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Nearby Star May Have More Planets Than Our Solar System
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."
So, how many of you saw HD 1080i
I remember when MOD was an audio format, and DOS wasn't a network attack....
Planet envy
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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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Yeah but when nibiru comes back around, we'll be up a planet and then who'll be laughing?
The current IAU definition is (c/o Wikipedia)
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).
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.
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!
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.
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When did 130 ly become nearby?
As soon as the context became the stars.
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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.
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.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
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.