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Strange New World Discovered: The "Mega Earth"
astroengine (1577233) writes "Meet 'mega-Earth' a souped-up, all-solid planet that, according to theory, should not exist. First spotted by NASA's Kepler space telescope, the planet is about 2.3 times larger than Earth. Computer models show planets that big would be more like Neptune or the other gas planets of the outer solar system since they would have the gravitational heft to collect vast amounts of hydrogen and helium from their primordial cradles. But follow-up observations of the planet, designated as Kepler-10c, show it has 17 times as much mass as Earth, meaning it must be filled with rock and other materials much heavier than hydrogen and helium. 'Kepler-10c is a big problem for the theory,' astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, told Discovery News. 'It's nice that we have a solid piece of evidence and measurements for it because that gives motivations to the theorists to improve the theory,' he said."
The galaxies are ACCELERATING away from each other, and we don't have a real solid answer for why.
Cosmology, the study of where all these planets and stuff came from and how, is still a young field with really big and really interesting discoveries yet to be made.
For all of those people claiming that there's nothing new to discover, point them to the stars and ask how the hell that happened.
And the state of the art is getting to the point where we don't need placeholders to conveniently fill in the gaps.
Exciting times.
The second one is not at all ambiguous. "2.3 times larger" means "multiply how large the first thing is by 2.3" to absolutely anyone. It's kinda ambiguous when you're talking percent, but not a literal multiplier.
The first one is totally ambiguous, though.
"The second one is not at all ambiguous. "2.3 times larger" means "multiply how large the first thing is by 2.3" to absolutely anyone."
No, that would 2.3 times the size. 2.3 times *larger* strongly implies the correct answer (for x=1) is 3.3, not 2.3.
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Shouldn't this be 1.7 decaearths?
Since the sun is about 333 kiloearths in mass, wouldn't a megaearth be about 3 solar masses? :-)
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Something that was 2.3 times the size of the earth would be only about 12 times the mass of the earth if it were the same density
since it is 17 times the mass it must be denser than the earth, presumably more iron/nickel than silicate rock.
way too much gravity for 'life as we know it, Jim'\
The second one is not at all ambiguous.
If it's not ambiguous, then it's just wrong.
1 + 1.3 = 2.3. Thus 2.3 is 1.3 more (or larger) than 1.
Similarly, 1 + 2.3 = 3.3. I.e., 3.3 is 2.3 larger than 1.
2.3 is 2.3 times 1. But not "times larger". That confuses addition and multiplation.
If the article had said "2.3 times", and left out "larger", it would have been correct.
"2.3 times larger" is grossly ambiguous in at least 2 different ways:
Until we read further, we are left to guess whether that means 2.3 times the diameter, 2.3 times the volume, or what. A few sentences later they clarify a bit, but it's still sloppy writing.
Second, "times larger" is ambiguous in English. If Earth has diameter 1, then a diameter 2.3 times as large would be 2.3. Technically, a diameter 2.3 times larger would be 3.3 (1 + 2.3).
Call that nitpicking if you want, but it's still sloppy writing.
Okay from the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...
The sidebar states 17.2 +/- 1.9 M (M = Earth masses)
It also states that the Radius is aproximately 2.35 R (R = Earth radius)
Surface Gravity is a little over 3x that of Earth.
Unfortunately this probably isn't going to be a liveable world. It's only about a quarter of the distance from its sun that the Earth is. It's mean surface temperature is a whopping 400+ degrees Fahrenheit (so yes, paper would auto-ignite there).
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THANK GOD!!!
Same here in Finland, it's an endless battle. One common argument for the "illogical" way is to separate the "larger" and "2.3 times" -- it's larger than the original, and it's 2.3 times the original. Of course, if you want to say "2.3 times the original" then you don't need the extra "larger" qualifier.
My usual argument for the logical way is to ask "what about 50% more". It's obviously not half of the original. The illogicians are quick to point out that the meaning changes when you go below 100%.
For an even worse abuse of linguistic logic, we have a colloquialism (not too common, fortunately) of saying "half more" when meaning "double the original". There is of course some "logic" when considering the inverse number, but now we have three different ways to intepret the same thing >.<
In fact, the case of "double" is interesting in that there is no ambiguity, it's always interpreted as "two times the original". However, Finnish doesn't have a direct native equivalent of "double", so we even get the confusion of someone saying "two times larger" when meaning "two times as large". Fortunately, we do have a loan of "double" ("tupla, tuplasti"), but it hasn't quite replaced the "two times" expressions.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
"Times larger" is not ambiguous. "X is Y times larger than Z" means "X is Y times Z larger than Z. "Y times" is in relation to Z. There is no other correct way to interpret it. It's often used and interpreted incorrectly, but that doesn't make it ambiguous - it makes marketers liars and people morons.
Of course, there's the completely senseless uses as well. "X is Y times smaller than Z" where Y is greater than 1 implies a negative sieze for X, and "DSL is 10 times slower than cable" implies a negative speed for DSL (then there's the whole issue of internet "speed" when we're really talking about bandwidth).
Not exactly. A reply I made the last time there was a slashdot article about a planet discovered by Kepler that required planet-forming models to be reevaluated is still particularly apropos.
