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Nearby Star May Have More Planets Than Our Solar System

Posted by Unknown on from the told-you-space-lizards-were-real dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "HD 10180 is a near-twin of the Sun about 130 light years away. It's known to have at least six planets orbiting it, but a new analysis of the data shows clear indications of three more, for a total of nine! This means HD 10180 has more planets than our solar system. And whether you think Pluto is a planet or not, all nine of these aliens worlds have masses larger than Earth's, putting them firmly in the 'planet' category."

102 comments

  1. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Wowee wow WOW!

    1. Re:Wow by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2

      Look little buddy. I made this contraption to measure planets around nearby stars. I call it the Star Gazer 3000....

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    2. Re:Wow by Ofloo · · Score: 1

      Exactly what I was thinking, now quit wasting time, lets go and steal a planet, so we got more.

  2. Yes, but... by mmullings · · Score: 3, Informative

    So, how many of you saw HD 1080i

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    1. Re:Yes, but... by pushing-robot · · Score: 3, Funny

      Researchers claim that the increased number of planets makes this star far more interesting than its companion, HD 7120.

      However, it takes sophisticated equipment to detect the additional planets; most amateur astronomers can't see the difference with their smaller telescopes.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    2. Re:Yes, but... by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Funny

      HD 1080i has only half the planets of HD 10180, it just looks the same as it's an interlacing solar system.

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    3. Re:Yes, but... by gstrickler · · Score: 2

      However, most interstellar travel only goes to HD 7120, getting service to HD 10180 is much more rare.

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      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    4. Re:Yes, but... by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Funny

      So, how many of you saw HD 1080i

      Sorry, my telescope only does 720p.

      I'll have enough saved to upgrade in a month or two, though.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    5. Re:Yes, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      COME ON ALREADY, GIVE ME MY HD 4K, WITH MORE PLANETS THAN YOUR MOM HAS BOYFRIENDS.

      <Insert anecdote about my IBM T221, which is 10 years old and blows away every other monitor ever, and conspiracy theory about how the TV industry is deliberately running a slow upgrade treadmill to make everyone buy one at every step...>

  3. Then we must attack! by stevegee58 · · Score: 2

    We cannot stand by and allow this "planet gap" to continue! Earthlings unite!

    1. Re:Then we must attack! by blacklemon67 · · Score: 1

      Wait, I have a plan *stands up* MEIN ASTRONOMER! I CAN WALK!

    2. Re:Then we must attack! by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

      So we are going to 'liberate' one their planets? Count me in

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    3. Re:Then we must attack! by jamstar7 · · Score: 1

      ... und ve now haff zhe source of zhe 'alien hand sysndrom'. Mein Leader, ve MUST ATTACK!!

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    4. Re:Then we must attack! by Randle_Revar · · Score: 1

      No plant gap, the Sol system has 13 planets, this other one seems to only have 9

      --
      Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
    5. Re:Then we must attack! by formfeed · · Score: 2

      We cannot stand by and allow this "planet gap" to continue! Earthlings unite!

      We once had nine planets too. Till some @*&! just had to kill Pluto.

    6. Re:Then we must attack! by stevegee58 · · Score: 1

      Yes, some puto killed Pluto.

    7. Re:Then we must attack! by formfeed · · Score: 1

      .. and now claims that "it had it coming"

  4. I have Planet Envy by trout007 · · Score: 2

    Maybe we can let NDT take a look and demote some?

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  5. So it's finally come down to this... by mwvdlee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Planet envy

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  6. mass? by Pieroxy · · Score: 2

    I thought Pluto was 'degraded' of its planet status because it wasn't orbiting the sun in the same plane as the other planets, not because of its mass...

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    1. Re:mass? by meglon · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's because it hasn't cleared it's neighborhood of other objects (not including it's moons). Pluto is basically one of the largest objects in a debris disk. Had it accreted that disk, we'd still call it to planet.

