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Newly Spotted Frozen World Orbits In a Binary Star System
An anonymous reader writes A newly discovered planet in a binary, or twin, star system located 3,000 light-years from Earth is expanding astronomers' notions of where Earth-like planets can form. At twice the mass of Earth, the planet orbits one of the stars in the binary system at almost exactly the same distance at which Earth orbits the sun. However, because the planet's host star is much dimmer than the sun, the planet is much colder than Earth. "This greatly expands the potential locations to discover habitable planets in the future," said Scott Gaudi, professor of astronomy at Ohio State. "Half the stars in the galaxy are in binary systems. We had no idea if Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits could even form in these systems."
The summary clarified "Binary Star" for Slashdot readers. That seems unnecessary, or my opinion of Slashdotters is far too 2002.
It's a rebel hideout
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We need to try to solve the FTL problem.
r.e. FTL research: you raise some good points.
But nobody (except maybe a Comi-Con panel) is going to get behind funding FTL research.
Our species also has some baby steps to work on first: in no particular order... orbital solar power, fusion, space elevators, mars colonies, asteroid mining. *shrug* Let's solve those things first because they will (eventually) set the stage for interstellar work, including FTL research.
As for basic physics research, I would say China is showing some interest in basic research and advancing the state of the art; with any luck that will motivate some other governments to not be left behind. India also seems hungry to establish itself as a prestigious space power; they're doing some cool things - I hope they are successful.
Likewise I'm optimistic about the progress SpaceX has made; I hope they're wildly successful because it will open new doors for humans.
cool. it flips between being a star and a black hole.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
We know nothing about this planet's atmosphere. The low flux of energy from its star tells us that its stratosphere (if present) must be very cold, but says nothing about its surface temperature. It could have a much deeper troposphere, and thus a much stronger greenhouse effect than Earth has.
60 K = -352 F. Slashdot will eat any characters not on a whitelist due to past abuses of Unicode characters, and this includes the actual minus sign that isn't a hyphen.
Japan is starting work on orbital space power already. Hopefully they've played SimCity and turned disasters off. Microwave power was a fun way to burn a line through your city.
"Winter has arrived."
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.