy. i've seen the evidence and its strong. this is damage control - the only way these asses know how.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Is that a good fertiliser?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Rocks + infinity can be awsome to
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Getting demoted to dwarf planet. Pluto is absolutely furious, I tell you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No he didn't, he ignored it because it's irrelevant as it's nothing to do with gravity.
Even assuming it's strong enough to exert enough force to accelerate a planet, how the hell is it going to make it spiral inwards?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
http://xkcd.com/852/
Maybe as the surface area that's being pushed away decreases over time thereby decreasing the total force exerted such that it spirals inward slowly.
Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, and in takes you forward.
Unless you are suggesting that the planet can tack like a sail
We've already established that loss of mass doesn't cause gravity to spiral it inwards. A reduction of an outward force (which is tiny anyway) is not the same as a net inwards force.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Oh, I found a comic about this theory (more or less). http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/368.html
"One can not truly appreciate Shakespeare until you have heard it in it's original Klingon" -Star Trek