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    2. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not exactly, but yeah, mass is not the determining factor to whether a stellar body is a planet or not. It is more about the orbit.

    3. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The current IAU definition is (c/o Wikipedia)

      The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies in our Solar System, except satellites, be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
      (1) A "planet"[1] is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
      (2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape[2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
      (3) All other objects[3], except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".
      Footnotes:
      1 The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
      2 An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either "dwarf planet" and other categories.
      3 These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.
      The IAU further resolves:
      Pluto is a "dwarf planet" by the above definition and is recognised as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects.

      Pluto fails because it hasn't cleared its orbit.

      Many people don't like the definition for many reasons. Among them, that what constitutes a "clear" orbit is not specified and is arbitrary (no planet has an orbit 100% free of other objects), that the point of 'hydrostatic equilibrium' is also unspecified and arbitrary, and that it only applies to the Solar System ("The Sun" is in there).

    4. Re:mass? by avonhungen · · Score: 1

      I think most folks would agree it fails 1b as well

    5. Re:mass? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

      Many people don't like the definition for many reasons. Among them, that what constitutes a "clear" orbit is not specified and is arbitrary (no planet has an orbit 100% free of other objects), that the point of 'hydrostatic equilibrium' is also unspecified and arbitrary, and that it only applies to the Solar System ("The Sun" is in there).

      Those people ignore that there's a five order of magnitude difference

      between the least of the planets is, versus the greatest of the dwarf planets.

      The line between Europe and Asia is arbitrary. The line between Eurasia and the Americas is absolutely not -- you could draw the line with a brush a thousand miles wide. The situation in our solar system is the latter case.

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    6. Re:mass? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2

      Not really; as far as we can tell Pluto is roughly spherical, and has sufficient mass to reach hydrostatic equilibrium.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
    7. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem isn't how fine the line is, the problem is that it's entirely arbitrary. People don't like arbitrary definitions in science.

    8. Re:mass? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 0

      There's nothing arbitrary about a 5-orders-of-magnitude difference in gravitational dominance. It's an obvious difference between objects in our solar system that should be acknowledged. Ignoring it would be stupid.

      "People" don't like that Pluto got demoted; their objections to the definition are reverse-engineered from that emotional fact, as evidenced by not even trying to understand the physical reality that informs it.

      Well guess what, Pluto fans? You're not much of a Pluto fan if your love is based around it being technically called a planet. The object is still just as awesome as it used to be. The only thing that changed is our understanding of its place in the solar system.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    9. Re:mass? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1

      Pluto fails because it hasn't cleared its orbit.

      So get in there and clean your room, or you'll never amount to anything!

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    10. Re:mass? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      Not really; as far as we can tell Pluto is roughly spherical, and has sufficient mass to reach hydrostatic equilibrium.

      So are my neighbors. In addition they've cleared a debris field that encompasses 'the neighborhood' (McDonald's, KFC, Wendy's and both grocery stores).

      Should i report them to the IAU?

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    11. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But in that sense the definition isn't arbitrary: Pluto and Mars are clearly in a different category. Of course you could argue that all names arbitrary and that the current current nomenclature is as arbitrary as calling them xulphydsfs and wchmfups instead of planets and dwarf planets, but that shouldn't stop us because that would preclude all communication and hence science.

    12. Re:mass? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

      Well in contrast to bodies in space, their inability to clear their debris field is most likely a direct consequence of their great mass. So calling them "dwarf humans" would be highly inaccurate.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    13. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Arbitrary means that the line has been drawn at a certain point because... we decided to draw the line at that point. There's no "physical reality" there, it's just a certain terminology that we've decided feels right. That type of definition makes some people uncomfortable. And how do we apply it to other star systems, or star systems in different stages of development?

      And I don't think all of the people who have issues with the definition are "pluto fans". That's an unfair characterization. I can understand the complaints, and I certainly don't care about the the little rock any more than any other trans-neptunian object.

