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13-Billion-Year-Old Alien Worlds Discovered
astroengine writes "Two exoplanets have been discovered by scientists at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy orbiting the star HIP 11952. But according to conventional thinking, these worlds shouldn't exist. You see, HIP 11952 is a 'metal-poor star and planetary formation is hindered around stars with low metallicity (PDF). This isn't the only thing; as metal-poor stars were the first stars to form when the Universe was very young, these two worlds also formed around the same time. They are therefore the most ancient exoplanets discovered to date."
How is this news? Sure its uncommon for these stars to have planets but its not impossible. HIP 13044 is a low Fe/H star (even lower than HIP 11952) with planets.
Nothing is "ageless".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Possibly they are captured rogue planets.
Except when the ladies ask you that, you say "My love for you".
You are welcome.
Well, they're only 375 light-years away, so I'd say that if they had managed to exist for 13 000 000 000 years, they likelihood of them disappearing in the last 375 is pretty low. My bet is on "are".
And the worms ate into his brain.
All they have to do is make one. One really good one.
I think there are simply too many things for us to be 100% on. That, to me, is exciting--it allows us to never run out of things to learn about. If we're wrong, we get to keep trying to find out why.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
I dunno. I'd vote Keith Richards.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
time is not an illusion at all, it is the increase in entropy of the structures of the visible universe, it is a non-conserved state function
It doesn't matter.
Point is that we now know that planets were formed at a very early stage of the universe.
As for the planets being metal poor, it isn't a surprise really, considering the age of the planets.
Let's put aside that for astronomers everything beyond helium is a "metal", we are talking about iron (Fe) and heavier elements.
Suns can only create elements up to iron in a fusion process, everything else is created in a (super) nova, and those were only starting at the beginning of the universe.
The real surprise here is that planets were formed without (or with few) heavy elements.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
I have read TFA on Slashdot and also the TFA on discovery
On both the title of TFA on Slashdot and on TFA at discovery, we are told that the star was formed 13-billion years ago
On TFA at discovery it was also mentioned that the star, HIP 11952, is 375 light years away
If the star is located in a very distant galaxy some 13-billion-light-years away, the star is already 13-billion-year old, or the star may be no more - but we still see the light from that star since the star light took 13-billion-years travelling time to reach planet Earth
But that star is located merely 375 light-years away - which means, the star, if the astronomers are correct, the star is 13-billion-year old !
As I am not an astronomer, nor very good in astrophysics, can someone help explain to me the following question:
Can a star really last for 13-billion year and not running out of fuel?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I am astounded by the amount of rhetoric and vitriol that surrounds astronomical discoveries. Whether or not they are correct, the truth boils down to: we don't have shit for current time observations of anything in the universe. I truly believe that we are on the right path, and models fit observation, but why get so skeptical about everything? By the time we all die, the universe will basically be in the same state. Let's enjoy the limits of our observation, explore and expand them, and then maybe one of our lineage will be able to explore it.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
Anonymous cowards are an illusion we use to make nonsense out of slashdot.
Actually, it's unknown what it was like before the big bang.
Like the parent said, time itself did not exist until the big bang, therefor, there is no "before" the big bang. There is no such thing as before time, just as there is no such thing as negative mass or negative distance.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Depends - if the planet is female I'll bet her birthdays stopped at 29. :D
They're only 375 light years away.
Not to snark at you, but Sol is estimated to be 4-5 billion years old and it's only 8 light-minutes away.
But you've raised a really good question...
Off to read up on it.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence
They can guesstimate the age of a star based on its light characteristics. Our current understanding is that stars tend to follow a set progression through their evolution, and by looking at the current characteristics of a star (mass, heat, spectral composition), they can guess roughly how old it is.
It's all guesswork, mind you, and it doesn't necessarily tell us that the planets themselves are as old as the star. They could be trapped planets from other solar systems that the stars came into contact with over the years, or even trapped proto-stars that never had enough mass to start fusion... current thinking is that the interstellar medium may have a lot of this type of planet.
not going to make a starship out of water
Why not? I'd welcome them ice-spaceship-travelling overlords. Extra points if it's ice-9.
Every end has half a stick.
Didn't get one thing: the article says the star is 13 billions yo, but it's 375 ly from our solar system.
I always have thought that distance meant age. Which other technique there is to tell a star's age?
