Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Discover Three Potentially Habitable Planets (mit.edu)
Scientists have discovered three Earth-sized planets that look ideally suited to search for signs of life beyond our solar system. A team of astronomers from MIT and the University of Liege detected three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star -- just 40 light years from Earth using a prototype telescope called TRAPPIST which is capable of looking at 60 nearby ultracool stars. NPR reports: The closest planet to the star orbits in about one and a half Earth days. From the planet's surface, the star would look like a reddish ball fixed to one spot in the sky. Scientists don't yet know the mass of the planets or what they're made of. Astronomers have discovered more than a thousand planets outside our solar system, but it's still rare to find ones that look promising in terms of habitability."These planets are Earth-sized, they are temperate -- we can't rule out the fact that they are habitable -- and they are well-suited for atmospheric studies," says Julien de Wit, a researcher at MIT.
We finally have a safe place for transgendered individuals to use the toilet.
The earth needs a protective shell, before illegal aliens come from these worlds to take our jobs.
Financing? Not a problem. Just make the aliens pay for it.
detected three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star
Ultra-cool? So the dwarf star is like Verne Troyer - AKA Mini-Me?
ultracool dwarf star
Peter Dinklage?
That close to a white dwarf start it's not going to have an atmosphere or any life if what we know about white dwarf star creation is at all true.
Well.. I better get going now! Should not take too long. What 170k years? That's not bad. We can use one of those new 1700 generations ships!
I would point out that "Scientists don't yet know the mass of the planets or what they're made of." is kind of an important factor here...
Even if the radiation is comparable to Earth levels I wonder how the potential magnetic field will behave when the planet orbits its star in just a few days. Radio interference would probably be severe or not?
Lead researcher updates the original report stating, "After a technician realized they forgot to use the zoom button, an easy mistake considering the vast number of pretty lights and switches, an appalling discovery was made. The supposed planet has been re-identified". A short pause and a look of horror crosses the researcher's face, "That's no planet, it's a space station!"
The entire research team agreed that they all had a bad feeling about the turn of events.
At that visible spectra, are you sure those are "habitable"?
By what?
Your eyes would burn out.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Only Mars, the dead rock, is nearby. Even going to Jupiter takes many years... We're stuck until we find a totally different way of traveling.
Let's not get TOO carried away.
Venus and Mars are arguably in the 'habitable' zone in this system, and I don't see us busting down any doors exploring those like crazy. Sure, we've done some good work on Mars but budgetwise it's not a big priority...
-Styopa
I'm guessing that this star is Zaphod Beeblebrox's vacation spot.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
This sounds an awful lot like the descriptions I remember from a Wrinkle in time.
Perhaps we should name the star Malak and these planets Ixchel, Camazotz & Uriel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wrinkle_in_Time#Locations
So what is it?
With orbits that close to each other, aren't there going to be some pretty severe tidal effects on each of the planets? Maybe the solar intensity fits, but the surface might look a bit like Io, which is paved with active volcanoes thanks to the back-and-forth flexing due to Jupiter and the other Galilean moons.
Humpty Dumpty has taken a final fall. No, seriously. Fantasy is real. I'm not making it up. They are.
As I understand it, red dwarfs are the most numerous stars in the galaxy. (Also much longer lived, if the difference between 5 billion and 100 billion years matters to you.) Although they are smaller, cooler, and redder, if a planet is close enough, it will be in the temperature comfort zone for humans. But what kind of light would one see? Would it be perpetual sunset/sunrise? Would chlorophyll driven photosynthesis work?
I'm also thinking it's all very academic because by the time humanity has the technology to get there (if it ever does), things will be very different with us or our descendants (Who may not be biological descendants.)
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Looks like we need to send some forced freedom their way! 'Murica, Fuck yea!
g0t b33r?
Am I the only one to find suspicious that Belgian astronomers would use a telescop called 'Trappiste'?
Oh. How wonderful. JUST 40 light years away. Fucking journalists. It might as well be in the next galaxy, we are never going there. Ever.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is what a TRAPPIST looks like:
http://sr1.wine-searcher.net/i...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
From TFA: "The sizes and temperatures of these worlds are comparable to those of Earth and Venus"
So size of Earth, temperature of Venus? Tell me how that is habitable? Venus is something like 900 degrees all the time.
Do any of these planets have an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere like Earth? That's a very important discovery (specifically oxygen); because oxygen is highly reactive and must be replenished to hang around in large enough quantities. To my knowledge, only life cracks the bond of oxygen free via photosynthesis.
Life is not for the lazy.
Because that would be really l33t if Anonymous was able to hack a planet.
So in other words, scientists discover three planets which are "potentially habitable" in that we don't know enough about them yet to completely rule out the possibility.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
So how do we get there?
What the hell is an 'ultracool dwarf star'? Is that cool as in awesome? This is a brown dwarf. Not really a star at all. It has as much in common with Jupiter or Saturn as it has with a star. It is not large enough to fuse (standard) hydrogen into helium. Which is why it has that weird 2MASS designation based on the 2 Micron All Sky Survey instead of stellar catalog number like say Gliese 581 which is a real dwarf (or main sequence) star. Our star is also a dwarf star ffs. A yellow dwarf. 2MASS was a 2003 infrared sky survey that was searching for brown dwarfs like this one.
As far as the orbiting planets' ability to support life there is quite a bit of doubt as to whether even a red dwarf, which is a real star, allows for life supporting planets. So a planet orbiting a brown dwarf is probably even a more improbable location for life at least as we know it. Also if it is orbiting a brown dwarf is it really a planet or just a large moon like Titan?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
with Cardassians but without Kardashians.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."