    14. Re:mass? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Arbitrary means that the line has been drawn at a certain point because... we decided to draw the line at that point.

      Well they didn't draw the line at a certain point because they didn't have to. The extant gap between bodies' orbit-clearing ability was already there and ridiculously huge. It's no more arbitrary than the distinction between the Americas and Eurasia. You might not be able to exactly where one begins and the other ends, but you don't have to because there's a gigantic gap where neither of them are.

      Complaining "Why did you pick exactly that point?" when no point was picked, the 5-order-of-magnitude gap makes such a thing unnecessary, is missing the point.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    15. Re:mass? by Randle_Revar · · Score: 1

      The anti-Plutites are absurd, even as they deny it is a planet, they simultaneously admit it is, by calling a dwarf planet. A dwarf mammoth is still a mammoth, after all.

      --
      Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
    16. Re:mass? by Surt · · Score: 1

      I don't like it because the IAU aren't the most qualified scientific organization to construct a definition.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    17. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But again, that might not work for extra-solar star systems.

      I use the dwarf planet / planet distinction, don't get me wrong. I also like dividing the bodies into 'region'-based categories. Inner planets, inner dwarf planets (asteroid belt planetoids), gas giants, ice dwarfs.

    18. Re:mass? by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      The lines between Asia and Africa or North and South America, would be a better comparison. There was a land connection before the canals, but so much smaller of a land connection than between Europe and Asia that it becomes obvious to draw a distinction.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    19. Re:mass? by dissy · · Score: 1

      Yeay, it's car analogy time!

      So imagine a new rule is passed for a particular road which that states "Only motorized vehicles of car size or larger are permitted"

      While the rule of "motorized" is arbitrarily drawn, arguing pluto is still a planet is akin to arguing that your roller skates should be allowed because they both have wheels and the human body is a motor.

      You then follow by presenting evidence your roller skates should be labeled a motor vehicle because they are technically more like a jeep, and the line between a jeep and a car is so small as to not be worth mentioning... All the while not realizing the scale of difference between roller skates, and either a car or a jeep.

    20. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Note that Pluto's debris disk, the Kuiper belt, overlaps the orbit of Neptune, which is about 10000 times as big as Pluto. We'd say that Neptune accreted Pluto, not the other way around.

    21. Re:mass? by mister_playboy · · Score: 1

      The amount of mass needed to self-round is far below the amount possessed by Pluto.

      Saturn's moon Mimas would be our best cutoff example found.

      --
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    22. Re:mass? by mister_playboy · · Score: 2

      "People" don't like that Pluto got demoted; their objections to the definition are reverse-engineered from that emotional fact, as evidenced by not even trying to understand the physical reality that informs it.

      Indeed. Not only is Pluto no longer a plant, it no longer can claim Charon as its moon. Pluto and Charon orbit a common center of mass outside of both bodies, making them a binary planet with a further two (or possibly more) small moons.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    23. Re:mass? by arth1 · · Score: 1

      But in that sense the definition isn't arbitrary: Pluto and Mars are clearly in a different category.

      Different from the rest of the solar system? Yes. Neither Pluto nor Mars clears its own orbit. Phobos, Deimos, Nix and Hydra are good evidence of that - they're captured debris that wouldn't have been there in the first place if the orbit had been cleaned.

      I think a more reasonable definition is what a passing alien would see. In which case the answer would likely be four or six planets. Two gas giants, two ice giants, and perhaps two rocks. The rest is various smaller debris, which includes satellites and smaller objects like Mercury, Ceres, Mars and Pluto.

    24. Re:mass? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      Yes, there is a 5-order-of-magnitude gap in our solar system, but there are other systems, and they may have celestial bodies that fall within that gap, so clearer terms might be useful.

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    25. Re:mass? by Mal-2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, there is a 5-order-of-magnitude gap in our solar system, but there are other systems, and they may have celestial bodies that fall within that gap, so clearer terms might be useful.

