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First Other Solar System discovered
The first solar system other than our own has been discovered
only 44 light years away. Its planets are Jupiter-sized and its
discovery suggests that solar systems such as our own may be commonplace
in the Universe... potentially providing a fertile ground for extra-terrestial life.
The large size of the system's planets also invalidates all current planet-formation
theories.
I find it completely amazing that we can see these three planets (calculating size, year, distance from the center of their solar system), yet still don't have a complete grasp on the classification of Pluto!
/. community should name them, seeing that the scientists will probably use some naming scheme such as S503-x-311, S503-x-312 and S503-x-313. What kind of names can anyone else out there think of?
I say the
I vote for Bill Gates I, Bill Gates II and Bill Gates III seeing that they are all full of hot gasses.
Sure, they have had articles about finding these Jupiter sized planets, but this is the first time several have been seen revolving around one sun.
I think it's the first time a solar system has been declared. If this is valid, a LOT more study will be put into checking it out, and we will know a lot more "after the dust settles"
Extrasolarix perhaps?
if the lack of information in the article surprises you, you obviously aren't familiar with the bbc. really awful journalism..
I say the
I vote for Bill Gates I, Bill Gates II and Bill Gates III seeing that they are all full of hot gasses.
There's plenty of hot gas bags around to name these planets after. Innermost can McNelly. Second one is twice as big, call it Ellison. The third one is the biggest hot gas bag of all -- Gates of course.
It seems to me that the reason for that would be that Jupiter size planets in 3 day orbits are far and away the easiest to observe. As the sensitivity of our data increases and our observation times increases, I feel confident more solar systems similar to ours will appear.
Doug
This is talked about in the sci.astro FAQ. The bottom line is that stars are not for sale, at least, not in such a manner that your name will appear in any official catalog. You can certainly do whatever you want with your money, but don't expect to find your name by grepping through the Tycho catalog a year or two down the line.
Uhm...
Size seems to be correct in this case especially since we don't know what they're made of...
Supposedly they can determine the volume of the planet in question, but without knowledge of the materials how can you possible determine it's mass?
Please explain your statement a bit more...
There's just a big mirror out there; we're just seeing the reflection of our own universe! The planets look to be the size of Jupiter only because the mirror is a bit concave.
So if I call there at 3:00 in the afternoon, do you think they'll be awake?
Don't laugh at me!
Well duh, it was only a matter of time before we finally found another solar system. I just hope we finally are able to make contact before I die. I mean, is there really anyone out there who really thinks there isn't life somewhere else out there in this vast universe of ours?
If there is x infinite planets how can you prove that there are y finite habited planets? With this logic how can you ever say, "ok they're no more habited planets?" You can't! Obviously you're misinformed on the definition of infinity.
No. *Most* of the extra solar planetary systems have had multiple members. Even the first, the weird system arround a neutron star had multiple planets.
I'd very much like to see where you got this information, as I do not recall "most" of the extra-solar planetary systems having multiple planets.
I think a capital S should be used with Solar in the sense of our Solar system to denote that it is the system of Sol. Other solar systems should have a lowercase s.
Unfortunetely the example of this usage that comes to mind right now is Holocaust/holocaust. The Holocaust (capital H) is the slaughter of Jews and other minorities by Nazis in WWII while a holocaust (lowercase h) is any such slaughther.
Maybe if you got a lot of rocky planetesimals in a solar system and then the star blew the gas off early you might be able to form large rocky planets. However, I really doubt you'd get a large rocky planet this close to the star via this mechanism since most of the planetesimals in orbits that might hit the planet would be a lot more likely to just get sucked into the sun.
Anyway, while I'm not about to say that they can't be rocks and have to be gas giants, I would accept bets and give very long odds.
I think that the theory to which they are referring to is the thought that large gas giants (like Jupiter) tend to form at large distances than solid, rocky planets (like Earth). Two of the discovered planets are closer to the sun than Earth is.
Also, large planets close together tend to disturb and destabilize each others orbit. Three-body systems are very unstable; four bodies even more so.
More info on 3-body problems:
Or, maybe, Dennis Rodman's?
Allright. This is _not_ the first multi planet system discovered outside of our solar system. There were 3 planets discovered around the millisecond plusar PSR 1257+12.
It also is not the first time a planet has been discovered around a sun like star (as some people are posting). There is a planet orbiting 51 Pegasai (a virtual solar twin).
How they know it's a gas giant is a whole 'nother story which involves the size of the planet (as determined from the doppler shifts of the star).
Also, for the record, no one has ever reliably actually _seen_ a planet. They only see the doppler shifts in the star.
Once both of those are known, a simple calculation of FORCE=MASS*ACCELERATION will yield the mass.
That's not quite right, as the acceration measured is tangental, while the force is linear. You can't simply plug in and get an answer.
Better. :)
| Its planets are Jupiter-sized and its discovery suggests
| that solar systems such as our own may be commonplace in
| the Universe... potentially providing a fertile ground
| for extra-terrestial life.
there seems to be an implicit assumption in this statment in
that for there to be life on other planets, that it must be
like our planet, and that the life must be like us. but this
is a big assumption. you can't assume that life will have to
exist in a temperature range in which humans can survive, or
that they have to be carbon based, or even that they have to
have solid physical bodies like us. where there is water,
fish develop, where there is land and air, land creatures
develop. if there is a gaseous methane atmosphere, perhaps
it is not even concievable that it could support any sort
of human life, but it might very well support some sort of
Gaseous Beings that resemble clouds intsead of solid-mass
like creatures like we ourselves. are humans so limited that
they can't imagine a lifeform that is unlike themselves in
composition?
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
All this is true. It is all _possible_. But there is the distinct possiblility that all intelligent life (i.e. life that we will be able to find unless we find some way to travel faster than the speed of light) will be carbon-based and should dwell in the "habitable zone" of a galaxy (between Earth and the area half way between Mars and Jupiter). There is quite a good book laying this out called "Searching the Cosmos. Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life"
Its actually more *likely* that other intelligent lifeforms out there are *not* carbon based, or like ourselves.
That's not quite right, as the acceration measured is tangental, while the force is linear. You can't simply plug in and get an answer.
Every body moving in a circular orbit has acceleration towards the center of rotation (the star in this case). For circular paths, it is equal to the tangential velocity squared, divided by the radius. So, if you know the force, velocity, and radius, you can get the mass.
Not true.
For example, let current x = 2a, and let y = a.
Now, let dx/dt = 2 and dy/dt = 1.
The limit as x approaches infinity of y/x is 1/2
You _cannot_ see these planets.. that's impossible due to the light the star is pouring out!
What they have done is that they see that the star is twitching back and forth in a manner witch suggests that 3 planets in these particular orbits circles the star.
Yo must observe a star continously in several years to see these very delicate moves.
Interessting though is that NASA is planning in the far future (2020) to build a gigantic telescopes witch actually can _see_ Earth-like planets orbiting stars in 50 lys distsnce. the project is called PI, Planetary Imager.
Much the same resolution and quality witch we today see Pluto and Charon.
- Henrik
"Confirmation of what we've suspected for a long time (that is, that life not only exists elsewhere in the Universe, but is abundant) would be a bit more than "neat." :-) It would force us to re-evaluate our place in the grand scheme of things, and it would hopefully unite us in ways that would allow usto put some of our more petty differences aside."
