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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."
There are some numbers in this newest comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1584
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I did not say we should stop looking; but it would be nice to find Earth 2. We will need it eventually.
Find Earth 2? Pfft, I'd rather make Earth 2. Anyone want to give me some funding to get some terraforming going on?
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Billions and billions*.
* assuming one per galaxy.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
A planet doesn't need to be in the Goldilocks zone to be habitable, it's just the safest bet we have for estimating habitability. It's dangerous to exclude planets that are too big, too far out or in general unlike Earth. Moons around gaseous giants might very well be just as habitable as Earth is, but for a different reason than being close to a star. All that is really needed is enough energy to keep water liquid, which could be had via volcanism or gravitational pressure from a larger neighbor.
... whatever
He would have got pissed ...
From the article:
"Einstein's planet," formally known as Kepler-76b, is a "hot Jupiter" that orbits its star every 1.5 days. Its diameter is about 25 percent larger than Jupiter and it weighs twice as much. It orbits a type F star located about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
The planet is tidally locked to its star, always showing the same face to it, just as the Moon is tidally locked to Earth. As a result, Kepler-76b broils at a temperature of about 2000 Kelvin.
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."
I'm not sure it's understood to be truly 'infinite', but 'so damned big as to be infinite for purposes of discussion'.
And there was a time (not even all that long ago) when it was thought that planets around other stars would be very rare and uncommon.
In university I hung out with a bunch of astrophysicists, and the idea of finding exoplanets was still something we weren't sure of, and it was assumed there was a relatively small number of stars which would have planets.
It's only just over 20 years since we confirmed the first one, and in that time the rate at which we detect them keeps going up at a pretty staggering rate. To the point now that if you look at Drake's equation, it's hard not to conclude that, somewhere, some form of life has probably evolved elsewhere in the universe, and probably even intelligent life existed at some point.
Admittedly, the distances and time spans are so vast as to make it highly unlikely we'd ever find them. But, to me at least, it just seems so improbable that we're the only life to have evolved anywhere in the entire universe.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.