      Since we don't yet know the composition of these other systems (though I think most would grant they should exist), shouldn't the defining be similarly deferred? Make the definition as useful as it needs to be now, tighten it up later when it's clearly inadequate. It's an imperfect process, but it worked before and it will work again (Pluto controversy notwithstanding). "Planet" is a name for a class of objects, and perhaps overly broad, but right now it usefully defines what we know. When we know more, we'll muck with the definition to fit.

      --
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    26. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ya know, sometimes someone has to draw an arbitrary point to start from...it may get refined in future but humans making arbitrary distinctions in a field as young as planetology is perfectly fine to this scientist...in fact until all the recent IAU kerfuffle, even the definition of a planet was relatively arbitrary...(this is a planet and that isn't) etc

    27. Re:mass? by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Well they also need to have celestial bodies, each to his own but I wouldn't describe those as heavenly...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    28. Re:mass? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (a) is in orbit around the Sun - I think this disqualifies the newly found planets from having that title.

    29. Re:mass? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

      But again, that might not work for extra-solar star systems.

      That's why limiting the definition to our solar system is actually a feature. :)

      I use the dwarf planet / planet distinction, don't get me wrong. I also like dividing the bodies into 'region'-based categories. Inner planets, inner dwarf planets (asteroid belt planetoids), gas giants, ice dwarfs.

      Which is great. As Neil Tyson said in an interview once, to him the important thing wasn't whether you called something a planet, it was what the properties of the object were. You have a big table of the objects and their properties, and if what you're interested in is icy bodies that have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium but not cleared their orbits, then you get a set of bodies that match that. And so on.

      To me personally, I don't care about the word "planet" or "dwarf planet". I don't care what you call these things. I just care that we acknowledge extant differences between them -- such as that there are 8 objects orbiting the sun that have the ability to clean up their orbits of the vast majority of debris, and the rest which cannot even come close.

      Separating Pluto from those 8 bodies isn't arbitrary. Neither is wanting to include it with them. The difference is that the latter is based on history and nostalgia, the former on science.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  7. But... but.... by halivar · · Score: 1

    ...but [i]we[/i] have nine planets [i]too[/i]!

    Justice for Pluto!

    1. Re:But... but.... by halivar · · Score: 1

      Damn those bb forums and their tags, and damn those previews for letting me click through them without retyping the whole message!

    2. Re:But... but.... by Randle_Revar · · Score: 1

      We also have Ceres, Eris, Makemake and whatever the other one is called, Haumea or something. And maybe Charon, if you roll that way.

      --
      Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
  8. We've Got This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Between Tyche and Planet X, I think we can win!

  9. are they all in the habitable zone? by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 2

    Could this be the place we escape to when the earth is uninhabitable? Will we live in a space western?

    1. Re:are they all in the habitable zone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No.
      If the star is larger than our sun, and they're in an orbit closer than mars to our sun, they likely aren't in a habitable zone at all.
      Maybe the furthest out, but the size measurements make it unlikely to support life at that distance.

    2. Re:are they all in the habitable zone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I think the formula for creating & perpetuating "life" is (in part) a function of star-radiation/planetary-gravity, within a certain range. You can be a little closer and a little smaller, or a lot further & a lot larger, than Earth. We are kinda near the inner limit, with our mass. I mean, it's just a theory...

    3. Re:are they all in the habitable zone? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2

      Could this be the place we escape to when the earth is uninhabitable? Will we live in a space western?

      No, it's the place prepared for our afterlife.

      If you're good, you get to float around the clouds of the gas giants playing a harp. If you're bad, you spend all eternity assembling smartphones on one of the scorching inner planets.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  10. HD 10180 Nearby? by aslvstr · · Score: 2

    When did 130 ly become nearby? Did someone invent a FTL drive while I wasn't paying attention?

    1. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by Grayhand · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When did 130 ly become nearby? Did someone invent a FTL drive while I wasn't paying attention?