It is my earnest prayer that that is what would happen. If we as a world cannot live together in harmony, how can we engage in the multinational effort needed to build great intersystem spacecraft, journey to the home worlds of these fellow travelers in the universe, and snuff them out?
Its not impossible. We just don't have any telescopes large enough to overcome the angular resolution problem.
Theta (angle of smallest resolution) = 1.22 * wavelength (nm) / diameter of your telescope
The problem is that at 40 ly, the angular seperation between the star and the planet is so small that it would take a very large telescope to be able to resolve them independently (the problem of seeing the very small magnitude planet next to the star is a minor problem as you can simply integrate the measurements over a long period of time).
In the mean time I'm going to go make a few Xeroxes on our non-Xerox copy machine. While I'm there I really should wipe my nose with an aftermarket Kleenex...
The Holocaust (capital H) is the slaughter of Jews and other minorities by Nazis in WWII while a holocaust (lowercase h) is any such slaughther.
That is, unless you happen to be a victim of one of those other holocausts...in which case I'm sure you'd be offended at someone lowercasing you (as if your suffering was any less great).
I'd like to see you support this. Hydrocarbons are some of the most widely occuring complex molecules (we have discovered them in many nebulae already).
Life is simply a series of chemical reactions. Carbon will bond with almost anything, and at very low energy costs.
The only other element which could provide carbon's capabilities for bonding would be silicon.
sadly.. I agree... we can't even manage to communicate with the next most intelligent species on earth... let alone teenagers.
They or we are doomed... Klatu Barada Nikto
*snif*
Have you even looked at the data confirming the existence of planets around other stars? It's actually very straightforward and easy to follow. There is NO way this is just camera vibrations, which is why no scientist (the most skeptical type of person around) is disputing the validity of these discoveries.
But they're like, really long lines. Their IBM cards had 2^80 columns, not just 80, and their whole mentality about programming has followed from that.
How do I know? Wait'll I take my hat off, baby.
Heh!
The past discoveries (about 9 of them!) are VERY well supported. They are NOT camera vibrations. Dude, get off your sister and pass your thoughts through a shit filter before you post them!
For circular paths, it is equal to the tangential velocity squared, divided by the radius.
But planets don't orbit stars in a circular path. Even approximating a circular path can give you dramatically incorrect results.
Maybe I am just mistaken, but I thought one of the biggest reasons that all of our gas giants were farther away than all all of our rocky planets was because of the influence of the Sun on the formation of gas giants. Maybe I am way wrong here, but I seem to remember this from college astronomy.
/.
Anonymous and very new to
True story: astronomynow.com reported an orbital
plot with three highly elliptical orbits, especially for the outermost (ringed ) one. You can find the article & the plot at astronomynow/breaking/990415planetsx3/index.html.
Whatdoes this do to your calculations?
regards,
jdholsinger@saber.net
Get a fast enough ship, about .999 lightspeed, get there in a couple years, have some sex with some alien women, go back home to Earth and meet your grandchildren that are older than you.
Get a fast ship going about .999 lightspeed and you could make the trip in about 2 years. Of course, your family would be dead when you got back.
Then I wish Balmer would crash into Uranus.
Check this page out -- we're building UFO's!
6 apr99_1.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop1
You people are so cute ..
*pinches cheek*
the colony would still be very dependant on the motherworld
Uhhh...what would it be dependent on the "motherworld" for? Water? Oxygen? Minerals?
Besides, what happens if there is a galaxy wide disaster...having lots of colonies in the Milky Way wouldn't help one bit.
What's more, who cares if humanity becomes extinct?
Only the one neutron star has been found to have more than one planet. and even with that. they aren't sure if those planets were prexisting, or results of the stars 'death'
Yeah, but the energy costs...! Then again, maybe not: to paraphrase Heinlein, once you escape Earth's gravity well, it's pretty easy sailing and speed is cheap.
:-) And probably nothing would beat the rush of waking up and realizing that this means a) you survived and b) the ship's computer has identified a planet as being inhabitable...
But I'd rather see them do more work on 'suspended animation', so to speak. So the trip takes 400 years. So what? You'll be asleep the whole way.
Want to help look for proof of life in outer space? Check out http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ and http://www.setileague.org/ for two ways that you can use your computer at home to speed the search.
Did you notice the date on that?
:)
S503-x-311? Sounds like the naming conventions
used in certain.. uh.. binary usenet newsgroups.
Coincidence?
I think its sortof foolish for people to believe that our planet could be the only one suitable for life. Finding life elsewhere would be "neat" I guess, but it would be no real suprise to me. Finding life that we could communicate with (we can barely do that on earth today) would be extremely difficult. We are the first "intelligent" life on earth (that we know of). The closest 5 billion galaxies could have just plants and insect type creatures. Could even find creatures big as the earth itself (wouldn't that be scary). I think it would be easier to find ways to communicate with life on earth that trying to find life on other planets we can communicate with.
in 1492 the europeans found what was to them
a 'new world', full of 'alien beings'.
then they went over and slaughtered them
all and used the land for european agriculture.
if you want to meet aliens, go knock on your
neighbors door who you havent talked to in 15 years
and say hello.
And orbiting the biggest hot gas bag, Gates, is a small, extremely dense moon named Ballmer. This moon has an extremely erratic orbital motion. It's spin axis constants flips from side to side depending on it's interactions with Gates, McNelly, and Ellison. Recent unexplained motions by the moon have led scientist to strongly believe that a fourth major planet (tentatively named Linus) must also exist.
What is interesting is that the moon is believed to have an atmosphere compose of hydrogen sulfide, an extemely foul smelling gas. However, despite the presence of an atmosphere, no signs of intelligent life has ever been detect on Balmer.
Finally, while the planet Gates exerts a high level of influence on the moon, the moon has no influence on the planet. How the moon got to it's present position totally mystifies scientists.
Another poster was skeptical of these findings saying that so many of them can be attributed to things like "camera jitter" and such. Well, as I just said this is not the first planet that Marcy has found around other stars. He's been doing these experiments and getting good results for several years now. His experiments have been repeated and so far nobody has found any problems with them. I've come to accept that at the worst some of Marcy's extrasolar planet claims may wind up being disputed, but some of them are almost certainly planets. We're past the "camera jitter" phase in trying to come up with problems in the observations that Marcy is making.
Now, as for "invalidating all current theories of planetary formation" -- this isn't necessarily true. If Marcy is right this probably will bury all the theories which were in existence prior to his finding extrasolar planets. However, we've known of the existence of extrasolar jupiter-sized planets tightly orbiting other stars for a few years now and the shake-up in the theoretical community has already occured. There are now models out there which can account for this kind of star formation. One model that I know of suggests that many jupiter-sized gas giants are formed in the early solar system. As the solar system evolved there is a transfer of angular momentum between the orbits of these stars and the gas and dust and crap still remaining in the protoplanetary ring. The result of this angular momentum transfer is that the gas giant closest to the star will spiral into that star, then the next gas giant in line spirals into the star, and so on, until the gas and crap in the solar system is blown out of the system by the star and this process stops. When the process stops the solar system is left "frozen" in whatever configuration it was in. If a gas giant had nearly wound up plunging into the sun, then you'd see a gas giant in a very tight orbit. If, on the other hand you'd just lost a gas giant into the sun then the next one in line will have only started to spiral in and you'll see something similar to what our solar system looks like. It also makes the current results of this system of 3 gas giants, with one of them tightly orbiting, not too surprising and it might even be commonplace.
