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Probable Rogue Planet Spotted
Maow writes with news of a sighting of a rogue gas giant: "'This object was discovered during a scan that covered the equivalent of 1,000 times the [area] of the full moon,' said study co-author Etienne Artigau of the University of Montreal. 'We observed hundreds of millions of stars and planets, but we only found one homeless planet in our neighborhood.' This planet appears to be an astonishingly young 50-120 million years old. The original paper is on the arXiv. Here's hoping the Mayan End-of-World-2012 people don't seize upon this as some kind of impending rogue planet on a collision course with Earth, but one can expect it'll be bantered about on such forums."
From the article: "The team believe it has a temperature of about 400C and a mass between four and seven times that of Jupiter - well short of the mass limit that would make it a likely brown dwarf."
can reach earth before they get too far?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Spotted it! Those puppeteers are going to have to come up with a new plan now, or give me one million stars to not reveal the secret.
we only found one homeless planet in our neighborhood
Either the galactic economy is going well, or they are good at hiding the problems.
Have they found Genesis? Genesis allowed is not! Is planet forbidden!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Given that the definition of a planet is dependent on the relationship between objects (planet and star, planet and moon, planet and other objects in the same orbit), how can something be classified as a type of planet if there are no observations of that object in relation to other objects in a planetary system?
First, in the summary you forget to identify the distance: 100ly. Well, that pretty much rules out any worry of a collision even if at such a distance the alignment would be astronomically unlikely to be one which would allow for a collision.
Second, why does anyone care if there is a 'spike' in discussion with the 2012 doomsayers? You think there WOULDN'T be a spike in discussion around December 2012? And who cares if there is? The good news, is that by January, all the 2012 end of the world nonsense will be over (Even if they are right ;) )
My problem isn't any of that however. My problem is THIS travesty from the article:
One tricky part is determining if rogue planet candidates are as massive as the "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, further along in stellar evolution but without enough mass to spark the nuclear fusion that causes starlight.
It's so freaking wrong I can't even parse it to bitch about it in any specific manner. And to me, that's the worst thing that could happen. If I can't complain, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
prediction of the end of the world all you want. But on the next day you must promise to never, ever, talk about the end of the world.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let me know when they discover a nethack planet.
mod me funny
For details we turn to our usual correspondent...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Of the two possible origins of planets like this, the first would be that it's a star that didn't get enough mass to ignite. This seems to make the most intuitive sense to me.
The other possibility is that it was somehow ejected form it's parent star. This seems less likely, but then I'm not an astrophysicist. What would it take to eject a planet that large from it's solar system?
What kind of event would it take to say, eject Jupiter? Would it take a huge rogue Nemesis kind of star, or could something smaller perturb it's orbit just enough to eject it?
Assuming it was ejected, could you not interpolate from the planets velocity just where it came from, work backwards to find it's old parent star, and perhaps even figure out what other stellar body it interacted with that caused the planet to be ejected?
The good news: It is 100 light years away from Earth so there's no way for it to reach us in time.
The not so good news: 100 light years is nothing cosmic-distance-wise. If our detection capabilities can let us spot a Super-Jupiter sized object 100 light years away, are there smaller object that are closer, but still pose a threat?
Given a 100 light year sphere, "trillions" would be an understatement of the number of smaller than Super-Jupiter size objects within it, but large enough to be a threat if they were on the right trajectory.
We should improve our detection abilities mainly to spot asteroids headed our way in time to prevent a catastrophe.
That's certainly true, but utterly unrelated to this finding. There ain't jack-shit we could do about a "rogue planet" headed for Earth, other than throw a few awesome end-of-the-world parties.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/12/21/17846/757
LocalRoger wrote several shorts based in this universe. I though they were great, and am still waiting for a book.
Of course there are. Scientists point out new discoveries of these all the time, and show the near misses. There's loads of things we haven't seen yet, which is why you can still get new comets being discovered that have hugely elliptic orbits.
I think this has already been best answered with "Well, our object collision budget's about a million dollars a year. That allows us to track about three percent of the sky, and begging your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky."
If we truly had one incoming on a collision course ... I'm pretty sure we have nowhere near the technology to do anything about it. People occasionally float a new idea, but so far if something big comes along, we're screwed. Same if the Vogons show up.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
in the subject line is confusing and annoying. We need a "-1 poor communication skills" mod option! :)
It's heat from the planet's formation. It's estimated to require about 12 Jovian masses to start ignition, and this is only 4-7 Jovian masses.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Off the top of my head -- heat of accretion, radioactive decay, partial nuclear ignition delaying cooling, tidal heating from it's previous orbit before it was ejected, . . .
But that's all speculation rather than applicable knowledge.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.