      Light coming from it is only a 130 years old not millions or billions of years old. I think the general unspoken idea of nearby is that they may still have the same technology if there were intelligent life that they did a 130 years ago so there's the potential for contact if a civilization was detected. There is a likely window of a few hundred years to a few thousand years where contact would be possible. There is no set standard for nearby but I think that would be the closest I could come, any star with the potential for contact. 130 light years is definitely in that range and with multiple large planets it'd be a solid candidate for life.

    2. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Around the time that 130 became less than 100 million.

      From : http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/virgo.html

            Number of stars within 100 million light years = 200 trillion

    3. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's always been nearby. Nearby is a relative term. Whether your scale is the galaxy, the local galactic super cluster, or the entire universe, 130 light years away is practically right on top of us. The top of the redwood tree I am sitting beneath is "nearby" even though I have no way of getting up there.

    4. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When did 130 ly become nearby?

      As soon as the context became the stars.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    5. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by Surt · · Score: 2

      It is among the nearest .000001% of all stars.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    6. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think any object that no human being can visit in their lifetime without defying the laws of physics can be truly said to be "nearby".

    7. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by rachit · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't think any object that no human being can visit in their lifetime without defying the laws of physics can be truly said to be "nearby".

      You *can* visit it in your lifetime without violating the laws of physics, its just that you cannot visit it in the lifetime of the people observing you from Earth.

    8. Re:HD 10180 Nearby? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

      Why is a human lifetime the only meaningful context? Because we're human? That doesn't stop us from thinking about contexts where a human lifespan is too tiny a blip to even notice.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  11. Huh, I guess I'll be the first by mdenham · · Score: 1

    ...to bring up Firefly and its "dozens of worlds" in one solar system.

    Yes, I know it's horribly inaccurate with respect to pretty much every detail on this solar system. I don't care; it's better than stupid resolution jokes.

    1. Re:Huh, I guess I'll be the first by tragedy · · Score: 1

      There are 9 (8) planets in our solar system with an additional 20 large moons and a good 100+ smaller ones. After that, there's a good number of solidly large asteroids. A single (or binary) solar system with dozens of worlds doesn't really seem that far-fetched when you consider how many we have right here. Admittedly a good number of them are so far from the sun that the local temperatures measure in the double digits on the Kelvin scale.

  12. Explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We have Jupiter, hence less planets.

  13. Nibiru to the rescue! by Trails · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah but when nibiru comes back around, we'll be up a planet and then who'll be laughing?

    1. Re:Nibiru to the rescue! by Cazekiel · · Score: 1

      Now is the time to make Ceres a planet. Our fragile, blue-speck egos need it.

      --
      You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
    2. Re:Nibiru to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not necessary if you call Pluto a planet, as Eris is more massive than Pluto.

    3. Re:Nibiru to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Niburu supposed to be a brown dwarf? So we will be a binary system. It'll make us look even more pathetic. "Look! They have two stars and all they can manage is a lousy eight planets!"

  14. only Solar System can have planets by khallow · · Score: 1

    The definition of planet is such that only the Solar System can have them. And as already noted several times, higher mass isn't enough to be a planet. It also has to have "cleared its neighborhood", whatever that means.

    1. Re:only Solar System can have planets by gstrickler · · Score: 2

      You narcissistic xenophobe. Sol is not superior to other suns.

      End Solar Supremacy! We demand equal treatment of all planetary systems.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    2. Re:only Solar System can have planets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Cleared it's neighborhood' means that if a planet sized object is in an asteroid belt, then it's just a big asteroid. To be a planet it has to have cleared out any such debris near it's orbit.

    3. Re:only Solar System can have planets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure support just the one's with planets. What is it with some people? Just because a Star doesn't have a body of planets doesn't mean it's somehow inferior. I object to your term planetary and expect a retraction. good day sir!