Distance is... well, distance. The number of light years something is away means that we are looking at what happened that many years ago. In this case, what we see happened 375 years ago. It has nothing to do with the age of the object. However, if we see a galaxy 13 billion light years away, we know that the galaxy is 13 billion years old since nothing is that much older, provided it still exists. We don't really know as we would be seeing it as it existed 13 billion years ago. To see how it looks today, we'll have to wait another 13+ billion years and look at it again.
As for judging the age of a star, I'll take a stab at it, although IANAA. If I recall correctly, there are several methods used to judge the age of a star. We know by looking at what the star is composed of which developmental stage it is currently at. We know by its size and energy output how fast it is burning its fuel. So, if we see a large, bright, hydrogen star, we know that it is fairly young since large hydrogen stars don't last long. We can be more accurate by figuring out how fast it burns its fuel and how much it has left (helium to hydrogen ratio). If we see that it is composed mostly of helium, we know that it is in its second stage. We can judge by its size how long it was in its hydrogen stage before it fused it all to helium.
I have not RTFA, but I believe they are judging that this star was one of the first out of gate judging by how much metal it has in its core, meaning that it is very, very old.
Take with salt. Like I said, I'm no astrophysicist.
What I don't understand is how do the scientist know that these were not rogue planets, formed much later and then became trapped by the star's gravity. Just because a star has planets orbiting it, doesn't mean that those planets formed along with the star.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
not going to make a starship out of water or gases... so to even invade with starships, they have to already have found sources of metal...
Well, if they do make a starship out of gas, the fan suddenly becomes our ultimate weapon.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Time has an age, it is approx 13 billion years old.
Time and space were created at the moment of the Big Bang. Time didnt exist before that, so therefore it has an age.
13.75 +/- 0.11 billion years
(The same age as the universe)
Is position an illusion? No. Time is just position on an axis you can't understand.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
How old is time itself?
No older than the universe. In some cases much younger.
Without the geography of space, time doesn't exist.
We like to think of time as a constant linear, but it really isn't - it's a local phenomenon with large variations. We can say it takes billions of years for the light from the farthest distant galaxies to reach us, but if we were to ride that beam of light, it would only take an instant. If we consider the photons particles, they are very young, and yet as old as the universe.
Thought I just found a fellow creature, then I realized it was not saying "13-Billion-Year-Old Alien Discovered". Sigh.
time has a very concise and hard definition, much more so than this word "mind" you invoke with your vague and nebulous words. Reality is not an illusion; jump from the roof of a skyscraper to the street, and even though you convince yourself some other event is happening, you will die when from the sudden stop regardless. Reality trumps all, and time is a very real component of reality.
... And she was delighted. It's really natural for us to think that the universe is that old, and that our vision of it is like lag in an online game. But there is something utterly satisfying when you show this to someone who isn't that much into cosmic timetables and when you watch their reactions as they try to imagine the scale, and their faces when they realise just how meaningless this planet is.
News like this should really become mainstream. This kind of humbling, nihilistic conceptualisation of our lives and surroundings could, ironically, save mankind from whatever foolish suicide we'r preparing to ourselves.
time is not an illusion at all, it is the increase in entropy of the structures of the visible universe, it is a non-conserved state function
So, does time run backward in your freezer, and faster than normal around it?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Anonymous cowards are an illusion we use to make nonsense out of slashdot.
Slashdot is an illusion we use to make sense out of anonymous cowards.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They're only 375 light years away.
Maybe the light took the scenic route.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So do we say that these planets "are" orbiting HIP 11952, or that they "were" orbiting HIP 11952?
Never mind that this star is in our neighborhood, but you make the mistake of thinking of time as a universal (no pun intended) thing. When the light from a distant star hits us, the star does exist, whether the star is billions of light years away or not. It is meaningless to think that the time that the light traveled has passed, because it hasn't. If you were riding the photons from that star, only a moment would have passed for you.
If we were to go backto the faraway star at the speed of light, we would find it 2*distance older.
Yes, it's difficult to wrap one's head around, so we make up the comfortable lie of considering distant stars being older proportionally to the distance light and radio waves travel as seen from a fixed point. But that point doesn't exist. Time is always subjective, as long as the speed of light in vacuum is considered constant.
And if you thought that makes your head hurt, consider that space itself is expanding, so the distance to a far away star is longer than the distance the light has traveled...
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so.
Being stoned doesn't make you more insightful than anyone else. It just makes you stoned.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so.
Quitting time, infinitely so.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nothing is "ageless".
How old is time itself?
I don't think that's a well-formed question. It's like asking "how long is distance?".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
another idiom busted
While this discovery is very cool, it may be a very bad sign. One of the most plausible explanations for the Fermi paradox is that intelligent life almost always wipes itself out before it is able to engage in largescale space travel (as so-called Great Filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_filter. One of the other more satisfying explanations is that the sun is one of the first stars to have enough metal to plausibly form planets. That now seems to be less likely. There are other explanations, such as the low metal systems not having enough carbon for life to form and prosper, or that complex life is very rare. However, this discovery potentially removes one of the more plausible possible explanations, and thus makes the possibility of a Great Filter in our future to seem more likely. This is disturbing.
Time may not have passed for the photon, but time certainly has passed for that distant star.
Um, no. Not without a frame of reference that encompasses both the star and the distance the photon has traveled. The star itself has no such frame of reference.
In short, it's meaningless to say that time has passed at the star, because you can't compare time here to time there. We're constricted by the light cone.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity for more details.
Orbital dynamics and mr. Occam must be at odds today. Play with an N-body simulator and see how it goes. I don't think most people can claim any sort of common sense here unless they've been playing with one. It usually doesn't work the way one would expect. For example, one could naively think that gravity, as an attractive force, will cause eventual collapse if you start simulation with a random bunch of bodies having 0 relative velocity. To one's surprise, then, not only there will be no collapse, but a bunch of objects will get permanently ejected from such a system. Getting things cleanly orbiting one another in low-eccentricity orbits can be considered a lucky occurrence as well. That's what I remember from when I was in high school -- that's the first and last time I felt like coding up N-body (it's a pain -- naive algorithms don't work if you've not got a couple centuries to wait for the results), so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
time is not an illusion at all, it is the increase in entropy of the structures of the visible universe
"Increase" is over time so your definition of 'time' includes 'time'. As Fynman himself would say "you have cheated very badly". Entropy is said to be the reason why we can only travel forward in time, ie: it defines the "arrow of time" not time itself. Although it could just as easily be worded the other way around, ie: the arrow of time is why entrophy always increases.
Time, space and the fundemental forces are what I like to call "miracles", they are "a given" and (for now) we just have to accept they exist because the best we can do with our current level of understanding is describe how they behave.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It is difficult for a body not already in orbit around a star to be captured by it unless there is a third body or something else (dust cloud, etc.) nearby to take away some of the kinetic/potential energy involved. If there is no third body then by a conservation of energy argument -- the small body falls toward the star, faster as it gets closer then slingshots around and back into interstellar space. Even if there are "third bodies" around it is just as likely they will transfer energy to the interstellar visitor and send it out with more speed than it came in with. Similar thing happens with the solar system comets -- they are technically in orbit around the sun way, way out there but occasionally one gets perturbed and comes in close -- unless it gets further perturbed by a planet it will fly a practically parabolic trajectory and go right back out to the far edges of the solar system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe :
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has confirmed that the universe is flat with only a 0.5% margin of error.[1] Within the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) model, the presently most popular shape of the Universe found to fit observational data according to cosmologists is the infinite flat model,[2] while other FLRW models that fit the data include the Poincaré dodecahedral space[3][4] and the Picard horn.[5]
We can test for changing fundamental constant. IIRC, we have observed the decay of a shortlived (in the order of days) isotope in a distant supernova. We have confirmed that the half-life is the same as is observed now. Half-lifes are quite complex, being affected by most of the fundamental constants. Either the constants are nearly unchanged since these supernova exploded, or they have changed in a way to exactly cancel out the effects of each of them on the half-life. Furthermore, the Okla natural nuclear reactor has a distribution of daughter nuclei we would expect to find today. Again, either the fundamental constants are unchanged, or their change is fine-tuned to give the correct answer. Applying Occams razor, the fine-tuning explanation is out until we find evidence that supports it and not the unchanging natural constants hypothesis.
I always tell them "life without you is like a broken pencil!". If she's a Blackadder Fan she will understand :)
Stuffed up your nose in order to escape the army?
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
"But according to conventional thinking, these worlds shouldn't exist. You see, HIP 11952 is a 'metal-poor star and planetary formation is hindered around stars with low metallicity ."
Therefore - Jesus!
no, the refrigerator does work moving heat to the outside in time with some of that energy thereafter unavailable to do work, increasing the overall entropy of the universe even though causing a local decrease of entropy inside
And that folks, is the definition of a refrigerator here on Slashdot! Still wonder why you don't have any gfs? Seriously though, this is why I love /.
No. Pointless.
...wrapped in bacon
+1 Disagree