Unfortunately, I don't have a reference, but I saw a seminar on this theory and found it intriguing, and it would explain the existence of solar systems like this one and like ours. I don't think that this theory is necessarily correct, but just to point out that the damage to theories of planetary formation have already been done and that people are working on other theories which can explain what Marcy has been observing.
http://www.extrasolar.com/planetsearch.html seems to be a pretty good page of links. The first link on this page will take you to Marcy's extrasolar planet page at SFSU which is pretty much the authoritative source.
It's COMPLETELY foolish! Have we found the "edge" of the universe yet? ... And what is the "edge" of the universe? At what point does the universe end? I don't understand how people can think in such 3 dimensional terms.
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
Not sure.. I've always though of "a sun" as any star with planetary bodies in orbit of it. This comes from the many science fiction novels and television series which depict planets with many "suns".
The same is true for "moons". There is "the moon" and then there is "a moon". Saturn has several moons, but "the moon" circles earth.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I know I have read about the discovery of Jupiter size planets as long ago as 1997. More interestingly later findings seemed to suggest that while the larger planets might be discernible there was the possibility that smaller earth size planets might also be present.
I read about a technique call interfereometry in some scientific magazines that may allow for finding earth size planets surrounding distant stars. The technique would use arrays of smaller mirrors or detectors to simulate a larger single unit. Also, a smaller subset of the array could be used to go out-of-phase to cancel out the radiation of the parent star and make the remaining objects easier to analyse.
They'd use spectroscopy and doppler-shift to gain additional information on composition and motion.
Anyone know what techniques they used for the discovery? A URL to a paper?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
If you watch the Mos Eisly cantina scene in Star Wars: A New Hope, you see a person wearing what looks like an Apollo astronaut suit, complete with US flag :)
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
Too bad it's "only" 44 light years away. :)
They use Exchange. That's why they haven't made contact yet! ;>
The further back we look, the more we look back in time... That's what I always kind of liked about the whole thing. :)
I hope, without the shadow of a doubt, to live long enough to be left alone by these aliens... Probing me all the time... I tell ya...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
For those of you who (like me) can hardly find the Polar Star, here's a nice constellation-browsing site:
http://www.stargaze.force9.co.uk/.
-Lars
I think you're wrong on this one. IIRC, the discovery of multiple planets around a neutron star was retracted. They made a mistake in their analysis and failed to properly take into account the motion of the Earth....
In fact, the tip off in the neutron star case was that one of the "orbits" they discovered was remarkably similar to the size of the Earth's orbit. After making the proper corrections, the evidence for the planets disappeared.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
Marcy et al have detected all their planets spectroscopically. That is, they look for subtle changes in the doppler shift of the central star in the system. So far, none of the planets detected have been observed in any images (that I know of).
As for interferometry, this technique has been used by radio telescopes for decades, but doing this kind of thing with optical telescopes is still in the experimental stages. But basically your information is correct.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
There should be some interesting names from mythology for these planets. One is incredibly close to the star - I'm not an astronomer, but how is it that it is not ripped to shreds? How about Icarus? Or is that not impressive enough a mythological figure for a planet?
The one 4 times the size of jupiter sounds interesting. I wonder if it radiates more heat then it receives.
So, do extrasolar planets get names, or are they going to be Ups Andromeda I, II, and III?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
There are 9 planets in our own system. Only one has life. Now we've only conclusively found 3 planets in this new solar system...I'm amused that the scientists are shrieking, "eureka! We are not alone!". Just because there is a giant rock somewhere orbiting an energy source doesn't mean that life has a decent chance of existing there. Also, isn't there a reason the largest planets are gaseous? (I really don't know the answer). Because if these planets are truly gaseous, how will life exist there? I s'pose they could hover in the clouds, like in Empire Strikes Back...
tim
I say we honor the truly great of our community:
Linus Torvalds
Commander Taco (Man, I would love a planet named that...)
and Meept.
InThane
I think its interesting that they kept saying that three "jupiter-sized" planets were around the star, when in fact its three jupiter-massed planets. Without knowing what they're made of (which they can't do yet -- can't get spectral readings from stuff that close to the star AFAIK), they can't really say what *size* they are.
As gas giants seem to be of the same general origin as stars, but without the mass or energy to sustain or start a fusion process, I'd think it'd be a lot more interesting if these jupiter *massed* planets were (because of their proximity to the star) actually much smaller, but more massive solid planets, or at least more substantially solid planets.
Seems that would tell us something that we don't know -- how common rocky planetary formation happens.
If they were balls of gas, wouldn't the heat and proximity of the sun cause the gas to escape the atmosphere? I remember something about hydrogen escaping our atmosphere into space when it gets charged by the sun's energy.
Maybe these planets are much like Mercury. Who knows, the cooler side may be able to support life. Imagine those hideous Doom characters duking it out on such a radioactive mining planet.
So why is everything so quiet? This discovery adds to the evidence that planet formation is a lot easier than we thought. Which in turn gives credibility to scientist's best guess at the "average spacing" between advanced life forms: 200 light-years.
But paradoxically this is bad news. Think about it. If we had starships that traveled at a tenth of the speed of light, we would go out and find more good planets eventually. Then that colony does the same thing. So you get this expanding sphere of settlement. And if *we* can do it, it's sure possible the aliens can too. See the problem yet?
David Brin wrote about this and even mentions an even easier scenario. Just make robot spaceships that can go out and find materials and reproduce at a much faster rate. If there is just *one* such original probe, then within three million years there would be one at *every* star in the Galaxy.
So why so quiet?
The planets and all the stuff on/in them were created on days Bleem through Florp (inclusive). Then, on Xyzzy, nothing happened.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Ten gallon hats haven't got anything to do with any sort of liquid measurement. In fact a typical ten gallon hat probably wouldn't hold more than a single gallon.
The name derives, IIRC, from the spanish galon, which was a braid that was used for decoration on the hat.
Now the five gallon gloves and seven liter boots are a different story....
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Hmmm... all Gas Giants eh? Anyone else here read Varley's Steel Beach? Yikes!
STFU about slashdot bias.
...um, almost anything is better than the indiscriminate use of the word "galaxy" in SF (Prize example: Goddard's Alphaville, where Lemmy Caution tells someone that the "other galaxies" are reporting civil disturbances also. Must be some communicator he has there...)
As for "Terran", the wimps will probably change the name of our planet to the more ecological "Gaia", and we will be "Gaians", a name that doesn't exactly trip off the toungue. There's a transvestite warlock who uses that term 'round these parts...Not good to look at, but a militant feminist...
teleny, friend of cats.
So many of these things have come and been disproved as just camera vibrations or whatever. I'm waiting for the dust to settle and some reliable facts to come out before I worry about it.
There are a number of other planetary systems
n cycl.html
that are likely, and one that has been known
but not exactly.
The known system is 55 Cancri, it has two large
planets.
The other "likelies" are Lalande 21185 and a bunch
of pulsars. Lal 21185 has at least two likely
companions that are detectable, but they are long
period orbits (est. 5.8 and 30 year orbits) so
they will take longer to confirm.
The only reason this is getting news is that both
the SFSU and AFOE teams concur on the system. I'm
not dissing on either team, they have both done
insanely cool work that is shattering and
rebuilding our understanding of planetary
sciences. The SFSU team, headed by Marcy and
Butler, have discovered or confirmed the majority
of the extrasolar planets that are known, and
continue to release new results every couple of
months.
