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Astronomers Find Planet Barely Larger Than Earth's Moon
The Bad Astronomer writes "A team of astronomers has announced the discovery of the smallest exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star yet found: Kepler-37b, which has a diameter of only 3865 kilometers — smaller than Mercury, and only a little bigger than our own Moon. It was found using the transit method; as it orbits its star, it periodically blocks a bit of the starlight, revealing its presence (abstract). Interestingly, the planet has been known for some time, but only new advances in asteroseismology (studying oscillations in the star itself) have allowed the star's size to be accurately found, which in turn yielded a far better determination of the planet's diminutive size. Also, the asteroseismology research was not funded by NASA, but instead crowd funded by a non-profit, which raised money by letting people adopt Kepler target stars."
No moon!
It wasn't that long ago the first planets were found and now they are detecting ones around the size of the Earth's Moon. Imaging Earth sized planets will be the big breakthrough. There's talk of imaging planets similar to space shots of the Earth and other planets but I have my doubts I'll live to see that. It's not the technology it's the investment that would need to be made. Humans walking on Mars and a detailed photo of a distant planet would be the two I hope to live to see.
A planet or a dwarf planet?
I mean, if Pluto is not allowed to be a planet, then why should such a small object be labelled as one?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The interstellar space age isn't going to begin for humanity for several centuries at the earliest, barring some sort of breakthrough that allows us to travel between locations faster than light takes to travel between them.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Below the caption of the artist's rendition: "Click to enhermesenate"
New word for the day
Being able to find smaller things far away is good.
While there is high hope of finding Life elsewhere is slim to none, at least it gives us better places to look and send out messages too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If it has been known to be around "for some time" then I don't understand why they are calling it a new discovery- it's more like their decision to formalize their acknowledgement of its existence to the public.
If it is only a bit bigger than the moon then it wouldn't seem to qualify as a planet, only a planetoid.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There is a lot of space travel we can do before we have to, or able to, go interstellar.
What is the uncertainty in the size? They seem to be awfully precise in their reported numbers...
Yup. If only NASA were gone, the crowd funders would have discovered the planet using data from their own frigging telescope, instead of NASA's Kepler. And call me when the "asteroid miners" produce anything but vaporware. Meanwhile, NASA is doing meaningful science.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
This term struck me as odd. The side of me that cares about meaningless pedantry wants to know why it's "asteroseismology" and not "astroseismology", but Google isn't helping much. Anyone happen to know?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Pluto me once, shame on you. Pluto me twice, shame on me.
These are simply exoplanets. No formal definition exists dividing them into further categories. There is still debate over where planets end and brown dwarfs begin, let alone the smaller end of things. As of 2006, when the definitions for planet and dwarf planet were created, we knew almost nothing about planets outside of our solar system. Trying to figure out how to categorize them at that point would have been putting the cart before the horse (although that didn't stop some people). But there was no reason not to go forward with classifying the things we already knew about.
..of the "Oh Shit" we found a rock in space moments are we gonna have. Notify me when we are going to Titan pls.
First asteroid mining, and now this. Once NASA is completely out of the way the Space Age can actually begin.
NASA is not standing in anyone's way. Someday NASA will be surpassed and ultimately be made obsolete, but it is not in any way an impediment. Quite the contrary, it's NASA's shoulders that this and the other accomplishments are currently standing up upon.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Sounds like my mama!
Wouldn't that really be the largest exoplutoid found?
Since this new planet is slightly larger than the moon, then doesn't this mean Pluto is a planet again?
NASA is doing meaningful science.
And is (thankfully) still alive.
We are now finding new planets, what next, habitable planets, inhabited planets? We can make 3 D doodling pens and yet, all we have for our taxes is crappy cars with even crappier gas mileage. What's worse is all the crappy auto execs with not so crappy bonuses.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
The interstellar space age isn't going to begin for humanity for several centuries at the earliest, barring some sort of breakthrough that allows us to travel between locations faster than light takes to travel between them.
I think we're all generally assuming that something will eventually be discovered, hopefully sooner rather then later.
It's an exoplanet-sized object.
The interstellar space age isn't going to begin for humanity for several centuries at the earliest, barring some sort of breakthrough that allows us to travel between locations faster than light takes to travel between them.
I think we're all generally assuming that something will eventually be discovered, hopefully sooner rather then later.
You can't argue with cold, hard logic like that.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You don't understand: from the slashdot-libertarian's point of view, the very existence of NASA (government) creates a distortion of the pure free market. If it wasn't for socialism, we'd have been on the moon by during the reign of Queen Victoria in a cool steampunk style.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Thats no moon....its a space station!
Sounds more like an exo-dwarf-planet.