When scientists say "This shouldn't happen according to current models", they are really saying "Holy shit, this is awesome! We get to come up with new models!".
Meanwhile, the mainstream media hears that and reports it either as "Scientists say this shouldn't happen. The universe is fucked up" or "Scientists say this shouldn't happen. Science is fucked up" depending on their political bent.
It's really a bad stroke of luck for humanity that English is the de facto international language. The English language is pretty messed up in more ways than one. For example, in the English language it's often impossible to know how to properly spell a word without learning it through use and experience. Unlike for example the German language, where you can practically always tell how to spell a word by how it is written.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media hears that and reports it either as "Scientists say this shouldn't happen. The universe is fucked up" or "Scientists say this shouldn't happen. Science is fucked up" depending on their political bent.
Also, don't forget the ever-popular, "Scientists are flip-floppers who can't make up their minds, while my ancient religion is always the same, century after century!"
The same strain runs through all of these: the implication that scientists should feel humiliated because what they thought to be highly plausible has turned out to be much less so. So long as people believe this--that being a good Bayesian and adjusting your beliefs in the face of new evidence is somehow shameful and "unmanly"--we will be stuck in this mire of evidence-free policy-making and anti-science gibberish on all sides.
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That's because English took a large number of words from other languages and kept the spelling from the origin language. It's easy to figure out a word in German because the word is German. In English, a word could come from German, or Latin, or French, or Greek, etc.
There's one I see regularly that baffles (and disappoints) me: on the top of the flush valve for public urinals (sorry, I'm a compulsive reader) it says "This 1-pint-per-flush valve saves 87% more than standard 1-gallon valves". What the hell does "saves 87% more" mean? Uses 87% less, fine - but saves 87% more??? WTF???
"What the hell does "saves 87% more" mean? Uses 87% less, fine - but saves 87% more??? WTF???"
The only way that could make any sense would be if they were measuring the water that does NOT cycle through in a flush, i.e. the amount that is 'saved' between flushes. Since the idea is actually to 'flush' the system saving more in that context would be a bad thing.
They appear to be trying to say that it uses less water, as you say, but the wording is so horribly confused I dont think I would accept it as an English utterance. Those are English words strung together but the sentence as a whole has no meaning.
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A little bit pedantic, but it certainly matters as they vary as different powers of the radius. Having 2.3 times the radius would be almost 12.2 times the volume. If the volume was only 2.3 times the Earth's volume, then the radius would only be 1.32 times larger.
Humorist P.J. O'Rourke once wrote that English doesn't just take words from other languages; English chases other languages into dark alleys and mugs them for their words.
Other people have commented on the lousy "size of Texas"-style "2.3 times larger than Earth" bit, but there's so much more wrong with this. There's the now standard "artists representation" header artwork/slideshow teaser that doesn't even have any sort of disclaimer that it's not a representation of any kind of this planet. There's also an appalling lack of any of the figures people really want to know such as what the surface gravity would be on this planet. I'm getting about 3.3 G based on the diameter and mass they give. Surface area is about 5 times that of Earth. The year is about 1 and a half Earth months. The temperature is over 200 degrees celcius, close to the melting point of tin.
It's more then that, read some older texts, perhaps early 18th century, and you will see many words with legal but different and often variable spelling. Even now what different groups of people consider correct spelling in English varies. "The centre of the grey coloured licence devise had a strange connexion to an organisation that had its dialogue paralysed as if by diarrhoea." Is an example of a correctly spelled nonsensical sentence that could trigger spelling nazis here.
Dictionaries weren't commonly used until the middle of the 18th century and later dictionaries attempted to change various spellings, often for no other reason then nationalism.
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The diameter is 2.3x. The mass is around 20x. The density is about 1.5x. The length of year is a shade under 1/3. The surface temperature is estimated at 10x. The gravity is around 4x. The magnetic field at Earth's current age was probably 3.375x. Tea time is a universal constant.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's a large planet orbiting a star. It has no massive hydrogen/helium atmosphere, and that's a mystery, WHY? Well, let's see, park a planet about 20 million miles from its host star for ELEVEN BILLION YEARS and see how long the atmosphere hangs around, in the face of ELEVEN BILLION YEARS of stellar evolution, coronal mass ejections, and all the rest of it, and they're PUZZLED as to why it's not hte size of Neptune?WTF? I'm surprised it still exists at all...
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Nope. Gender doesn't really change much. (e.g. Georgian not only lacks gender, but even words like he/she/it are the same, yet it's much more complex than English)
Lack of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... , no need to morph words depending on this and that, makes English somewhat simple..
And actually it's got where it's got historically and not because it's easier or harder to use, thanks to British Empire.
Russian is widely used in former Russian Empire, even though it's much more complex to learn. (7 cases AND things have gender AND lots of exceptions in the grammar AND the need to morph words most of the time following puzzling rules)
Every language has its quirks. While with German you might be able to tell how to spell a word on how it's spoken, on the other hand what gender a noun has in German is completely nonsensical (and German goes one step further than the Romance languages in having a neuter gender, so now you have three possible genders to guess at!) whereas in English the gender of nouns is entirely straightforward and logical.
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homophones are currently only confusing in speech
Their prices are pretty bewildering, too; $849 for the 5s 64GB?!
Not on the internet you don't.