For a great resource, check out the Extrasolar
Planets Encyclopedia at: http://www.obspm.fr:80/departement/darc/planets/e
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
I seem to recall that more than one system has been discovered with more than one planet. I think it was a neutron star.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Okay. I must have missed the retraction.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
The reason why this is likely to change a lot of planetary formation theories is due to probabilities. You are absolutely correct that the galaxy is a very big place. And with a couple hundred million stars, if a particular type of system has only a tiny chance of being formed, it probably exists in the galaxy somewhere. That _somewhere_ is the key.
This system is only 44 light-years away. If planetary systems are rare, the chances of there being two such systems (ours and the newly discovered one) within only 44 light-years of one another would be -- pun intended -- astronomical.
Because we found another such system so close to us after looking for only a short amount of time (we have just recently developed the technologies necessary to look for such systems), means that such systems must be very common.
And that is not what conventional theories have been predicting.
Uhh.. say what?!? Sol is the name of the sun. I can't speak to Latin but it's the Spanish word for Sun and I'd bet it's also the Latin name. Latin is a language that's a lot older than the term 'solar system'.
Planetes
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promo Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitl
Because "world domination" sounds a bit like understatement in this aspect.
.sig: SEGV
I once tried to comprehend astronomical distances, but it only made my head hurt. However, 44 light years is not so bad. Let's see, Hitler's Olympic game speech must be on the way back by now; it should arrive in about 25 years.
Incidently, cnn.com reported today that astronomers using the Hubble telescope have identified something that is 13 billion light years away. Try to comprehend that distance! (without the use of any mind altering substance, of course). Furthermore, suppose our universe was just an atom in the fingernail of some alien beast...:)
B ut the Sennsitivity is still lacking to see Jupiter.
I'm glad to find something closer to our solar system - all thos gas giants on 3 day orbits were starting to make the chances of life elsewhere look less and less likely.
er, I could have sworn I've heard the exact same thing in a Star Trek movie... I agree wholehartedly about the religious dogma thing, it's brainwashing, plain and simple.
Whatever this system is, it's not the first.
A good overview of extrasolar planets may
be found at http://www.ph.adfa.edu.au/e-mamajek/ex o.html.
I wonder which day GOD created these worlds?
And did He build a firmament above them as well?
I eagerly anticipate the tripe I'll hear about
this in the local xtian media.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
How is this discovery "further proof" of your nutty fairy tales?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
If you assume that life on the earth is a result of chance and evolution, then if it could happen once, it doesn't seem so absurd to think it could happen elsewhere.
On the other hand, if you believe that the earth was created by God, and if you believe that man was created in God's image, then there is really no reason whatsoever to assume that he created other "intelligent" (now there's a vague term) life.
So the real question is not whether there is "intelligent" life on other planets; rather, the question is how those other planets (and this one) were made. The question is how man came to exist.
Personally, I prefer not to make the wild and contradictory leaps of faith required to believe that I'm a product of evolution.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
First, why should we take the earth as the basis for the whole universe? We have 8 (or 7, if you don't count Pluto...whatever) other planets right in our system that don't have life. On that basis (which I'd say is pretty slender) we could make a better argument that this is the ONLY place with life.
Secondly, no one (well, not me anyway) is suggesting that there positively isn't life of any sort anywhere else in the created universe. God certainly could do this; the question is whether he has done so. We are unlikely to find out in the next couple hundred years.
if he gave us dinosaur bones to dig up and ogle at, why not some intelagent [sic] life to play with also
As I said, "intelligence" is a vague term. Dogs are intelligent, and we play with them. I think that satisfies your question. But I think you're really asking whether God created beings that are like man somewhere else in the universe. Of course, he could do such a thing. But for various theological reasons I doubt you want to hear (correct me if I'm wrong), I seriously doubt that he did so. And it's not our place to question why he did or didn't do something.
anyway, i don't want to be an only child
As with any siblings you do/don't have, that's really up to your parents. So too with God. Our liking/not liking the idea of being unique in the universe really has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether we're unique in the universe.
I know of no reason to think that we're not.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
How many lines of code a year do they produce?
--JT
One of the results from all these searches that I would think would be most interesting is the number of stars that apparently _do not_ have planets (within the limits of resolution, of course) relative to the number that do. I've never seen that talked about in any of the popular press reports or even the general articles in Nature or Science. Perhaps the astronomy literature deals with the question.
By now, with so many of these systems known, shouldn't we be able to start taking stabs at the statistics of solar system formation, at least for Jupiter-sized planets and up?
Anyone know?
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Funnily enough, in one of my favourite SF series, the term "Terran" was used in a mirror universe where we've all been turned into a slave race. It was spat out even more harshly than "hu-mon".
:)
But I do like the "What makes you think you can have an empire" comment below..
Kris.
Win a Rio (or join the SETI Club via same link)
"Jupiter-sized" planets at about the equivalent orbits of Venus, Earth, and Mars does not make a similar solar system. It might make a planetary system.
The theory for the beginning of our solar system uses the assumption that the more dense materials coagulated into the inner "rocky" planets, where as the less dense gases coagulated into the outer gas giants. This new planetary system seams to put this theory on its head.
And, life as we know it would not exist in such a planetary systm, since no Earth sized planet could exist at the proper orbit with these large planets forcing their weight on their neighbors.
So to say this new planetary system is like our own, is not a fair statement. IMHO.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
It would force us to re-evaluate our place in the grand scheme of things, and it would hopefully unite us in ways that would allow us to put some of our more petty differences aside. The promotion of global peace and brotherhood would IMHO be the greatest impact that a discovery such as this would bring about. Since we'd know once and for all how insignificant we are on a universal scale, there would be more propensity for us to work with each other, rather than against.
I don't think this is the case. The reason that the world does not have "peace and brotherhood" is not that people are not being nice to each other. There are serious political, economic, philosophical, scientific, and moral issues that divide us, and the existence of life elsewhere will do nothing to solve them. We will still have power-hungry dicatators, overreaching governments, impoliteness, and all our other problems.
The main impact of discovering non-sentient life would be biological. It would allow biologists to do true comparative biology, and discover whih features of life are essaential and which are merely accidents of Earth's conditions.
Now discovery of and communication with sentient life would be literally the most important event in human history. Just the scientific and cultural exchanges that would take place would be incredible. But there is this little thing called the speed of light, and until someone proves Einstien wrong, none of will actually see non-terran life. Even these three planets are too far away for us to ever go there.
Hey, can I play this game? :-)
You have an urn and an infinite set of marbles labeled 1,2,3...infinity.
At 11pm you put marbles 1-10 in the urn and take out marble number 1.
At 11:30pm you put marbles 11-20 in the urn and take out marble number 2.
At 11:45pm you put marbles 21-30 in the urn and take out marble number 3.
And so on.
At midnight how many marbles are in the urn?
First of all, IIRC there were about four plans on the drawing board for more advanced, space-based telescopes. Many of these would use optical interferometry to get better resolution, much as is presently done with arrays of radio telescopes. This does *not* allow you to detect fainter objects - it _does_ let you see details more clearly in objects that you _can_ see, though. The idea is that we'd be able to distinguish the image of a planet from the image of the star it orbits using telescopes like these. IIRC a proof-of-concept system was being set up on Earth by linking two conventional telescopes in adjacent observatories.