    4. Re:only Solar System can have planets by Surt · · Score: 1

      That's a definition, not the definition of a planet. And it's the IAU at that, who are hardly experts in the field.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    5. Re:only Solar System can have planets by Randle_Revar · · Score: 1

      Welp, there goes former planet Jupiter... (see: Trojans)

      --
      Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
    6. Re:only Solar System can have planets by khallow · · Score: 1

      "Cleared it's neighborhood' means that if a planet sized object is in an asteroid belt, then it's just a big asteroid. To be a planet it has to have cleared out any such debris near it's orbit.

      No, that's not what it means. In the paper which coined the term, it was noted that the eight planets dominated the rest of the mass in their "orbital shell", the spherical shell centered on the Sun with inner and outer radii the object's closest and most distant approach to the Sun with several orders of magnitude gap between those planets and "dwarf planets". And it's worth noting that there still isn't an official definition of the term (despite the definition being coined six years ago).

    7. Re:only Solar System can have planets by khallow · · Score: 1

      It's the definition that is sticking.

    8. Re:only Solar System can have planets by Surt · · Score: 1

      I'd actually say it's under attack on a lot of fronts. It made NPR last week.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    9. Re:only Solar System can have planets by khallow · · Score: 1

      I hope you're right. It really was sloppily done way back when.

  15. Not to be pendantic, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    None of these objects are firmly in the "planet" category according to the technical definition.

    First, the definition only includes objects in our own solar system. Exoplanets are not a subset of planets, they are a different class of objects altogether.

    Second, even if we were to fudge the definition to include extrasolar planetoids, size doesn't matter. (Cue "that's what she said" jokes) Part of the definition of a planet is that is must have cleared its orbital neighborhood of other objects. True, a larger planetoid is going to have a much easier time of doing this than a smaller planetoid, but theoretically you could have a Jupiter-sized "dwarf planet" in the same solar system as a Pluto-sized "planet."

    1. Re:Not to be pendantic, but... by Randle_Revar · · Score: 1

      >Exoplanets are not a subset of planets, they are a different class of objects altogether.

      Troll harder

      --
      Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
  16. Here comes wads of funding! by Cazekiel · · Score: 1

    Now you KNOW there's gonna be a jump-start in the government throwing big bucks into NASA. If they did it during the Communist vs. Capitalist dick-waving that went on for decades, how are they going to tolerate the idea that there are other planets out there, ones that MIGHT get to other exoplanets first? The fear, anger, propaganda... I can see Obama now...

    "By 2419, we will send a man to 51 Pegasi b!"

    It'd be better in a Boston accent, but hey, let's get our light-speed on!

    --
    You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
  17. Cannot claim any of them as planets by SnarfQuest · · Score: 0

    In order for something to be called a planet, it must obet the following rules, according to WikiPedia.

    1 is in orbit around the Sun,
    2 has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and
    3 has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit.

    They fail #1 (they aren't orbiting the Sun, but some other star), they cannot prove #2 (could be a bunch of disk-worlds), and they haven't proved #3.

    Thus, none of these can clearly be claimed that they are planets.

    --
    Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
    1. Re:Cannot claim any of them as planets by Surt · · Score: 1

      That's the IAU definition. They are not planetary experts, and should not be consulted when constructing a planetary definition.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  18. More Great Work from Kepler by physburn · · Score: 3, Informative
    NASA's Kepler mission has so far found 2300 potential planets outside the solar system, and the mission has been extended to past 2016. Way to go Kepler!

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    Extra Solar Planets Feed @ Feed Distiller

  19. Firefly System? by Jhyrryl · · Score: 2

    You're asking if this is the planetary system from Firefly.

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    Jhyrryl
    1. Re:Firefly System? by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 1

      ding ding ding ding.....

      I know there are fewer planets than in Firefly, but still....It took that long for someone to get it?

