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'Einstein's Planet' Becomes First Exoplanet Discovered Using New Method
cylonlover writes "Due to their relative faintness compared to their parent stars, most known exoplanets have been discovered using indirect detection methods – that is, detecting the effects they have rather than observing them directly. There are numerous indirect methods that have proven useful in the detection of exoplanets and now yet another, which relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity (abstract), has joined the list with the discovery of an exoplanet known as Kepler-76b."
How many of these planets are in the goldilocks zone? Sure we can find them; but which ones are livable for Carbon based lifeforms?
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
This new method is apparently known as the BEER effect. One wonders what Albert would have felt about that. :)
Help! Help! Let me out!
(Yeah, I know he was cremated, but his brain is in a jar.)
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If that planet was so smart how come it didn't discover us first? Just saying...
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Looks more and more like "crazy" concepts such as the Alcubierre drive will, soon, actually be needed.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Looks more and more like "crazy" concepts such as the Alcubierre drive will, soon, actually be needed.
Didn't that require converting several universes worth of mass into energy to power it?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
sure but that is just a scaling problem. The original computers basically required their own generators to power them too.
now your smart phone has more processing power than super computers built in the 1980's
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
It was thought it would require the mass of Jupiter, but that was changed due to a redesign. The new design requires as much energy as 70% of the US annual energy usage. High, but not astronomical anymore.
It does however, require the exotic matter known as negative energy in its usage.
Jupiter is no longer consider "alien"? I take this as evidence that people have already secretly colonized Jupiter.
And this got modded up? Shoot me now.
It does however, require the exotic matter known as negative energy in its usage.
Well, that's a bonus: Due to energy conservation, when creating this negative energy you'll also create the same amount of positive energy. FTL travel and energy problem solved at the same time! ;-)
This planet was discovered by Lorentz boosting, the theory of which predates Einstein. Meanwhile, 20 exoplanets have been discovered to date using gravitational lensing, an application of General Relativity (a theory created by Einstein ) that was itself first predicted by Einstein. Somehow, the press release (and thus all the subsequent press) failed to mention these "Einstein planets."
The original paper, "BEER analysis of Kepler and CoRoT light curves: I. Discovery of Kepler-76b: A hot Jupiter with evidence for superrotation," is here.
That's Alcubierre's original theory, sure. The tests that warp field researchers are preparing for now, however, are expected to be doable with convential forms of energy (high voltages, as I understand). What a time to be alive!
As far as "The Big Crunch", current observations make it seem exceedingly unlikely. Detailed observations were made many years ago to measure the rate at which gravity was slowing the expansion of the universe in an attempt to estimate whether the universe would expand forever, eventually collapse, or balance right at the cusp. What we discovered was that the rate of expansion is actually *increasing* due to an unknown force, and increases faster over longer distances - the as yet unexplained effect we named "Dark Energy". So the future of the universe is likely one where eventually everything else in the universe will be moving away from us faster than light, so not only will it never coallesce, but eventually every galaxy, and possibly eventually every star within them, will be completely isolated from the rest of the universe and the night sky will be utterly black.
There *is* still the possibility that the universe is finite but unbounded - i.e. it loops back on itself and everything will eventually "loop around" and recombine, but measuements to date indicate that the universe is perfectly flat to within the limits of our instruments, which at the least probably sets a very large minimum size for any such looping. Then again it's quite possible we still don't understand something fundamental about gravity and/or the nature of spacetime - for example we can observe some tight-orbitting binary stars which are "spinning down" consistent with radiating energy as light-speed gravity waves as predicted by General Relativity, and our theory predicts that current gravity wave detectors should be able to detect the waves being eminated, but as yet no gravity wave has ever actually been detected.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The initial design did, but IIRC the required energy was dependent on the external volume of the warp field, and further analysis revealed one of the interesting properties of the spatial geometry is that the internal and external volumes are independent of each other, so for example you could wrap the entire planet in a warp field that, from the outside, is subatomic in scale (assuming Plank-length spacetime granularity doesn't interfere). Also I think someone came out with a vastly more efficient variant on the topology, though I don't know if it still permits the Blue Box effect.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There were never any theoretical limits on energy consumption for computers (okay, actually I think there are now, but our most efficient devices are still many orders of magnitude away)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Not to mention some sort of magical technology capable of bending space into improbable topologies.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The requirement for exotic forms of matter that have never been seen or manipulated in anything close to what is needed is still there. The amount needed has been reduced quite a bit, but at the moment, it is the same as saying you only need one kilogram of unicorn tears instead of a metric ton. There are no other known alternatives. The only exceptions are some analogies or more fundamental tests of General Relativity that won't have any practical use for the construction of such a drive, and crackpots on the internet, that while they have a non-zero chance of being right, aren't usually based on reality and usually are a worse chances than winning the lottery.
And there is also a long list of problems that even if you can construct it that are not known how to get around, short of using such a drive for only slower than light travel.