The telescopes won't go out to Mars. IIRC, they were just going a reasonable distance away from _Earth_, so that the glow of sunlight reflected off of us wouldn't interfere with their measurements as much. I don't remember exactly where they were going to be placed.
I agree that the results produced should be quite interesting.
Are they balls of dirt?
What?
The inner one is almost certainly rock, as gas would have boiled away long ago (a planet orbiting that close to our sun would receive 350 times as much light per unit area as Earth).
OTOH, maybe a Jupiter-like planet's gravity well would be deep enough to keep it in.
I have questions about the equipment they are using and such, but the link dosn't answer much.
At least some of the planet-detecting experiments that produced results checked the doppler shift of stars' spectra, looking for periodic oscillations in how quickly it was moving towards/away from us. A regular oscillation means that it is being tugged back and forth by a planet orbiting it. This technique only works well for relatively large planets orbiting relatively close, which is why Jupiter-sized planets and larger are the kinds that are being detected.
I vaguely recall reading about another technique that actually looked for wobble in the star's position directly, but I could be mistaken about that.
This is usually up-to-date (within a week). Try http://ast.star.rl.ac.uk/darwin/planets/ .
It contains more useful information than most of the other extra-solar planet pages I've seen.
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
I'm not sure that it would be a good thing.
Star Trek, as an example of popular culture, paints a pretty picture of the future. The reality of Earth history is that primitive cultures rarely survive contact with advanced cultures.
The discovery of ET life would probably result in the creation of a large number of whacko cults and disrupt traditional religions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Oh great. And I was quite happy with the astrophysics society not having to be politcally correct.
If humans were to ever set up a colony in another "planatary system" and used solar panels, whould we have to change the name to stellar panels instead? Or maybe Proximus Centari panels?
Solar system sounds good to me.
to die, knowing without the shadow of a doubt, that we are not alone.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
cje is correct. "Sol" is the name of the star we call our sun. "Sun" is a generic term which can be applied to any star, but when we refer to "the sun," we refer to Sol only. So to call any other star system a "solar system" is a misnomer; there is only one solar system, and that is ours.
There can, however, be any number of planetary systems (or, actually, the preferred term, "star systems").
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
1) first extra solar planets? Hardly.
2) first extra solar multi planet system?
No. *Most* of the extra solar planetary systems have had multiple members. Even the first, the weird system arround a neutron star had multiple planets.
3) First with hot Jovians? No. I remember reading about those years ago.
4) First to be directly observed? No. No mention of direct observation. If they had, there would be some clue as to how a jovian mass planet survives that close to a star.
5) First planetary system arround a sun like star?
Possible. Vega is a planetary system still being formed. The neutron star system is obviously nothing like ours. I don't recall the rest.
...time to go check out sci.space.science,sci.astro, and alt.sci.planetary for some real information.
There's more than one pulsar system. PSR1829-10 was retracted. PSR1257+12 most definately was not and is considdered confirmed with multiple planets. (as much as any can be considdered confirmed. No extrasolar planets have been directly imaged)
See http://www.public.asu.edu/~sciref/exo plnt.htm
That's what it's not the first of. Ok so it's the first extrasolar planet. And it's not the first extrasolar multi-planet system. It is something. The neutron star systems don't tell us much about "normal" planetary formation so it's more significant than it sounds.
The press just got it wrong. What else is new?
Life can pop up anywhere that the right conditions form. But there are a few general rules, there's only so many elements that can serve as the molecular base of a living creature. Carbon is one and silicon is another. Silicon based life forms could exist places carbon based animals would die very quickly. For each planet type there's only so many variations you're goingto get. On a terrestrial planet you've going to have creatures that in some way are like our own. Physiology may be different but mechanics are going to be similar. On gas giants such as Jupiter I would assume there could be animals that float in the atmosphere, sort of like arial jellyfish. Deep space or airless planetoids would likely be places silicon based life forms would spring up.
There's plenty of possibilities, afterall life as we know it is only a few coherent patterns.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Part of the problem is that those arrangements of gas cloused are so far away no–one really knows what is going on. We can't see it too well, and can't conduct any experiments. It's also in a different zone of time than ourself (albeit but a few dozen years).
Cheers,
Joshua "I should have used dc to calculate the number of years so someone wouldn't humiliate me" Rodd
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
...but you could have read about this yesterday (beating the "Strict Press Embargo until 10 am April 15") on memepool. Hey, self-promotion is my middle name :-)
And, life as we know it would not exist in such a planetary systm, since no Earth sized planet could exist at the proper orbit with these large planets forcing their weight on their neighbors.
What if one of the bigger planets had an approximately earth-sized moon?
Did you read the article? Where in there did anyone say they we have evidence of extraterrestrial life? Nowhere. All we (yes, I AM an astrophysicists...theoretical though) are saying is that our Sun is not alone in having a system of planets. System of planets != life on other planets. Not yet anyway.
Better example, less touchy subject.
It is standard practice to use Galaxy when referring to our own Milky Way, and galaxy when talking about galaxies in general.
It IS true that we cannot see other planets, it isn't due to the amount of light that their star is emitting. IIRC, the gas disks around beta Pictoris and Vega were both imaged using a "stellar block" (I don't know what the actual name is, but, if you've seen "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", you get the idea). They have ways to block the light from the star, and see the dim objects in their immediate neighborhood. As someone else mentioned, you are diffraction limited to angular sizes much greater than the planets span at such distances.
Plug and chug on this, then...
Newton's third law... For every force, there is an equal and opposite reaction force.
When two gravitationally bound objects orbit each other, they are both orbiting the common center of mass. As measured from the center of mass, M_1*r_1 = M_2*r_2 where the r's are the radius of the orbit. If the orbits are elliptical, it doesn't matter. The center of mass of a two-body system doesn't change position with respect to the two bodies, the product remains constant. As one body moves farther from the center of mass, so does the other one, to preserve the equality.
Stellar masses, although difficult to measure, can be found indirectly from spectral observation. The wobble in the stars position indicates the distance of the star from the center of mass, while the distance to the planet is directly measured. Thus, you get the planetary mass.
You know, you should read Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz". Gives you an idea of exactly what we might be preserving after 2000 years... As I recall, one of the holy relics was an incomplete shopping list.
So I wonder if there are any moons on those Gas giants. If one is 2 times the size of jupiter and has a similar year to Earth than maybe it's warm enough to have an atmosphere... that is if the giants gravity doesn't suck it right off...
:)
neat, I can hardly wait for FreeBSD/Mac/Windows versions of the SETI@home clients... all three machines will be searching
While I do agree that this combination (three gas giants) is quite odd, it hardly "invalidates" modern formation theories.
Why? Because scientific theories are designed to predict the average cases - what should happen in a theoretical closed system with specific characteristics. The problem is that the universe is hardly this kind of system. Rather, it's a very real, huge system that is subject to every kind of improbability you can think of. This is what it means to say that "if it's not forbidden, it's compulsory". Thus, there is no reason to believe that there will be no exceptions when you apply such a theory to the real universe; the only way to know if it's a good theory is if these 'odd' ones are rare enough.
So far, we only have two planetary systems on which to test them, and while our solar system can very well be the 'odd' one, it's just as likely that the new one is the 'odd' one. Or that both are 'odd'. Or that none is.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Perhaps they should take a non-linear approach to theorizing about the creation of planets?
"However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist."
Stephen Hawking
Are these actually gas giants?
Are they balls of dirt?
What?
I have questions about the equipment they are using and such, but the link dosn't answer much.
I'm also glad to see there is other stuff in teh universe!
Laugh, it's good for you!
I was going to point out something like this too. Glad I read down.
For all we know, the planets were captured; the near-star jupiter mass formed from the star; any number of other things. It's bad possibility to invalidate a theory without something to replace it. It's good however, to go about replacing a theory in light of an oddity. It's no suprise that one of the first planetary systems we found would be composed of large masses.
As an aside,
I do hope that if we meet aliens we call ourselves "Terrans" from the "Sol" system.
Terran sounds much less wimpy than Human or Earthling.
We can have a kick-ass "Terran Empire" with a cool logo, instead of a wussy "human federation" or whatever.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Unfortunately for many scientists, there's one popular formation theory that is not invalidated by this discovery. But they won't be talking about that one as this is further proof that it may be more Law than theory.
Genesis 1:1
Matt
I'll ignore your disrespect,
Looking at the small picture it's not so much an advancement in creation theory proofs, as much as a step or two backwards for the other theories.
Looking at the big picture, when all others step back and one remains still, who's the volunteer in front?
Cheers,
Matt
Doug is right here. The astronomical community have hundreds or perhaps even thousands of stars under observation for planets. To detect a planet, the star must be observed to wobble throughout a whole orbit of the planet.
This is why we are observing a lot of 'hot Jupiters'. It only takes a few days to observe the star through a whole orbit of the planet, and like Doug says, these are the easiest to observe, discover and confirm.
As time passes, you will notice that planets which are discovered later orbit further from the parent star. In five to fifteen years, you'll be seeing reports of discoveries of extrasolar Jupiters at Jupiter's distance from the star, because it takes that long to get the data for a complete orbit. Thirty years of data are needed to spot planets at Saturn's distance.
These are what astronomers are looking for: extrasolar equivalents of Jupiter and Saturn around stars like the Sun. These would be solar systems like our own system, and they will then use the sensitive instruments that will doubtless be available in thirty years to examine these systems for Earthlike worlds.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
You don't necessarily need a very large telescope to achieve fine resolution. You can achieve the same effect by observing the same object with two widely-spaced telescopes, then combining the observations with a computer. This technique is called interferometry, and astronomers have been doing this for a while with radio telescopes. A group of telescopes is being constructed in Chile so that astronomers can perform interferometry at visible wavelengths.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
I was getting tired of this solar system anyway.
BilldaCat
Actually, the name of our moon is Luna, not 'the moon'. Which is the reason we have 'lunar eclipses' and 'solar eclipses' - not solar eclipses and moonar eclipses. :)
We just call it the Moon, like we call our sun the Sun. It's name is Luna, just like the sun's name is Sol. And it's all greek (or is it latin?) to me.
Mur!
Maybe we aren't behind.
.... which will mean for one hell of a party when we all start meeting each other. :)
That sounds silly, I know, but consider: if NOW in our timeline, measured from the beginning of the universe, is about the average time it takes for intelligent life to develop and reach space-faring capability, then there are a bunch of races, scattered across the universe, just now developing the ability
but how could we handle relations with another species of life, when we can't even live with those of another "race" here on earth.
Ok coupla days ago Rob had the 27 million dollar fusion reactor story...combine that with some serious cryo research into cold sleep and perhaps my kids will get to be in the first ramscoops out of the Sol system...provided of course that >we can maintain a civilization long enough to create the daughter colonies that would prevent humankind from becoming extinct or causing its own extiction...does anyone take the long view anymore??
use Signature::Witty;
say for instance we colonize europa (prolly the best choice actually we KNOW there is water ice there) the colony would still be very dependant on the motherworld. so any disaster, natural or not will still take out the in system colonies. leaving them without the resources to make the tools that make the tools that make things go. so really the survival of the race depends on leaving the cradle.
use Signature::Witty;
Sol, the Sun, is our's. Not their's. They can't have a "Solar System"
It's just like the Moon. Other planets have moons but "The Moon" is our moon.
This is pretty exciting though, I heard on E-Town that they are building a really wide telescope that uses lot's of little telescope and some computer magic to make them act like a super sized telescope and they are going to launch it into space like Voyager. By the time it get's to Mars they are expecting it to show visual light pictures of planets around other stars. In addition to that, they are going to have photospectroposcyasdf(sp?) equipment on board that can sniff what's in the atmosphere on those planets, that way they can tell if there are the right chemicals to produce life, or if we're lucky they might find smog and pollution.. I think those planets might get a bit close to that star but it's exciting, none the less.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Well I think the name Sol is accually derived from the word Solar and not the other way around. So Solar describes sun/star entities in general
ok, here's what i know. current theory amoung astronomers states that a star system will either form (a) a binary system or (b) planets. In the case of a planetary system developing, large gas-giant type planets are MORE PROBABLE to form farther out from the star. Probable. The galaxy is a big place. damn big. too large for the human mind to easily comprehend. the universe is filled with innumerable galaxies. there is no way to accurately predict what will happen in the formation of a new system, and the law of probability says that if it is physically possible to happen, then (considering the size of the universe) it probably has happened. Don't be surprised at anything they find in space.
-Andy Martin
-Andy Martin
If y'all don't like me, blow me.
hahaha i love your comment
Interesting theological question. I'd probably throw these extra-solar planets in with their parent stars, which would put them on the fourth day. As for the firmaments on them, well, I would imagine they would be included, too.
Though, from your statement, it sounds as though you don't expect the Christian media to believe the discoveries?
A comparable situation would be if the US were to ever go completely metric. What would we do with terms like "inching along" and "milestone" and "10-gallon hat"? Whenever something comes along which radically changes the worldview or the "normal" way of things, grammatical artifacts always result.
The Terrestrial Planet Finder is a NASA mission slated for the 2009-2012 launch range which will interferometrically detect terrestrial-massed planets... the mission has a preliminary web page here. Even more excited, the mission beyond TPF, called the Planet Imager right now, would actually put a 50x50 pixel spread image on the planet...
And I do so love using the word "interferometrically"...
Many of these would use optical interferometry to get better resolution, much as is presently done with arrays of radio telescopes. This does *not* allow you to detect fainter objects - it _does_ let you see details more clearly in objects that you _can_ see, though.
Let me qualify that a little. An interferometer with two small mirrors placed 100m apart can give you as much detection capability as a 100m diameter monolithic telescope. The big hurdle for these interferometers is to null out the light from the parent star so they don't get blinded...
The Keck Observatory in Hawaii is one of the prominent ground-based interferometers. I believe they're set to do large baseline interferometry pretty soon. As for the NASA mission, it's called TPF for Terrestrial Planet Finder and is slated for 2010 or thereabouts. Present mission is to base the instrument in a solar orbit at about 1 au. A Jupiter sized (5.2 au) orbit was considered for a while, but the flight times were pretty long. The Eurpoeans are also playing around with a mission called Darwin.
A-ha, thanks for pointing that out. I was just racking my brain for term which didn't use a unit of length...
This is kind of off topic, but.. I heard an advertisement on the radio about a year ago, where they offered to name a star after someone in return for a donation to research causes.
Anyone know more about this? I think I would be interested.
You're a suburbanite.