    2. Re:Firefly System? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We all got it but most didn't think it worth commenting on

  20. pluto is a planet by Surt · · Score: 1

    After all, who decides? An astronomer, who studies stars, or a planetary scientist who studies planets? Answer: planetary scientists. And they are in consistent agreement: pluto is a planet.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    1. Re:pluto is a planet by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

      http://youtu.be/Z7dypPbpRC0

  21. What can be done about this? by Beelzebud · · Score: 1

    We can not have a planetary gap!

  22. Not necessarily planets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks to the poorly conceived new definition of a "planet", these objects are only planets if they have cleared their orbits. Unfortunately, that's very difficult to determine at this distance. What do we call these things until we determine whether they have cleared their orbits? Stellar satellites, maybe?

  23. Why is this news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who thought that Sol would have the most planets in the galaxy or the universe? This is like saying that the tree next door has more branches than the tree in our lawn. Well, duh.

  24. All Population I stars have planets by symbolset · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, they do unless they're binary stars where the planets were so huge they condensed into a star. And the planets go from so close they're in danger of being consumed, to so far out that the the material they would have been made of was flung out of the stellar system instead - in orbits of the maximum closeness that you couldn't fit another planetary orbit between them. Since every reasonable sized star has a habitable zone, and given the distribution of mass, between 2 and 4 planets have to be in it. Time makes the orbits regular. If the planet in the right spot is too large for Men, it will have a moon of the appropriate size.

    This is obvious from the distribution of prestellar masses and the forces that cause stars and planets to form. Who doesn't know this? It's Bode's Law.

    See those stars in the sky? They have planets. All of them, near enough as makes no difference. And all of them have planets where liquid water could form. And water is so common that there is water on all of them. And so the Fermi Paradox becomes more intriguing. The stars in the sky where Men cannot live are passing rare - if we can get there.

    Let's go already.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:All Population I stars have planets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surely you mean Dermott's law, which is based on a single exponential function, rather than Bode's law, which has an additive term existing solely to adapt it to Sol's first 6 planets? In any case, it's still a pretty lousy prediction. Either our system is not typical to the Population I model you suggest, or the model needs a lot of refinement; AFAICT there's no theoretical basis for an additive term, but I just ran a few quick numbers, and it looks like the best Dermott's Law fit (for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) has an error of over least 90% for Mars's orbital period. And it gets worse if you try to fit a "fifth planet" to account for the asteroid belt.

      Basically, there's no good law, at least in part because there's at least two distinct effects (material availability for formation, and dynamic stability to stay there) operating simultaneously, and until we see some more solar systems in good detail (i.e. at least enough detail to know we'd have detected at least Venus and Saturn analogues, and everything between), it's not clear whether the too large to be empty, too small for a planet Mars/Jupiter gap is a wild fluke, a near-universal feature pertaining to the transition from terrestrial planets to gas planets, or just an extra-wide gap that occurs with probability ~0.1 between any given adjacent planets (and we just happened to get one between the inner and outer planets, and built a century of explanations on it -- the universe laughs); hell, it's not even 100% clear that the terrestrial-inner, gaseous-outer structure is a common feature.

      Certainly, I agree in broad terms, that there seems no obvious effect to make planets avoid the habitable zone, and that the gaps between planets should generally be small enough it's unlikely the whole habitable zone lies in one, but I think before we "go there" (I'm assuming you mean the Alpha Centauri system, which by your logic should have at least one habitable-zone planet around each star, or Barnard's Star, which again "should" have some terrestrial planets, though we know it doesn't have any large gas giants), it's certainly worth pausing a decade or two to get a better picture of what "typical" is in general, and/or make solar gravitational lensing studies of any particular stars of interest, and make sure we've not predicated a mission on theories biased by where we grew up.

  25. let's bomb them by steve.cri · · Score: 1

    and take their planets

  26. And they are all planning to invade us! by Snaller · · Score: 1

    Unless we get there first! After all there may be oil!

    Go go go!

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    If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating