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Mysterious Planet May Be Cruising For a Bruising
sciencehabit writes "Something is orbiting the bright star Fomalhaut in the constellation known as the Southern Fish, but no one knows exactly what it is. New observations carried out last year with the Hubble Space Telescope confirm that the mysterious object, known as Fomalhaut b, is traveling on a highly elongated path, but they haven't convincingly nailed down its true nature. But if it is a planet, as one team of astronomers thinks, we may be in for some celestial fireworks in 2032, when Fomalhaut b starts to plough through a broad belt of debris that surrounds the star and icy comets within the belt smash into the planet's atmosphere."
Meanwhile, astronomers recently announced the discovery of the most Earth-like exoplanet yet seen, which orbits a G-type star, has a radius 1.5 times that of Earth and a year of about 242 days.
Terrible headline aside, I can only hope this time NASA doesn't dub in canned laughter and slapstick noises as it crashes through the front lawn. The soundtrack during the rover touchdown was just terrible, and the reward for watching a bunch of dudes in starch-white shirts with ties and unkept hair was a crappy over-pixelated image of a leg. I mean, hey, if that's what puts the lotion on all the power to you, but I've been underwhelmed so far.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
For the observable time of 2032, this means it already happened.
All the worlds indeed a
Thats no planet.
At least now we know around which star is Alderaan.
"Maybe there's no land life, but perhaps very clever dolphins," Livio joked.
Except dolphins are descended from land life. Fish are thick as quite thick shit. Most likely due to the lack of sufficient oxygen to run big brains. I hadn't actually considered that before.
which is totally what she said
It's the DEATH STAR!!!
With it's unprecedented ability to plow a path the planetary debris belt without losing suction, it must be a Dyson.... sphere.
By definition, a planet has cleared its orbit of material. If it's colliding with a belt of debris, it obviously hasn't done so.
Have I mentioned yet how unnatural I think this new definition of a planet is? Its primary purpose seems to be to exclude Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects from planetary status. Size, mass, and composition are all irrelevant and it's now the orbit of the object (and other objects!) that matter. As this article demonstrates, this new definition conflicts with common understanding of the term. The astronomers should have invented a new term to describe this orbital requirement instead of perverting an existing one.
I realize the thing is 25 light years away, but surely a large number of people can be tricked into thinking we'll be affected by this somehow. I mean what if there is debris hurtling towards us at near the speed of light the probability of impact is may well be in the one in a googolplexibazillion range but it's still non zero. How many people can understand large numbers? Not many. I say a religion can be formed and money can be made off this.
Deathstar.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So instead of its usual four pixels, it will be up to, what, six or seven?
Anything that makes an object have high eccentricity is likely to push it out of the plane so it won't intersect the disk.
The object takes 242 days to orbit its star (compared to Earth's 365 days)
(emphasis mine)
Whew, glad they told us that!
Maybe it's not a planet, but a Great Old One? Cthugha is supposed to live there after all...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthugha
K'Breel, speaker for the Council, released a statement:
"Gentle Citizens, today I stand before you proud as a gerlsh in the first heivtning, positively quirlly to bring you the news that our collection device near the Eye of Hoarfrost has nearly completed it's mission. Soon, very soon, we will have amassed the largest collection of Dihydrogen Monoxide in Matter state 3 since the dawn of T'zolar. Rest well Citizens knowing this operation marks the age of time we will finally rid Sector 42-Gamma of the evil blue planet"
A media operative, who asked K'breel for comment about several previous attempts, specifically the notorious Jupitorial 9-stone bungle, was tazed in the gelsac and evaporated. The J9S mission, nearly 20 ages old, is apparently still a sore spot with the council.
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It's great to keep finding these earth-like planets, but wouldn't it make more sense to first focus our searches on:
1) Star systems of the right elemental makeup where planets could have iron cores
2) Star systems of the right age, where the earth-like planets with iron cores would likely still have a molten core capable of producing a magnetosphere
I think we've all but proven that finding planets of the right size, within the right distance of their star, are perhaps abundant enough (see mars). That's great, and we can postulate that there might be liquid water on them because of this, but what we really need to worry about is their ability to produce a magnetosphere capable of holding in all that good stuff against the sweeping winds produced by their star.
Does anyone have some insight as to how easy or hard it would be to try to identify star systems with these characteristics *before* looking to see if we can find earth-like size/distance planets?
FTA:
Assuming it has a similar density to Earth, wouldn't it have considerably more gravitational force? Like, maybe 3x?
Earth's volume: 4/3 * pi * r^3 = 4/3 * 3.14159 * 1^3 = 4.1888
KOI 172.02's volume: 4/3 * 3.14159 * 1.5^3 = 14.137
People seem to forget that a small difference in radius produces a much larger difference in volume thanks to that r-cubed thing. "Slightly larger" equates to "much more massive" (given same density).
Or am I way off here?