This is apparantly the fist time they've found _multiple_ planets around a single star, which apparantly qualifies as a solar system (that's not quite the definition of solar system that I've always used, but I'm not exactly the expert here). To me it sounds vaguely like a sports commentator saying: "...next up to bat is John Smith, who has hit more home runs on wet Tuesdays during his second at bat than any other player in the history of the game!"
I'm eagerly awaiting the day they can find something Earth-sized around one of these stars. Such things are sure to exist, whether we actually find them or not, it would just be nice to be able to point to them sometimes. I don't think that there's anything particularly unusual about the huge gas giants they've been seeing. After all, that's about the best they can manage to resolve, so that's what they're going to see if they're out there. The conditions that allow them to detect these planets may also make these planetary systems unusual. So, it's no great surprise that these discoveries throw the existing theories of planet formation on their heads, especially when you consider the fact that all we've had to form theories with is our own system.
I think it's even more foolish to let your wishes for extraterrestial life lead you into believing that they just have to be out there. Don't mean to pick on you, but I hear a lot of people say things like "Well, it's just crazy to think we're the only life in the universe!" No, at this point, it's not crazy. We are in a severe data drought regarding ET life, and until we get some hard facts, it should suprise you to no end to find life elsewhere. You can get jaded about ET life later! :)
It is mental illness masquerading as faith
It seems to me that faith is simply a more acceptable term for mental illness. What is faith, after all, but a mindset that asserts that one believes in something for no good reason, and bases one's actions on this groundless belief? Strange, indeed. And I'm right with you on saying that the elimination of this concept would be a plus for the race.
There you go. When I read that this newfound system invalidated current theories of planet formation, my initial reaction was "Man, I hope so! What kind of theories could they possibly have based on one system?!?"
Ummm, it doesn't mean that such systems must be very common... it means they might be.
And the Internet is this large thing we are on now, whereas an internet is any large WAN.
It's the first time there's been confirmation of _multiple_ planets orbiting the same star (not incl. the sun).
:)
wts bd bout bng gky?
;)
--
Anyhow, AFAIK, they can't actually see the planets themselves. What happens, is that the star wobbles as the planets orbit it, kind of like with a binary star only to a lesser degree. Astronomers can see this with spectrascopes via the doppler effect (red and blue shifts in the spectrum). And with the calculated mass and revolution period of the orbiting objects they can figure out the distance, revolution period, number of bodies, etc.
Now, the planets observed (one way or another) all seem to be a) very massive; b) close to the star; and c) close to our sun. This is just because they are the easiest to be seen from our vantage. Bigger mass means more wobble. Close to star means more wobble. I don't see this as any difference to any theories. It is just easier to see the oddballs. But I am no expert so who am I to say?
Also, just because a planet has a greater mass than Jupiter doesn't mean it is a gas giant. Like I said they can't *see* the planets in any sense of the word AFAIK. It could be a really massive rocky planet. Besides, I wouldn't know how a planet can keep it's atmosphere so close to the sun. It would probably be blown away by solar winds (I am probably WAY off here). Look at Mercury which has an extremely thin atmosphere.
I am no expert so I don't claim anything I said as true it just a summary of what I read some time back. Please correct me.
Also, any place that keeps track of extrasolar planetary systems? That would make a nifty slashbox!
--
The article mentioned discovery of other, Jupiter sized planets around distant stars, but states that this is the first discoverd "system" which they define as having multiple planets.
And 15 minutes ago you "knew" we
where alone in the universe.
"Men In Black"
>- an AC wrote:
Supposedly they can determine the volume of the planet in question, but without knowledge of the materials how can you possible determine it's mass?
It is quite easy to determine the mass of a body with out knowledge of its composition. By using doppler and spectral shifts, one can gauge the tangential acceleration of the body. Additionally, we can, by its very interaction with the star, determine the force exerted to maintain the orbit. Once both of those are known, a simple calculation of FORCE=MASS*ACCELERATION will yield the mass. Now, all that remains is a way to determine composition and size.
Here's a link that has a cute orbital simulation, copies of the paper, and where to find Ups Andromidae in the sky. Much more info for the interested.
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/afoe/upsAnd. html
Enjoy,
Butler and Marcy (the guys who discovered these planets) are using doppler shift almost exclusively. The pages and pages of data they have is incomprehensibly nutty.
As to where they do their work, I believe they spent a lot of time at Keck (Hawaii) in 97-98 and were in several sites in Australia beofe that (though I'm not sure).
Well, the way I see it, we've got 4-5 billion years in this solar system. That gives us a good amount of time to get our eggs out of one basket (Earth).
1. Let's hit Mars. No issue there, with technological advances, we can colonize that little piece of rock. NASA's working on it, right? (wink)
2. From there, we can try Europa. Get a little farther out.
3. THEN we can move to get out of this two-bit corner of the universe!
Actually, it's
:)
"And 15 minutes ago you *knew* we were alone on this planet"
--
Well I think the name Sol is accually derived from the word Solar and not the other way around.
No. This is sort of like saying that the word "tube" is actually derived from "tubular."
So Solar describes sun/star entities in general
The word you want is "stellar."
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Confirmation of what we've suspected for a long time (that is, that life not only exists elsewhere in the Universe, but is abundant) would be a bit more than "neat." :-) It would force us to re-evaluate our place in the grand scheme of things, and it would hopefully unite us in ways that would allow us to put some of our more petty differences aside. The promotion of global peace and brotherhood would IMHO be the greatest impact that a discovery such as this would bring about. Since we'd know once and for all how insignificant we are on a universal scale, there would be more propensity for us to work with each other, rather than against.
Another positive effect of a discovery such as this is that it would sound the death knell for young-Earth biblical creationism as practiced by Christian fundamentalists. If it sounds like I'm being snide, I'm not; this would be immeasurably positive for the human race as a whole. Religious fundamentalism is the greatest threat that this world has ever known. It is mental illness masquerading as faith, and anything that helps drive it out of the human psyche once and for all would be incredibly beneficial.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I've always thought this is cool, too. When I drag my scope out into the backyard and cruise around the galaxies in the Virgo cluster, it's kind of thought-provoking when distances are considered: when the light that you're seeing actually left some of those galaxies, dinosaurs still ruled the Earth. :-)
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I do not think that anything (as far as I have read - I have just recently come to Christ) in the Bible absolutely rules out the possibility of other life created in the universe by the Lord. I could be mistaken about this - anybody have a different opinion?
Well, not creationism in general, but the literal young-Earth kind. These are the people who believe that the Earth (and, as a consequence, the entire universe) is only 6000 years old. They take objection to the idea that there is intelligent life on other planets, since the only intelligent life that was created (in their view) was Adam and Eve, since that is all that the Bible mentions, and the Bible is completely and wholly inerrant (again, in their view.) Furthermore, since the fall of Adam and Eve from grace (the "original sin") is what they believe to be the cornerstone of Christianity, they object vehemently to the idea that humanity is not alone among the stars. (Trust me, I've run into more than one of these folks.)
In any case, I am very sorry you feel that true Christianity is a "mental illness".
My comment pertained to religious fundamentalism in general, not to any particular religion. There is nothing wrong with religion at all, so long as it is constrained to contexts where it is appropriate, and I don't mean to offend. However, I stand by my opinion that rabid fundamentalist beliefs are dangerous.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Star Trek, as an example of popular culture, paints a pretty picture of the future. The reality of Earth history is that primitive cultures rarely survive contact with advanced cultures.
.. just life elsewhere than Earth. Even the discovery of microorganisms on Mars would go a long way towards destroying the Earth-centric view of the Universe that a lot of people have.
Maybe, maybe not. However, I'm not (necessarily) talking about the discovery of a race of Vulcans or anything so advanced
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
The bottom line is that the search for life has not ceased, even in our own Solar System. There are plenty of other places where astronomers believe that life could exist; some go so far as to claim as there could be life on Io or Venus, or even some of the Uranian and Neptunian satellites! These claims are a stretch. Nevertheless, it is foolish to discount the possibility of extraterrestrial life in our neighborhood, let alone the universe.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
.. the term should be "planetary system." The name of our sun being Sol, the term "Solar system" describes our planetary system. This being the case, "extrasolar planetary system" would seem to be the best phrase to describe something like this.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
If humans were to ever set up a colony in another "planatary system" and used solar panels, whould we have to change the name to stellar panels instead? Or maybe Proximus Centari panels?
Well, it's an interesting question, and we could come up with several other examples. When we establish a colony on Mars and are describing an honest, straightforward colonist, would we describe him/her as being "down-to-Mars?" If we found a new, inhabitable planet with a sizable moon and set a spacecraft down on it, would we call it a "lunar" landing?
Over time, any language is going to pick up words (adjectives, specifically) that are tied to a specific place or object, inadvertantly or otherwise. The only point I'm trying to make is that "solar system" in this context is not strictly correct, and yes, I am picking a nit (as I admitted in the subject line.)
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
>
Why would it have to be Earth sized? Why not bigger? Or smaller for that matter. Life on this planet was a fluke. A billion to one chance that something went right creating just the right environment. Maybe had the earth been bigger or smaller, the situation would not have been just perfect, and we wouldn't be talking here right now.
The thing is though, a billion to one oppurtunity in the universe is really good odds. It's when we start to narrow it down to fit our wants that the probablity goes down........: Well, it has to be within a certain distance of us........it has to be a form of life we can recognize......how evolved it might be.
Like it's been said many times, the chances that there is some form of "life" out there is probably high (no one really knows). But whether we will find it now, later, or ever is the question.
-Sarkis-
Q.
"What is the avg. population of the Universe?"
A.
"Zero."
x = infinit planets , y = finite habited planets
y/x = 0, as the limit of x approaches infinite.
"Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact, or fact are transmission errors."
Stupid transmission errors.
x = number of unihabitant planets, growing at a
rate of some number s.
y = number of habited plantes, growing at a
rate of some number t.
As is right now, x >> y, and increasing. Therefore s >> t.
If x grows at a faster rate than y, the limit as x approaches infinite of y/x is still approaches 0.
-Sarkis-
"Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact, or fact are transmission errors."
I kind of like my current weight. If I'm going to visit another planet, I'd rather not have to change my weight by more than a factor of two or three! :)
enough to have an atmosphere...
I think that all these planets are too close to the sun, so their moons wouldn't be able to retain an atmosphere if they are earthsized. :( Alas.
Lets start the invasion plans now! We need some dramatic Classical music, some spaceships on spindly legs.....and some guns that fire sparks!
Get them before they get us, wot ho!
Interesting though....new Star Wars movie.....new planetary system discovered!.....Maybe in a galaxy not so far away.
The universe is a canvas on which our imagination draws pictures.
Damn that's profound.
Ciao!
"Tell me your problems......I could do with a laugh!"
if we have "The Moon" and other planets have "moons"
then wouldn't we have "The Solar System" while the others would have "solar systems"
sematics is sematics is something else
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
i know which one i would pick
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
what makes you think you can have a empire
don't you know that the whole universe is about to be bought by Microsquish
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
guessing from our system 1 in 9 planets has life, then taking the assumption that their is a three planet system every 44 light years. their are billions of light years of space to fill so
(3 * a lot) / 9 =still a lot
even if there is a fraction of a fraction of those livible planets supports intelligent life, that's a decent number of species to find
i hope we find intellegent life in space, because we sure haven't found any on earth
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
assuming God created all life on earth, he did not waste any space. everywhere life could exist on earth their is some plant, animal, bactium, or something
now taking earth as the basis for the whole universe, why wouldn't God pack life every where else also
if he gave us dinosaur bones to dig up and ogle at, why not some intelagent life to play with also
anyway, i don't want to be an only child
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
the discovery of anything is likely to create a large number of wacko cults
that's why they are wacko
waco + k = wacko
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
the middle planet ranges roughly form the distance of venus to the distance of earth
so if the star is g type like our own it is with-in the livible region, it would have one heck of a season change though
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
i wasn't accually dimmising the possibility of life in the rest of our solar system,
in fact it would help to prove my point
my intention was just show that it is very likely that there is other life in the universe
intellegent or otherwise
(mother(you) -> hamster) and (smelt(father) = smelt(elderberries))
I believe Marcy is quoted as saying that 95% of
the stars being observed have not been found to
have "Hot Jupiters". I forget which article it
appeared in: NY Times or Washington Post or some
other one I read. It would suggest however,
a 5% SUCCESS RATE in finding "Hot Jupiters" in
local "average" Sunlike stars. Given all the
other, non-Hot Jupiter planetary systems
(The Solar System would NOT be detected using
Marcy's technique), One can safely conclude that
a higher percentage of Average Stars will have
Planetary systems of one sort or another, perhaps
even MORE than stars without planetary systems.
I think it would be fascinating to find life on other planets; however, as far as I see it, this would not sound the "death knell" for Christian fundamentalist beliefs (i.e., creationism). I do not think that anything (as far as I have read - I have just recently come to Christ) in the Bible absolutely rules out the possibility of other life created in the universe by the Lord. I could be mistaken about this - anybody have a different opinion?
In any case, I am very sorry you feel that true Christianity is a "mental illness". It is true that false Christians have caused innumerable hardships on the world... but those people are wolves in sheep's clothing. True Christianity recognizes the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ - and the Truth of the Bible.
The reason that we are detecting these (to use a technical term) wacked out planets is because there is a selection effect for them. That is, we tend to detect large planets, with highly eccentric orbits close to their stars. This just has to do with the fact that the detector technology is not good enough yet to detect the Doppler shifts caused by the smaller planets. So, there is a chance that there is a large percentage of stars out there with planets, but we just can't see them yet.
p lanetsearch.html
As for the formation point, there are several attempts at forming (no pun intended) a viable theory for Jupiter sized planets forming. It's actually quite interesting. A good site to go get this stuff from is right from the horse's mouth:
http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~gmarcy/planetsearch/
That is Darcy's (one of the guy's who discovered a lot of these planets) page at SF State.
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
Well.. perhaps it has just started? It could
very well be possible that the development of
intelligent life takes a quite definite amount
of time after the Big Bang. Stars have to develop,
explode, forming heavier elements, develop again,
this time perhaps with planets - it's a (relatively) well known process, and the lifespan
of potentially "useful" stars lies within a quite
small interval. You spoke of 3 million years to colonize the entire galaxy. Fine, but when a civilisation has developed that technology one
million years ago, when mankind was still creeping around in caves, it's still a 66% chance that we don't know of them and vice versa.
either way, it's staggering!
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
Well, they could have a Solar system if they also :-P
had a sun named Sol. Who are we to tell aliens
what they can call their star? It's just like my
friend Joe, who also has a cousin named Joe. If
there were bodies orbiting them, we could call
both systems "Joeular Systems".
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools