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Astronomers Discover Alien World Hotter Than Most Stars (vanderbilt.edu)
Science_afficionado writes: An international team of astronomers has discovered a planet like Jupiter zipping around its host star every day and a half, boiling at temperatures hotter than most stars and sporting a giant, glowing gas tail like a comet. From a report via Vanderbilt University: "With a day-side temperature peaking at 4,600 Kelvin (more than 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit), the newly discovered exoplanet, designated KELT-9b, is hotter than most stars and only 1,200 Kelvin (about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than our own sun. In fact, the ultraviolet radiation from the star it orbits is so brutal that the planet may be literally evaporating away under the intense glare, producing a glowing gas tail. The super-heated planet has other unusual features as well. For instance, it's a gas giant 2.8 times more massive than Jupiter but only half as dense, because the extreme radiation from its host star has caused its atmosphere to puff up like a balloon. Because it is tidally locked to its star -- as the moon is to Earth -- the day side of the planet is perpetually bombarded by stellar radiation and, as a result, it is so hot that molecules such as water, carbon dioxide and methane can't form there." The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
Simple enough : we get massive amount of data from scoped research as a side dish, and a trove of nameless PhD who've been told to publish or perish. I say : publish anything remotely interesting.
But c'mon man, can't you find it a least puzzling and a new onlook on space the fact that the frontier between a star, a comet, and a planet becomes that much more hazy ?
Can't you marvel at the idea of giant ball of proto plasma weezing around a sun with a trail behind ?
And that all these findings are due to serendipity ?
I diagnose you, sir, with a broken dream organ.
It's hot, so chances are if there are any purple alien chicks they're all nekkid.
If everyone thought like you did, we'd still be in the dark ages.
You never know what research will find, but because of all that research of no known future application was done, we have a world of computers, medicine, worldwide communication, and a multitude of other wonders.
The ad hominem attacks will prove that I'm right and that this finding is utterly useless.
Wait, so every time someone calls you names, that means your arguments become correct? I call your ad hominem and raise you a non sequitur.
Every end has half a stick.
With a day-side temperature peaking at 4,600 Kelvin (more than 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit)
I think they finally found the homeworld of AMD processors. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If those numbers are correct and "density" refers to the mean density over the entire planet, then that would make this the largest planet ever discovered at 7.6 times the radius of Jupiter. As far as I can tell the record was HD 100546 b at 6.9 times the size of Jupiter. Odd that the neither the article nor the summary mentions breaking that record. In light of that, I have a suspicion that someone reported the numbers incorrectly and that it's only 1.8 times the mass of Jupiter. Maybe I missed it but I can't spot the actual mass or size in the article anywhere.
For certain AC's, yes actually, but no cares what an AC thinks. I've been having to deal with "ad hominem" each time I question an article that involves scientists, almost creepily so like I'm being watched by a certain person that doesn't have the balls to reveal himself/herself. The problem is, because of recent political decisions, anyone skeptical of a scientific claim almost automatically gets shunned without any actual relevant counter-argument (almost always "ad hominem"; perhaps, "non sequitur"). These people that get offended blindly support a field they clearly know nothing about and only take the time to respond in a way as to suggest they view the particular field as an ideology and therefore as a personal attack rather than as a science that doesn't need faith to defend itself, just people able and willing to respond with an ounce of intelligence. "I'm skeptical and here's why..." has become the new "I hate all [insert race]."
Maybe because its one small step to understanding the universe and our place in it, and without all those potentially useless steps we'd be sitting in our cold caves eating dinosaur sushi. Maybe it will lead to nothing, or maybe our understanding of stars and planets will one day lead to better power sources (fusion/fission) or superconductors or communications or a new series of Survivor. Perhaps you think research works like Civilisation V, where you can view the tech tree and plan which advances you are going to get in the future, but it doesn't. Faraday didn't think- 'I'd like my ancestors to watch The Kardashians and heat up their popcorn in microwaves'. - he played around with potentially pointless experiments in the full knowledge that perhaps all he'd get out of it was a machine that made pretty sparks, but with the hope that it would lead him to something huge.
And apart from all that - what do you think it actually cost? A few university researchers using a telescope that was already built?
Honestly, Slashdot has turned into the playground of the Luddites. All that are left are the political stooges and a few of us lost geeks wandering around wondering what happened.
Seriously. Look at the icons near the title.
Your first issue is that you have conflated science and engineering. Your second issue is that you know little of either. Your ultimate issue is that you think like you write, and your writing is incoherent.
You're also wrong about almost everything you say, but I'm not interested in pig-wrestling today.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
In the long run we're all dead.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The planet is heated by SPARC processors.
Just there as a cool logo
Actually you are just a moron. Sorry to be the one to let you know. If you were qualified to be "skeptical" you would write a rebuttal paper and submit it for review. That goes double for anything involving modeling.
Why don't you cure your skepticism with some facts.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
No kidding. This is obvious about a Sun Macro system.
I wonder if it was formed the same way. Something really big must have impacted that star prior to the start of the fusion reaction.
AC, I would mod you up if I could. Platforms for healthy skepticism are very rare these days. All you did was ask a simple yet genuine question that should be allowed to remain for intelligent discussion. Unfortunately, 99% of Slashdotters take astronomy to heart, turning it into an almost religion and therefore start throwing stones, only to make those in politics we are all unhappy with right now, look no worse. The truth is, most people here are techies only and actually know very little of the subject they are trying to defend.
In a written only medium its can be very hard to separate a real troll from a sceptic who is just rude. Therefore if someone genuinely wants to ask a question they should probably be careful not to pitch it in a form that looks like a troll. Also don't ask the same question in every single science post.
I mention that people are afraid to question because of looking ignorant and being paired with those in politics. You site an aip page on global warming, which has nothing to do with astronomy or anything I've said. You're the actual moron and doing nothing but proving my point. IF you are capable of doing anything but name calling and misplaced logic, fee free to stop by again. I would love to hear a counter-argument involving the ACTUAL subject at hand, astronomy if you forgot and my two-cents covers a lot more than global warming in this particular thread, to which I don't dispute at all. So, what would the point of a rebuttal be in the first place? OP and I argue its value, not its validity. But as a side-note, if alluding to global warming is all you have in your arsenal for every time someone questions research, then it's just you and everyone else in the logical fallacy club trying to not look ignorant, as if political correctness has anything to do with science; it's a social issue and tell your people to not bring their baggage into science. Your "Think of the children" mentality won't get you far in any real science community. All your moronic millennial culture are capable of doing is turning facts into trends with absolutely no understanding of how it works, save a Bill Nye episode on Netflix and whatever Facefarm throws at them every morning. I would NEVER want to cure skepticism. No one that cares about science ever would. Faith in science is an oxymoron and the ideologies it's creating, as if a religion, are very dangerous. You are supposed pursue knowledge, you don't just let it be handed to you.
"The statements on this site represent the views of the author and are not positions endorsed by the American Institute of Physics." That's at the bottom of your sited page by the way. I spend 7.5 years in college and you spend 7 seconds googling. Congrats.
This is first time I'm seeing it. Looks like a genuine concern to me, and I probably wouldn't be "all over it" if it wasn't for the much worse responses that actually do seem to prove AC's point. A lot of name calling and no real substance.
Actually, given that it had all the definitions of a troll I would say that the 'good answer' to name calling ratio was pretty good. *shrug*
Not me, I'm going to live forev
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My apologies for assuming that you were a more specific brand of moron.
Frankly you're not really worth the time to do more than insult you. There's not really an argument to be had about whether or not you see the value in any particular bit of research. There isn't actually any way to value pure knowledge either.
This particular paper does not present new techniques so far as I have read, but analyzing spectroscopic data is a fairly interesting topic on its own. I assume you've read it, of course. Must be old hat to you, right? More generally, studying exoplanets provides information on what types of star systems are able to be formed, and gives us some insight into the formation of our own solar system. If you're searching after a practical application however, again, the fault is with your own understanding: that's not the goal of research.
'Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.' — Feynman
(blah blah millennials blah blah political correctness blah blah my age is greater than my IQ)
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Seriously /. editor, what the f**k is that? Is "exoplanet" that hard to use? Even the cited link use the correct term.
Elok
I find it pretty far fetched that this research would lead to us having a new type of semiconductor for example.
But that's a problem with your lack of imagination, not a problem with people trying to advance human understanding of the natural world.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I wonder what would happen if you were capable of formulating arguments without insults? Let's go to the Neighborhood of Make Believe (ding ding): "If you were qualified to be "skeptical" you would write a rebuttal paper and submit it for review. That goes double for anything involving modeling. This particular paper does not present new techniques so far as I have read, but analyzing spectroscopic data is a fairly interesting topic on its own. I assume you've read it, of course. More generally, studying exoplanets provides information on what types of star systems are able to be formed, and gives us some insight into the formation of our own solar system. If you're searching after a practical application however, again, the fault is with your own understanding: that's not the goal of research."
You'd think an educated human being wrote that. Why would that have been so hard for you to do in the first place?
Or better yet, just shorten it to: "Studying exoplanets provides information on what types of star systems are able to be formed, and gives us some insight into the formation of our own solar system." But instead, you decided to go with the third grade name calling tactic. Why should I or any mature adult take anything you say seriously when you do that?
So you read some slashdot story on a scientific topic until you get to a poorly-written rant which promotes "skepticism", which is a dog whistle for various anti-science types. Complaining about the scientific establishment, questioning the value of research and astronomy in general, and talking up "free thinkers" are the hallmarks of the physics crank. This person does not ask what the significance of the research is, they instead write paragraphs about how the useless the research is. This is not a person seeking to remedy their ignorance.
I'll retract most of my criticism of your scholarship. I do think that your style of writing is poor, and that you might want to get that young-person prejudice looked at. I'm in my 30s and was raised in rural Alaska; whatever qualities you imagine I have are unlikely to be applicable. And yes, I often belittle the intelligence of others on this forum. I'll consider your criticism on that score.
The paper, if you haven't read it, is available on the arxiv. (You may also want some background on echelle spectrometers). It does not go into great detail about the formation of star systems generally; it's focused on the subset of star systems with these "hot Jupiters". These systems are interesting because [1] they're big compared to rocky planets and therefore more easily found and studied, and [2] they're almost the 'default' result of excess stellar material. We would expect Jupiter to form more or less where it is, and then migrate inwards closer to the Sun, gobbling up or ejecting the inner planets as it went. One theory is that it actually started to do so, but then was pulled back by Saturn. It's not extremely well supported as yet, but it's one of the more interesting developments in astronomy in recent years. A critical review from the arxiv.
Generally speaking, the solar system doesn't look like how our models think it should. We ask: why? How much did the peculiar configuration affect the origin of life on Earth? Where else in the universe might we find conditions similarly hospitable for life? This discovery is a very small step towards answering these questions. They are, of course, of no practical use, now or in the future, but there's nothing wrong with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The pursuit of knowledge and confirmation and direct application of physical theories is not valuable to you?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Some people do not have the curiosity level that let's them understand your arguments. They do and/or can not believe in the utility of pure research.
So I'd say you're just pissing against the wind (note for ESL folks: a colloquialism, not an ad-hominem).
sr
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Thank you for the change of tone and finally saying something worth biting into. That's all I ever really wanted. Write like you are doing now next time instead of insults. I like seeing real discussions; I have no need to be right as long you can throw a good argument "punch," but I do have a problem with name calling when we are all adults.
"is hotter than most stars and only 1,200 Kelvin (about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than our own sun." Well, that all depends on where you take the Sun's temperature, or the temperature of any star. They're all hugely hotter near their core, because that's where the fusion is going on--as in 15 million degrees Celsius (or Kelvin, at that temp the diff between Celsius and Kelvin is negligible) at the Sun's core. (The Sun's corona is also much hotter.) I don't know whether the core of this planet is hotter or cooler than its surface, but it's presumably not hot enough to cause fusion. If it were hot enough for that, by definition it would be a star, not a planet.