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Five Possible Life-Bearing Planets Found
devphil writes "Reuters reports that six new planets have been discovered using the gravity-wobble method. Five of them are in the "habitable zone." More details are online.
" Well, they all appear to be Jupiter size class, so are most likely composed of the same elements. The primary elements of Jupiter are hydrogen and helium gas, which combined with an enormous gravity well don't make it very friendly to carbon based life. But five of the six are in the zone that would support liquid water, deemed a life-necessary element.
Aliens were also discovered today on these planets. The extraterrestrial life forms speak with very high-pitched voices and prohibit any sort of smoking.
That would be cool to take a vacation there, too bad they are probably millions of miles away :(
Overheard from Bill Gates:
..."
"Damn, another one
Despite the distant, these planets might be a good place for the next Chinese space expansion and colonisation.
I am SOOOOO not a scientist, so I may be completely wrong. But, even with the existance of water on any of these planets, wouldn't the extreme gravity hinder the development of advanced eukaryotes? What kind of complex structures could evolve in an environment with a gravity far greater than that of earth?
Charlie
I will be following this thread closely, this is so completely interesting to me I can't even put it into words
-- .sig files go when they die?
Child: Mommy, where do
Mother: HELL! Straight to hell!
I've never been the same since.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
how comes all those planets get discovered now ?
did some major breaktrough happen in technology that is used to detect planets ?
The planets themselves might have to be ruled out as possible candidates for Earth-style life, but what about any moons? The moons would have to be pretty large to be able to hang on to half-decent atmospheres, and tidal effects from the giant planet would be somewhat on the large side...
Of course, it would be immensely difficult to detect such objects, but the possibility is still there...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Of course wouldn't Non Carboned Based Life be much more interesting to see. Just imagine a super slimy goo that responded to our radio signals with video streams of what Goo life was like. Goo Sports, Goo Politics, Goo Art, the possibilities are endless.
Life doesn't have to be carbon-based, nor needing water in order to survive. How about a polysilicate kind of life, probably much simpler and primitive than "life" as we know it, but maybe a lot more interesting... (stands more heat, more cold, more pressure, maybe can move by "slithering" around... who knows?) Or how about some gaseous kind of life? We sure as heck don't know anything like that right now, but nobody says gases can't evolve to something interesting, just as carbon does...
When someone says life, everyone inmediately thinks it should be humanoids... it isn't necesarily that way...
I think the concentration ought to be on looking for life elsewhere in our solar system, be it past or present. If we do find life on, say, Europa, it'd be a pretty good indication that the Universe belongs to life. Then we could say that these new planets are likely habitation zones. If all our system's candidates turn out as dead as Salt Lake City on a Friday night, then we shrug and keep looking.
I find it ironic that we live in a "modern" age, complete with space flight, and we can't even work up the energy to send serious missions to the most likely close-by homes of extraterrestrial life. I mean, imagine people looking back at the 20th century and snickering over our "life vs. empty universe" debate when the proof lay so close at hand...
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The article had one interesting thing of note; it said that the planets have the possibility of containing liquid H2O, deemed necessary for life. But isn't it possible for forms of life to exist not dependant upon water. Life on earth is based on water, but these are planets in an entirely different solar system. Who's to say that life there is anything similar (in appearance, chemistry, and so on) to life here on earth. Maybe other possiblities should be considered when we look for life.
-Ort
Since when is water an element? :-) (I know, I know, just nitpicking a statement that could be interpreted different ways...)
Ok yeah I think it is great to find other planets for us to live on. Maybe it would be handy in the years to come. But what I need to know is...isn't every planet capable of life? I mean, yes, for Carbon-based life (such as life on Planet Earth) there are only few that we know of...but what about life forms that we don't know of yet. I would love to find a way to get off this thing they call Planet Earth. If they were giving the public a shuttle to that newly found planet to get check it out, I would be one of the first people to ask to join the flight. But what does everyone else think? Should we go and invade a planet that might have a history of other species? Or should we just stick to what we were given? Who knows...maybe by the 5000's we will be living on other planets that aren't capable of life as we know it...but then again...we could all be extinct by that time.
"I have lost my way in life, because I have lost my mind. I would go and search for it, but I'm afraid of what I'd find
I'm a student at the Uni of Sussex, one of the co-discovering institutions. Maybe I'll get to help vote on a name. That'd be wild.
Shut up me.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
The article talks about some people who didn't really see the planet but detected it through seeing a wobble in the stars they orbit.
To me it seems like our tools are too primitive to make all the conclusions and guesses we've made. Our universe could be 8 billion years old, 12 billion, or whatever. Astronomers just can't agree on that constant (was it Hubble constant?). It's too speculative for me, especially to say what the planets contain, how hot it is, etc. Lots of sentences say "could", "might", "may"... I sure hope we aren't using these kinds of ideas to support even more speculative ideas.
This discovery does have significance, not for the possibility of life on those gas giants, but because it proves that planets outside of our solar system do form in the "life zone".
As some of the news stories stated, only a tiny fraction of the stars have been identified as having a planet. Ten or twenty years will probably be required to detect some of the planets out there, based on the length of their orbital periods.
As for these gas giants... well, it is still possible that one or more of them have a moon large enough to old a decent atmosphere. That would provide a possible abode for life.
Mike Eckardt meckardt@yahoo.spam.com
The procedure relies on detecting a noticable gravitational 'wobble' in the stars they orbit. Currently its only useful for detecting large Jupiter-sized planets.
You stupid fucking asshole. I bet you support the GPL, huh? Communist.
If we disregard any potential life forms not based on carbon and water -- a reasonable thing to do, scientifically, since we have no data points with regards to them -- life on these planets, like life on Jupiter or in Jupiter's atmosphere -- is quite unlikely.
But if these planets are in their stars' habitable zones, then so are the moons of these planets. And one of these moons might, perhaps, be a world with plentiful water that supports macroscopic life.
(Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is widely regarded as the best candidate for extraterrestrial life in our solar system. Although it is outside the traditional 'habitable zone' of the sun, it does have an immense ice covering. Its ocean of ice is believe to extend to around 50km in depth. Beneath this ice, there may be liquid water -- and perhaps organisms living off the geothermal energy generated by Europa's gravitational interaction with Jupiter.)
Bob Kopp
we have to try to reach them.
First off, this is very big news! This could be the first step in moving the human race off-system and into the stars!
But then, *how* should be we use this knowledge?
Of course, we should gather as much information about these planets as possible. At first, all we can do is observe them from afar.
However, eventually, we have send probes. If we send them now, how long will it take before they get there? What should we expect to find? Hell, how should we build/equip the probes?
Then a manned trip. Who here wants to bet we can achieve some sort of faster than light (FTL) drive before the probes reach there destination? What about sending a cryo-frozen colony ship (boy, what an original idea, I should patent that one...)?
Just some random thoughts/questions, hopefully to stir a bit of discussion.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
"No Earth-like planets are likely to be contained in these new planetary systems, Vogt said. Jupiter-sized planets in oval-shaped or
eccentric orbits -- instead of the neatly stacked, circular orbits of our solar system -- would have such gravitational force as to
quickly eject any Earth-type planet, he said."
The planets in our solar system are not perfectly circular; they move in a slightly elliptical fashion (as shown by Johannes Kepler 400 years ago.) Also, conventional wisdom about inhabitable planets states that any such planet would have to be about earth-sized: any smaller, and the gravitational force would not be strong enough to retain an atmosphere. Much larger, and the gravitational field would be so strong as to attract large quantities of passing gas, and end up as a giant gas ball (a la Jupiter.) However, there is some postulation that Jupiter actually might be a brown dwarf (in other words, a stillborn K or M-class star), so conventional wisdom could be wrong in this regard.
You stupid fucking asshole. I bet you support the GPL, huh? Communist.
What the hell was that for? I thought both the question and your response (right up until that line) were both very well thought out. What's the deal with this last bit?
If the measurements were precise enough, I suppose one could figure out whether theres more than one planet at work. Does anybody know what level of precision these scientists have to work with?
I think that the odds of these new planets having moons that harbor life is low, (still non-zero however!) We will probably have to discover a far larger number of these before we come across one that contains life.
:(
:)
Still, this is not the real crux of the problem, these moons could have life on them and we will probably not be able to detect it for THOUSANDS of years. Why? The odds of the lifeforms on those moons being sufficently advanced to have developed radio or space travel or ANY form of technology is about the same of their being life there in the first place.
Why? (The astronomers and biologists amongst us probably already know this) Life on our planet took billions of years to evolve to the point where a civilization capable of technology appeared. The amount of time that we have possesed technology compared to the amount of time that life on our planet existed as nothing but simple prokyarotes is insignifigant. So, if there is life around these stars it is most likely in a very simple form (or so far advanced as to make our current technology equal to the discovery of fire.)
I only wish there was some way that we could go to these stars and check. Alas this will not happen in my lifetime, or even the lifetime of many of my ancestors.
Just thought I would add all that because I can forsee some of the quesions in advance.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
They recently managed to collect some of the light reflected off another large planet in orbit around another star. This planet was very close, but very large, and was composed of, IIRC, magnesium, silicon, and potassium (oxygen was also found in trace amounts, which was the big story with this report), which are all very heavy elements. The fact is, we're not quite sure what makes planets have the makeup they do, but the theory that I'm most familiar with says that the solar wind blows most of the lighter elements (helium and hydrogen, for example) out past a certain region, which is why the inner planets contain heavier elements. These planets may very well be something similar to Earth, or, more likely, a planet composed of terrestrial elements compressed into a form we haven't seen before.
Keep holding out hope, Mulders.
The planets have aliens on them, and they obviously must have computer systems... And -their- systems don't run Windows! They probably don't even have a 0.2% market share in the universe!
At http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/29/space.planet s.reut/ there is a great article about this discovery. They actually discovered 6 planets, 5 of which are somewhat hospitable to life.
Rajiv Varma
The size and composition of these planets effectively rules out Life As We Know It (tm). But, they are deemed to be "possibly life-bearing" because they could contain liquid water. Why is liquid water important? Because it is essential for Life As We Know It (tm), which, as has already been admitted, could not exist there.
What about hyper-intellegent shades of the colour blue? They don't need water!
I wear pants.
SANTA CRUZ, CA--The world's most prolific team of planet hunters has found six new planets orbiting nearby stars, bringing the total number of planets astronomers have detected outside the solar system to 28. The researchers also found evidence suggesting that two previously discovered planets have additional companions, said Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Vogt and his colleagues, Geoffrey Marcy of UC Berkeley, Paul Butler of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., and Kevin Apps of the University of Sussex, England, made the discoveries using the High Resolution Echelle Spectrograph (HIRES, designed and built by Vogt) on the Keck I Telescope in Hawaii. Their findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
The researchers have been using the facilities at the W. M. Keck Observatory for the past three years to conduct a survey of 500 nearby sunlike stars in search of planets. The project is supported by the NASA Origins Program, which has provided both funding and telescope time, and by the National Science Foundation.
The six new planets increase by about 25 percent the number of known "extrasolar" planets, giving astronomers a substantial amount of additional information about planetary systems, Vogt said. One of the planets, HD 192263, was also recently detected by Nuno Santos and collaborators in Geneva, Switzerland, who reported it while Vogt and his colleagues were preparing their paper.
The new planets orbit stars that are similar in size, age, and brightness to the Sun and are at distances ranging from 65 to 192 light-years from Earth. The planets themselves range in mass from slightly smaller to several times larger than the planet Jupiter (0.8 to 6.5 times the mass of Jupiter). They are probably also similar to Jupiter in their compositions--basically giant balls of hydrogen and helium gas, Vogt said.
The presence of a planet around a star is indicated by a telltale wobble inthe motion of the star as a result of the gravitational force exerted by the orbiting planet. Vogt and his coworkers recently achieved independent confirmation of this method for detecting planets when they were able to predict and measure the dimming of a star as a planet passed in front of it.
The orbits of the new planets, like those of most of the extrasolar planets discovered so far, tend to be quite eccentric, tracing paths that are oval rather than circular. One of the planets, around a star called HD 222582, has the most wildly eccentric orbit yet known, carrying it from as close as 0.39 astronomical units (AU: the distance from Earth to the Sun) to as far as 2.31 AU from its parent star in the course of its 576-day orbit.
"It is beginning to look like neatly stacked, circular orbits such as we see in our own solar system are relatively rare," Vogt said.
Interestingly, five of the six planets are located within the so-called the motion of the star as a result of the gravitational force exerted by the orbiting planet. Vogt and his coworkers recently achieved independent confirmation of this method for detecting planets when they were able to predict and measure the dimming of a star as a planet passed in front of it.
The orbits of the new planets, like those of most of the extrasolar planets discovered so far, tend to be quite eccentric, tracing paths that are oval rather than circular. One of the planets, around a star called HD 222582, has the most wildly eccentric orbit yet known, carrying it from as close as 0.39 astronomical units (AU: the distance from Earth to the Sun) to as far as 2.31 AU from its parent star in the course of its 576-day orbit.
"It is beginning to look like neatly stacked, circular orbits such as we see in our own solar system are relatively rare," Vogt said.
Interestingly, five of the six planets are located within the so-called "habitable zones" of their stars. This is the region where temperatures would allow water to exist in liquid form. Most of the extrasolar planets the researchers have studied have turned out to be outside the habitable zone, either too close to their star or too far away, and therefore too hot or too cold, Vogt said.
"These planets are at just the right distance, with temperatures in one case around 108 degrees Fahrenheit--like a hot day in Sacramento," he said.
Planetary systems with Jupiter-sized planets in oval-shaped orbits are not expected to harbor Earthlike planets, Vogt added. In fact, if an Earthlike planet were put into such a system, it would be quickly ejected by the gravitational influence of the Jupiter-mass planet. Vogt noted, however, that if these Jupiter-sized planets are similar to those in our own solar system, they probably have numerous moons associated with them.
"For a planet in the habitable zone of its star, such moons offer the possibility of liquid water and the eventual emergence of life," he said.
In addition to the discovery of six new planets, the researchers gathered new data on four previously known planets. Two of them, around the stars HD 217107 and HD 187123, showed long-term trends in their orbits indicating the presence of an additional companion. These companions, which may be planets or larger objects (e.g., brown dwarfs), appear to be orbiting their host stars in a long period, taking at least two to three years to complete an orbit, Vogt said. These findings are significant because previously only one other system of multiple planets, around the star Upsilon Andromedae, had been identified.
"It will take years of additional observations to work out the masses and orbits of these companions, but the evidence suggests there are a fair number of multiple planet systems out there," Vogt said.
Specific details about the new planets and their host stars are given below: HD 10697 is a G5IV star, slightly cooler and a bit larger than the Sun. It lies 106 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. Its planet has a minimum mass of 6.35 Jupiter masses and a 1,072-day orbit. The radius of this orbit is about 2.13 AU, but the orbit is somewhat eccentric, so the planet's distance from its star ranges from 1.87 AU to 2.39 AU. At its average orbital distance, it lies just at the outside edge of the habitable zone of its star, and is expected to have an equilibrium temperature (due to energy received from its parent star) of about 15 degrees F.
HD 37124 is a G4V star, slightly cooler than the Sun. It lies 108 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Its planet has a minimum mass of 1.04 Jupiter masses and a 155.7-day orbit. This orbit is also quite eccentric. At its average orbital distance of 0.55 AU, it sits just within the inner edge of the habitable zone of its star, and is expected to have an equilibrium temperature of about 130 degrees F. This is the lowest metallicity star known to have a planet.
HD 134987 is a G5V star, 83 light-years away in the constellation Libra.Its planet orbits in a 260-day eccentric orbit. This planet has a minimum mass of 1.58 Jupiter masses. At its average orbital distance of 0.81 AU, its expected equilibrium temperature is a balmy 108 degrees F. It lies well within the habitable zone of its star.
HD 177830 is a K2IV star, about 1,000 degrees Kelvin cooler than the Sun, lying about 192 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. It harbors a 1.22 Jupiter mass planet in a 392-day, highly eccentric orbit. This orbit carries the planet from as close as 0.63 AU from its star to as far as 1.57 AU. At its mean orbital distance of 1.10 AU its expected temperature is about 192 degrees F. The planet is probably within the habitable zone of its star.
HD 192263 is a K2V star lying 65 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. A planet around this star was first reported by Nuno Santos, a Portuguese graduate student at the University of Geneva. Vogt's team has obtained essentially the same results as Santos: a 0.78 Jupiter mass planet orbiting in a 24.36-day orbit. This orbit has a radius of only 0.15 AU, with little or no eccentricity. It orbits well outside the habitable zone of its star.
HD 222582, a G3V star, is a near solar twin, 137 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Its planet orbits in a widly eccentric 576-day orbit, which carries the planet from 0.39 AU to 2.31 AU from the parent star in the course of its oval orbit. This is the most eccentric extrasolar planet orbit yet known. The planet's expected temperature is about -38 degrees F. Its mean orbital distance places it squarely in the habitable zone of its star.
Further information about the planet search is available on the Web at http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~gmarcy/planetsearch/p lanetsearch.html. Information about the NASA Origins Program can be found at http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/ and about NSF's astronomy program at http://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/start.htm.
According to the article, the habitable zone is where the temperature is right for liquid water to form. But how can they tell the temperature there? If Earth had no atmosphere, it would almost always be either too hot or too cold for liquid water. If Venus had a much thinner atmosphere, it could possibly be the right temperature to support liquid water. If they're unsure of the composition of the atmosphere, how can they know liquid water could form on these recently discovered planets?
Granted, we have found these planets, but what good will they do us? Chances are, as stated in a previous post, that gravitational limitations will stop the growth of most things. So, the chance of life is slim. The only other possible use is a refuling station for ships to continue their journey farther out. Todays limits on fuel prevent us from even going there to get refueled. So, for now, these planets do us no great service. However, the future may bring more to bare.
-- "Our job is not to make the incredible possible. Our job is to make the impossible credible."- Jerry Olivieri
At http://www.msnbc.com/news/340436.asp MSNBC has a lot of info on the 6 planets including their mass, period, distance from Earth, and orbital distance.
Rajiv Varma
/Important Stuff: / /Please try to keep posts on topic Wulp, that was a completly pointless comment. You don't need to prove your lack of intelligence by posting totally irrelevant and ignorant rants.
I know this topic is rehashed, but I had to put it in my own words. We have data of what kind of organisms are alive from 1 solar system, our own. We are but 1 solar system in a galaxy of BILLIONS of stars. Then consider that there are MILLIONS of galaxys (just the ones we have been able to see) and it puts our data to shame. There are several other possibilities for life, some life forms may be based on an atom we don't even know about yet. For instance, it has been speculated that Silicon based life may exist, and other forms of life based on other chemicals, and all using our (limited) atomic charts. IMHO we need to actually start trying to find a way to GET to these planets to study them closer before we make speculations on if there is life on them or not.
"Out, OUT! You demons of STUPIDITY!" - Dogbert
What kind of complex structures could evolve in an environment with a gravity far greater than that of earth?
The giraffe would have a hard time evolving, but I don't really see why things on a scale of bacterias would have any problems caused by gravity.
Life on earth evolved in water, where it is essentially weightless, so there gravity would not be much of a factor even for big animals.
But multicelled animals on "land" (if such a thing exists there) would be decidedly flatter in appearance than earth standard...
Well, it doesn't seem like it'll be that romantic. In the article, they quoted the name of one of the planets as: HD 192263. I think part of it has to do with the star it orbits, and another with how far from the star the planet is. *shrug* IANAnAstronomer, so WYSIWYG. :)
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far... -- Le P
What is the "HD" mean? I know it is the "naming convention" for new stars and planets, but what the heck does it mean... Anyone? Anyone?
"Most of my heros won't appear on no stamps..." Chuck D from Fight the Power
of interest. You see our moon has a fraction of the gravitational pull that earth does. They each probably have 4-5 moons that could support life and have decent gravitational pulls. Or am i just too high...
Jupiter-size planets are likely to have interesting satellites... Don't forget that
Jupiter's satellites are probably the most likely
location for extra-terrestrial life in our own
solar system.
Danny.
Is it just me, or does it seem like every last one of the extrasolar planets discovered is jupiter-or-bigger sized? Is this simply because small planets are impossible to detect with current technology (my first guess), or is there some reasoning to the maddness? I've just never heard it stated that we couldn't detect the earth sized ones...
42
video streams of what Goo life was like. Goo Sports, Goo Politics, Goo Art, the possibilities are endless
:)
all together
goo goo goo
talking about goo
my friend too
you would too
goo
yr friend
thurston moore
(j/k)
Before we have the tools to find a second earth.
Back in the 1500's the first great wave of exploration started the coloniztion of the New
World.
Looks like we're on the verge of the second
great wave of exploration. Hold on to your
hats folks, many changes are coming that dwarf
our beloved internet.
Some of them will be good, others, well....
It is more or less correct to state that such a trip is within our technological grasp, human risk factors aside -- but the reasons we haven't done such a trip are more profound than simply budgetary or nuclear weapons treaty issues.
One interesting issue is that of radiation shielding -- as most of you are probably aware, the Earth's magnetic field shields people on, say, the Shuttle from lots of nasty critters. This wasn't the case for, say, the Apollo missions, but those were relatively short -- a few days; the odds that we would get a solar flare sometime during, say, a 3-year trip to Mars and back are pretty high. Shielding from highly-massive ionized particles (stuff in that lower right-hand of the periodic table) is also tricky -- the interesting thing is that up to a fairly large amount of shielding, you end up just "slowing them down" and making them more dangerous to humans than they were before. (If you don't shield, they by and large pass through and knock apart a few things in your body on the way -- giving you, for instance, a higher chance of getting a tumor.)
There are other severe physiological effects to consider, too. Probably the most serious is a degradation of bone material that occurs in a low-G environment -- this is acceptable, sort of, for even up to a year (cf the Mir missions), but a good chunk of the life sciences community would say the risk (of increased chance of fracture, permanent degradation, etc) is unacceptable when you're talking about a several-year mission. Soooo, people have looked (seriously) at artificial gravity schemes -- spinning people around to simulate gravity. These have problems too, though -- the Coriolis force makes your intuition wrong in many cases, plus putting a rotating ring in space (for instance) requires a pretty hefty penalty in terms of the amount of mass you're propelling. (I should mention that I think these problems will eventually be worked out -- tether schemes and small-scale intermittent-use centrifuges look promising. But it'll be a while.)
All of these are surmountable, probably. (And a substantial minority of people have said that the risk factors I mention above are acceptable for a Mars trip -- astronauts are risk-takers, the thinking goes.) My point is just that it's not as simple as it might seem. I haven't even touched on more basic physical principles that make accelerating anything (much less a manned spacecraft) up to some large fraction of the speed of light a very very difficult problem. But this post is more than long enough already. :-)
On the other hand, any planet massing as much as 6 Jupiters is going to have a lot of heat left over from its formation, however many billions of years ago. It'll be warm, plenty warm. What it probably won't have is a solid surface or a liquid sea anywhere within the zone that allows for life as we know it (liquid water between freezing and maybe 250 F). Life appears to be very tenacious, but it probably has its limits nonetheless.
--
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The judge defined the market in which MS has a monopoly as the "market for intel-compatable computers". I don't think the aliens have any "intel-compatable computers". ;-)
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This space unintentionally left unblank.
Actually, the post you replied to before was somewhat amusing. Deserving of the score of 2 that it currently has, probably not more. Your post, on the other hand, was inane. Not because it ragged on Linux. I've seen plenty of posts moderated up even though they rag on Linux. Sometimes they're even funny. Usually in a sort of self-deprecating way. Your post wasn't funny. Doesn't look like you even tried to be funny. You just said something stupid and predicted that you would be moderated down. Didn't take a genius to figure that one out. Owell. I'm done wasting time on this one.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
But what does everyone else think? Should we go and invade a planet that might have a history of other species? Or should we just stick to what we were given?
.. though millions of years ago it may have been a different story) they don't have a chance of evolving to anything more advanced. But who's to say that things on Mars won't change? Perhaps a cataclysmic comet collision or two introduces a massive supply of water that fundamentally changes things on Mars, and maybe that gives the hardy Martian microbes an evolutionary leg up!
:-)
This is an interesting question, and it's been posed many times before.
The most obvious example to apply this to is Mars. Let's say that in a couple hundred years time, we decide to start colonizing and terraforming the Red Planet. So the International Space Agency sends a crew to land and do some initial surveys. They get out, take some samples, and wonder of wonders, they find living microorganisms!
So what do we do now? Do we start terraforming anyway, and begin the production of greenhouse gases to produce a more Earth-like atmosphere that retains more heat from the Sun? Do we do this, knowing that we'll be screwing with the Martian climate and perhaps altering/destroying the history of its native life? Or do we adopt a "Hands Off Mars" approach, and leave, never to return? After all, Mother Nature is at work on Mars, and perhaps we should let things run their natural course. Do we care? Should we?
Maybe single-celled organisms don't matter. One could successfully argue that if microorganisms currently exist on Mars (and that's a really big if
Or what about a thousand years from now, when the International Space Agency's first interstellar "generation ship" arrives at the Earth-like, second-innermost planet orbiting nu Andromedae? (I'm speculating.) Suppose they find amphibious, complex but otherwise unintelligent life forms? Do they turn around and go home? (Probably not.) What if they find intelligent life that has been unresponsive to our years of direct radio broadcasts to them, either for technological or xenophobic reasons?
Assuming that life is not all that unusual (and there's no real reason to assume that it is), the ethics of colonization can get pretty hairy. Things get complicated when you assume that a planet suitable for human colonization would have to be at least somewhat Earth-like, and Earth-like planets have a pretty good track record when it comes to harboring life. Hell, every Earth-like planet that we know about has life on it!
But one sample makes for poor statistics, or so they say. I'm not considering Venus and Mars to be Earth-like here; by "Earth-like" I mean terrestrial (rocky) and covered by plenty of liquid water.
Anyway, plenty of interesting issues.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Unfortunatly, it will be a while befor we find out for certain: even 1 light year is a little far to walk (~9e12km) :(
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Harry Stubbs (Hal Clement is his pseudonym) wrote a *very* entertaining story set on a very fast spinning discus-shaped planet called Meskelin, such that anyone at the equator would experience about three terrestrial gravities, while the poles
ran to several hundred gravities. A human expedition uses the locals (long wormlike creatures) to salvage a polar probe. What makes it particularly fun is the story is largely narrated from the point of view of the Yankee Trader-like Meskelinite Captain Barlennan, whose real ambition is shown at the end of the novel, "Mission of Gravity", in which he masters the hot air balloon(A sequel, "Under", is the cover story for the January 2000 70th anniversary issue of ANALOG currently on sale).
However, my first degree was in Anatomy with distinction, and we used to use ultrahighspeed centrifuges to separate out eukaryotic cell cultures that were still quite reproductively viable after taking the equivalent of tens or hundreds of gravities.
If by "advanced eukaryotes" you're referring to multicellular organisms (all known multicellular organisms with organ differentiation are eukaryotes, not prokaryotes such as bacteria and archeobacteria), then they will be able to handle gravities of at least Jovian-mass planets without having to use unusual structural materials.
Bone is pretty resilient due to the fact that it's a composite of protein and mineral. Chitin isn't so lousy either, and it's possible that a Terrestrial Jovian-mass planet may have life that goes directly from the sea to the sky after using buoyancy organs evolved for rapid depth change underwater to colonize the atmosphere.
However, all known extrasolar planets detected in the Jovian-mass range have been considered as being gas giants just because we don't have any evidence that any planets that big *aren't* gas giants since every known planet orbiting Sol more massive than Earth *is* a gas giant and not a superterrestrial.
Even for the gas giants, there's a hell of a lot of mass and energy available in their upper atmospheres to allow for large buoyant multicellular organisms.
As recently as thirty years ago, we didn't realize most life on Earth was anaerobic bacteria living miles below the surface - and that's where most of the biomass appears to be, as well.
Life is astonishingly resilient, even the carbon based RNA/DNA stuff we find locally. Take for example the complex multicellular multispecies "black gusher" communities found around deep ocean volcanic vents (at pressures well above the upper atmosphere of Jupiter), or the archeobacteria found in volcanic hot springs.
And tidally warmed moons such as Jupiter's Europa may make the "habitable zones" around stars much larger than strictly trying to spot planets. Jupiter itself gives off more heat than it receives from the Sun, thanks to gravitational heating and radioactive decay.
Finally, although the innermost planet in orbit around Sol is in a 3/2 resonance orbit, Mercury was originally thought to be tidally locked around Sol (the same way that the Galilean moons of Jupiter, such as Europa, *are* tidally locked around Jupiter). Even if a Mercury-like planet close to its star might be very hot, it is possible that in the twilight region just past the surface illuminated by the star might be a region just cool enough to retain suitable conditions for life.
I'm not ruling out anything.
MicroSoft(TM): It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
wow... i hate to say it, but your coment trully frightens me. i mean, here we are, on the verge of a discovery of a completely and totally new system of planets, maybe a new system of life we don't even comprehend or being to understand. We are on the verge of great discoveries (or at least, we are on the verge of being on the verge.) And yet the first thing that is thought is, how will thses planets do us a service!
So, for now, these planets do us no great service.
are we trully the locusts of the universe, once we have developed the ability to travel outside of the stars will we travel from Possibe Life-Bearing Planet to Possible Life-Bearing Planet raping it's resources and maybe even eco-systems in the name of a highly touted neo-manifest-destiny?
sir, i fear you.
deus ex machina?
Clusters of smaller planets would most likely be roughly evenly spaced around the star which would negate the wobble. Not to likely that all the small planets would orbit close enough together to cause the star to wobble, but far enough apart that they didn't attract each other and collapse into on larger planet.
Yeah, not only would the tides likely be impressive, you would possibly, depends on whether the moon is tidally locked, have sever tide cycles a day, though each of different magnitudes, and you would probably never get the same pattern twice. Lots of calls for `surfs up' during the day. Mind you, I'ld hate to be the oceanographer (is that the right profession?) in charge of the tide tables:).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
You're right - there could be a few planets further out in the system that have yet to be detected exerting a wobble on the parent star. But multiple planet systems have already been found - Upsilon Andromedae has three planets going around it (found by Marcy and Butler, I think...) in April this year.
The technique is good for very close in, big planets, but not sensitive enough for Eath-mass planets at Earth-Sun type distances. But there are other techniques in the pipeline, such as nulling interferometry...
I think it was a joke from a fellow member of the GPL community: this is the kind of low brow abuse that many people get when they try to explain the goals and purpose of the GPL, and is sent on the same basis that black people in North America and other down-trodden groups began adopting the negative terms for themselves as a form of solidarity.
I dunno - I laughed when I read it, in rueful recognition of an ongoing problem I've faced.
Maybe we could just treat it as such until and unless you have proof the guy is an NBM (No Brow Moron).
= Yours in the GNU World Order
I used to laugh at habitable moons in Science Fiction (Example: 'The Forest Moon of Endor'). Sure, you would have a great night sky there, but it couldn't happen! After all, if you use our solar system for a guide, Jovian sized planets just didn't happen that close to their suns. And, even if they did, high levels of radiation from the 'Van Allen' belts of the super-jovian would make any satellites uninhabitable...
But these recent discoveries show this view to be as short-sighted as a redneck's color vision. Clearly such systems exist, even if they are not common. Of course the only planetary systems we can detect with current techonology include such super-jovian planets, so we still don't know if our own planetary system is 'normal' or not. I suppose it will be fun finding out though!
So the scenario I see is this: Super-Jovian planet located somewhere between the equivalent temperature zone of Earth and Mars with a host of puny to Earth sized moons, one of which (located far outside the super-jovian primary's radiation belts) supports oceans and life. If the primary has a set of rings, well, that would be frosting on the cake. Imagine parking with your sweetie and looking up at the night sky!
On the other hand, imagine two hundred foot tides rushing around the 'moon' in sync with its rotation...
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
The letters stand for "Henry Draper". Draper was an astronomical spectroscopist and one of the early pioneers of astrophysics. The Henry Draper Star Catalog is a listing of about 130,000 field stars down to a visual magnitude of approximately 9.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
When someone says life, everyone inmediately thinks it should be humanoids... it isn't necesarily that way...
Well, carbon based life forms don't have to be humanoid--I'm partial to space slugs myself.
At least at the temperatures we like, silicon based life forms are a challenge. While methane (CH4) is reasonably stable at 25C until someone lights a match, the equivalent silicon based compound, silane (SiH4), will spontaneously combust.
For life as we know it, it helps that CO2 is not considerably more stable than other carbon compounds. This isn't the case with silicon--SiO2 is a whole lot more stable than the others.
That leaves you needing a very cold, preferably oxygen free environment. It might be possible, but it's not the way to bet. (Yes, it also spoils the "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!" joke in ST-TOS...)
Pete Brooks
There is a mission planned to Europa by NASA. Time to increase the budget, my Yankee friends. Does NASA accept donations from Canadians?
We don't /know/ that there haven't been technological civilisations on this planet before humans. For all we know, the Dinosaurs could have been killed in a nuclear war, Vampires and Elves could be race memories of a hominid race that we displaced, and the Atlantaens could be waiting for us out in space (think stargate). All of human technological history would barely show up on the fossil record.
Because if their where aliens found they would encourage smoking marjiuana.
At least thats what they told me when I got abducteded, they need to find some dank around where I live.
I am a bit jaded with planets as places to colonize.
Why use up perfectly good places for life to evolve when you have much better control of your environment on artificial structures that you can make from raw sunlight and loose asteroidal materials?
Planets are the least efficient use of materials - the sphere itself has minimum surface to volume ratios, and seas and steep mountains and valleys just reduce this further.
We should explore other worlds, but we should live in space where all aspects of our environment would be at our control: gravity, temperature, pressure, topography, atmospheric composition, design, ecology, zoning and most obviously whether we allow those Windows riff-raff on board.
MicroSoft(TM): It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
Unfortunately, if you did have a moon of Titan's size with an atmosphere similar to Earth's in temperature and compsosition, the atmosphere would be lost to space pretty quickly. The only reason Titan can hold on to an atmosphere is because of it being very cold there.
It's the reason Mercury, Mars, and all the moons (except Titan) have very little, if any in the way of atmosphere. A lack of a nice, warm, thick atmosphere wouldn't necessarily be too much of a hindrance to life, however - you might get something a little like Europa, with a thin crust of ice covering the surface. The proximity to the star and tidal forces from its parent planet could easily keep an ocean liquid; geothermal[1] vents or similar could provide nutrients and energy for the hypothetical aliens.
Such a moon would almost certainly be tidally locked like Earth's moon, Jupiter's moons and so on. Eclipses caused by the parent planet wouldn't be too much of a problem; the ecosystem probably wouldn't notice that it was dark at all, and the 'night' would be pretty short - a few Earth-days long maximum.
[1] Geo, meaning Earth. What's the correct prefix for a moon orbiting a planet round a distant star?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
the Galilean moons of Jupiter, such as Europa, *are* tidally locked around Jupiter)
Okay, now my curiosity is piqued. What does it mean for a body to be tidally locked around another? Is it in a circular orbit?
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far... -- Le P
It wasn't light reflected off the planet but a huge coincidence in orbits that put the planet directly between earth and its star. The star dimmed noticably and the spectra changed as the starlight passed through the planets atmosphere.
The best part is that it looks to be a highly reproducable phenomenom so a lot of different telescopes can back up the original observation.
Bad me. I left italics on. Please modify my previous post down. This is what I meant to say.
And one of these moons might, perhaps, be a world with plentiful water that supports macroscopic life.
I've been hearing since I was six, statements similar to "If we were one foot closer to the Sun, we'd fry, and if we were one foot farther, we'd all be iced over"
Does a moon's position in relation to a star not vary _way_ beyond one foot?
_______________________________
The problem with having an entire planet the size of Jupiter made of metals is getting it all in one place. I'm not even sure the entire solar system contains a Jupiter mass of metals. Even if a planet had a lot of elements heavier than helium, it would have easily pulled much more hydrogen and helium onto itself, even before the protostar blew it all away.
Would be cool if these planets had moons though... Think of the view those guys/gals/greys would have!
---
"Scully, it's a classic case of Demon Fetal Harvest!"
I believe that the major point to not overlook, in referring to the 'Jupiter-sized' comment, is that each planet may have many moons as does our own little Jupiter here in this Solar System. It is these lower gravitational bodies that life has the best chance (this is based on the 'more like us' scale - hey go with what works right?). Since there are about 5 of these Jupiter sized objects in the habitable zone, and I would guess at least 1 or 2 moons each (why? no idea, but why not) - I would be surprised if there weren't some multi-celled lifeforms out there.
-Kraka40
has anyone else got the impression that this bit of news is just one more sign that more important things are being ignored?
it seems to me that a lot of todays discoveries are given the task of filling some void that really can't filled be searching outwards. I know i'm sounding kooky here but i bet things would be a lot better on earth if there was more focus on internal affairs. Maybe i'm just becomming affected from all the news of protest from the WTO being in town, but this bit of news sure seems quite useless. why don't we save life here on earth before we go looking for it in the reaches of space? do you really think aliens (if there are any, and we happen to cross paths somehow) would come to our rescue? for our sake i'm hoping they won't. Sure the United States was founded on freedom and largely by people who fled from religous persecution in Europe, but why did it become necessary to flee rather than stay and fight and fix the social probles of the 15~1700's? and don't say it can't be done, look what Gandhi did.
other than that, Vogt is going to hell, and i for one am hoping to find that aliens are simply a race of scantly clad teenagers.
_______________
"Dying tickles!" -- Ralph Wiggum
Why use up perfectly good places for life to evolve when you have much better control of your
:-)
.. the first time I previewed this post before submission, I had mispelled "important" in the above sentence as "impotant". How ironic.)
environment on artificial structures that you can make from raw sunlight and loose asteroidal materials?
Sort of like a Dyson Sphere? Sounds neat, but I'd say it's a bit beyond our technological capacity at the moment. Until we get to that level, maybe would should stick to planets until we grow out of our technological adolescence.
We should explore other worlds, but we should live in space where all aspects of our environment would be at our control: gravity, temperature, pressure, topography, atmospheric composition, design, ecology, zoning and most obviously whether we allow those Windows riff-raff on board.
And you forgot the most important one: Sex in near-zero-gee would be lots more fun!
(Heh
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
So when a star explodes, it already has a bit of carbon in it, but hardly any silicone, so we end up with a lot more carbon to make squirmy things out of (eg: life).
So the problem is, as I see it, is that there just isn't enough silicone to go around.
Since the formation and evolution of the planetary accretion disk is likely to be allbut complete by now, we are unlikely to see satellites around planets with high eccentricities or present in muli-star systems (at least possible according to the data concerning "companions" in the star systems).
Of course, this only applies ot the planets with high eccentiricities or in mulitple-star systems. And it only speaks of probabilities...But we should definitely check out the systems with the less eccentric planets first, if we ever get the chance (and distance is not a HUGE factor!!)
The truth is out there - we'll let it back in after it sobers up a bit. -The Cube
A body is tidally locked if you could only see the same face of the body from the surface of the primary facing the body.
Although our own moon, Luna, does wobble about 5% or so because its orbit around Earth is not perfectly circular, the same face is visible from the surface of the Earth. However, our Earth is not tidally locked to Luna, since the Apollo astronauts could see the Earth turning from the nearside (Earth-facing) lunar surface.
In the same way, Europa is tidally locked around Jupiter, but a magnetically, thermally and atmospherically protected human on the nearside (Jupiter-facing)surface of Europa could see Jupiter turning.
There is also the further situation of two bodies being tidally locked with each other - the most likely candidate case being that of Pluto and its large moon Charon (discovered in 1977). Does anyone know whether such dual tidal locking has been confirmed in that or any other case?
MicroSoft(TM): It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
in the same way we don't know that it took billions of years for human life to develop. we have no evidence that the earth, or the solar system has been around for billions of years (do you really believe that carbon dating crap?) or that space-time is linear. clearly what we need is a greater perspective to view things from.
_______________
"Dying tickles!" -- Ralph Wiggum
The correct prefix relating to any moon is "lunar", no matter whether the nonsolar primary is in orbit around Sol, any other star or just moving independently of any star in interstellar or intergalactic space.
MicroSoft(TM): It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
wish that the aliens are going to be scantly teenagers that is? It can't just be you and me. Right?
What is this equilibrium temperature stuff, and why refer to it if it is only a very rough guideline? -confused, esperandus
The truth is out there - we'll let it back in after it sobers up a bit. -The Cube
"Silicon" the element is what's being referred to, not "silicone" which is used most popularly for Hollywood starlets and as a form of child abuse by Brittany Spears' parents (?????WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?????).
Notice I was too kind to suggest you keep abreast of chemistry, so to speak.
As to whether there's enough silicone to go around is something I leave to the philosophers...
MicroSoft(TM):It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
Both of these invole efforts to directly image extrasolar planets, which allows for the tantalizing possibility of finding life directly. With the wobble method, you can only tell that a body of a given mass is present at a given distance. With direct observation we could tell such things as the exact size of the planet, presence of any moons (watching the light curve for lunar transits), and, most exciting, atmospheric composition. If we were to find free oxygen in the atmosphere of a planet, it would finally be definite proof of life outside Earth. No other natural chemical process is capable of releasing oxygen in sufficient quantity to make up a substantial portion of a planet's atmosphere.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
I thought these cretins all committed seppuku when Segfault stopped accepting comments and write-in votes. Don't let it happen here!
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
Sure, I go to the trouble of a lengthy post ("Meskelin or bust!") and get a score of zero, but a fast reply to a simple question and I get a one?
Anonymous Cowards unite! You have nothing to lose but your score!
Shouldn't the *merit* of the post be the basis for the score, regardless of ones gutless anonymity?
MicroSoft(TM):It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
logan
I'm an astronomer, and as an astronomer 6 new planets are not interesting at all. A lot of astronomers do this kind of thing because it makes good headlines and keeps the funding rolling in.
OK I'll agree it has to be done, and I'll agree that finding extrasolar planets will lead to good science, but simply finding an extrasolar planet is about as exciting as finding a new asteroid.
The first interesting science on a planet was released earlier this month. The first spectrum from the reflection off a planet was taken. Now that is interesting. We can tell what is in the atmosphere from that. We may even find some complex molecules.
That is science, and it is so much more interesting that finding 6 new planet sized gravity wells orbiting stars.
Fourier transforms. Wobbles induced by planets with different periods will show up as different frequencies of wobble on the star.
My reason for not discussing Dyson spheres is because I have *ideological* problems with them - anyone outside them has to rely on sunlight that's no longer in the visible spectrum but instead re-emitted in the infrared, which screws up anyone living outside the Dyson sphere in the same system who still relies on direct sunlight.
While this shouldn't be a big problem for a technological civilization (ie California imports water), it could be lethal to nonsentient life depending on the sunlight.
Although there are no known photosynthetic organisms outside the orbit of Earth (and hence the likely surface of a Dyson sphere in Sol system), by the time we can build it (which would likely require extrasolar materials until we have cheap transmutation), I would hope that we would have seeded the outer solar system with photosynthetic organisms if no life is living there already.
But, what the hell, I'm also a green thumb...
(And the best thing about zero gee is that you don't have to keep it up!)
MicroSoft(TM):It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
Apparently, one of the aliens that run their equivalent of /. ran a story that they've detected a small terrestrial planet around a middle-aged yellow star, but that it is probably too small to support life.
...said the leader of Mexico just before Cortez arrived in North America. So, we rely on the "Fuck you, I'm bigger than you" philosophy espoused by every schoolyard bully and military dictator? I hope that you're young and still go on to learn something.
A fundamental, essential, *or* irreducible constituent of a composite entity
Not 'and'
In addition to the discovery of six new planets, the researchers gathered new data on four known planets, whose orbits they had previously studied. Two of them showed long-term trends in their orbits indicating the presence of a companion, which could be an additional planet. These findings are significant because previously only one other system of multiple planets, around the star Upsilon Andromedae, had been identified outside our solar system.
This is so new to us, I don't think i've really seen any work on star study to determine if there are longer period planets. For instance, the one confirmed via the brightness method two weeks back had a period of 3.3 days. Put in their local terms, one of their YEARS is 3.3 of our DAYS. To accurately get something with a period on the order of one of our years or more, a longer study period is needed. (this isn't quite true according to nyquist, but increased samples give increased accuracy) Try getting all that telescope time if you're a lowly grad student with no nearby observatory and meager funding! (especially Keck!)
You can see the NASA press release regarding this at ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pa o/pressrel/1999/99-140.txt
[humour]Maybe we can all hook up our old satellite tv dishes like Charlie Sheen and have a big distributed star observing effort in a radio telescope version of the SETI stuff! ;-)[/humour]
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
I *did* mention in "Our own moon, Luna, is tidally locked" about the need for magnetic protection of an observer standing on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Not only is Jupiter's magnetic field powerful, but it's *big*: if we could see it standing on the surface of the Earth with our own eyes, the field would be the same half a degree wide that Luna appears in size, despite Luna being only 1 1/2 light seconds and Jupiter being over a light hour away from the same Earth-based observer.
MicroSoft(TM):It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
If the hypothetical moons around these gas giants are the best extra-solar candidates we've got a shot at 'seeing' how do we do that. If the number of planets we find grows significantly in the next few years will we be able to start looking for variations between the planets, maybe in the 'wobble' of these planets that would suggest moons? Will we be able to get a feel for the size and composition of the moon using the same indirect method we used to find the planets?
Yes, light was discovered reflecting off of a planet recently. You're thinking of the one from a couple of weeks back. More recently, reflected light was observed, although this hasn't been peer reviewed, yet, AFAIK.
The Nov 22/99 BBC News article (i couldn't find a more scientific one) at http://news.bbc. co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_531000/531486.stm states:
"...scientists from the Department of Astronomy at St Andrews University, Scotland, claim to have detected the light reflected off a planet itself."
You're thinking of another discovery mentioned by CNN on Nov 13/99 at http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/13/n ewplanet.ap/ which stated:
"A startling image of a planet passing in front of a bright star has confirmed what scientists before only could deduce with math -- there are planets beyond our solar system."
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
why don't we save life here on earth before we go looking for it in the reaches of space?
:-) It really is News for Nerds. It's in the nature of humankind to study the universe and make observations about it. We've got an inborn curiosity that we're powerless to do anything about. What we're finding is that planets are really not all that special; that they exist in abundance outside of our own planetary system. Now this was pretty much well-established before these findings were published, but the news of six new planets of this nature just further confirms it.
Why can't we do both?
Why do we have to pick and choose?
Why is the space program, and astronomical research of any kind, the favorite whipping boy of folks who claim to want to eliminate government waste? (This latest discovery comes out of academia, by the way.) While I can't comment on waste within the governments of other countries, some of the more lavish expenditures of the United States government are almost legendary. This is the same government that spends millions of dollars buying boats and airplanes that the military doesn't even want. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of US taxpayer money went out to study cow farts. And don't even get me started on the six hundred dollar toilet seats.
And it's the space program people complain about?
Look, I'm all for trimming government waste, but the space program is a veritable island in a sea of pork. It's almost a cliche to present a list of new technologies that sprung up as a result of the space program, so I won't do it, but I will offer one opinion about news of this nature:
It's just fucking cool.
So yes, by all means, let's work to solve the problems that we face here at home. But I don't think it's a "this-or-that" situation. We can have our cake and eat it too.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I have no doubts that even if the air were breathable, we would never be able to withstand the sheer pressure (or could we adapt to it eventually? I imagine not without extreme headaches, to say the least). But can the human body withstand that strength of gravity? I don't even know if we could stand in it, let alone that falling down would probably cause you to break about half of your bones. Anyone? I've always wondered that about Jupiter-sized planets.
NASA's "Mars Polar Lander" touches down this Friday (December 3) at 3:37 pm EST. Shortly before that it'll be releasing the two "Deep Space 2" probes to bury deeper into Mars' surface - both will be looking for water and organics, signs of life, and in the most promising part of Mars yet - the south polar area. Newsweek has an excellent cover story on this this week (by Sharon Begley, whose science reporting I greatly respect). Aside from Europa, Mars really is the mostly likely place for life in our solar system. Perhaps more likely than Europa given that Mars clearly had a liquid water ocean early in its history. The next few years should be VERY interesting in the search for extraterrestrial life!
Energy: time to change the picture.
To work, a lung must be able to inflate. In the case of premature infants, the neonate's lungs will tend to stick together, in part because the infant has not been able to produce surfactant (which keeps lung tissuues from sticking together.)
In the case of the Abyss, the extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean will cause a lungs to collapse, if the incoming gas pressure is not high enough. The problem one gets is that oxygen and nitrogen can be toxic at high pressure. Theoretically, if a liquid, such as a perflourocarbon, could substitute for the carrier gas (He, N, etc), high pressure diving could be made more practical.
In neither case does one actually breathe liquid in place of oxygen. The liquid just carries the oxygen. Perflourocarbons can theoretically substitute for red blood cells--a person with perflourocarbon blood would still need oxygen.
BTW, for those who plan to do deep diving, perflourocyclohexane has its share of problems. But, there are thousands of possible perflourcarbons to choose from. I would suggest doing a search in the scientific literature. You might start with Leland Clark, who has written dozens of papers on the subject.
I read all the posts.
I'm not a big fan of Seganism, saying life must be out there, but the atmosphere/pressure of Venus, along with the temp, should sterilize to perfection. I read the post about sulphur compounds, and noting that:
1) reactions happen faster at higher temps,800+
2) Venus is oxygen poor
3) Venus has atmosphere of sulpheric acid(very reactive)
I conclude that Venus would, if it could, produce some weird life.
Life has a reproductive quality, and here it pretty much covers every nook and cranny. Bottom of oceans, nearly inside volcanoes, etc. If Venus had life, it should blanket it, not being too different anywhere on the surface.
I think life has to have a template, and I don't see sulpheric acid doing anything to promote that (although digestion is an acidic process). If we don't see life flourish near, chances are smaller for being there further out.
The Russian Venera probe sent back pics of what was hell, not a paradise, and Mars probes haven't done better. Maybe moons would be a better choice?
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
lets go to the park sunny day, bright sky,laugh, smile, I hate you so much
When people start talking about discovering new microstructures in things (new sub-atomic particles,
;-)
or planets or moons around distant stars) I can't help but wonder if the real joke is that these
things don't really exist until we observe them...
It's sort of like as time advances, underlying microstructures don't exist until they are discovered.
The consequence is that it's quite possible that the laws of physics themselves determines the rate
at which we can make these discoveries...
Something to consider
f1r57 p057!#$%^&*$%^
And you think things could be any different? We're on the top of food chain, and how do you think we got there? OF COURSE we think of wealth, nice stuff and women to rape (uhh, this can get kinda hard now tho...) when we see something new. If it weren't for that thinking, we'd propably still be either eating leaves in trees or got eaten by a lion that didn't have conscience problems.
- Kaatunut
I know that Jupiter has a much greater mass than Earth or other planets, but here is the angle for my question:
We are very close (relatively) to Jupiter, and so are field of view on its gravity wobbles may be incomplete. When you take into account its moons plus the actual planet, its wobble may be much greater. So, my question is this: How can they be sure these planets aren't much smaller, but perhaps with multiple moons? Are they assuming these other planets have no moons?
Just my $0.02
http://www.stardrive.org/ faster than lisht
We'd all just be squeaky, flat, and explosive. Speaking of which, what would happen if one lit a match on Jupiter?
-lx
IANAAP (I am not an Astro Physicist) As far as I remember from a life of Sci-Fi, you can have a stable orbit in 5 places:
The centre of gravity between the sun and the planet,
180 degrees from this around the planet,
The opposite side of the sun,
Two points In the same orbit as the planet, but offset by 60 degrees. (So that the moon, planet and sun form an equilateral triangle)
I think you can even have a stable orbit around these points without having a planet there.
Here's how I think this went:
/. links to yet another "lookie - habitable moons out there by Beta Pictoris or whatever, we swear it's true this time, they're, like, fulla spacedudes" story (or at least that's what too many people seem to think it says).
/. is flooded with (among other things) "Hey, man, wouldn't it be kickass if we could go there and check out those undoubtedly habitable planets and mate with their silicon women and I wonder if that means they'd consider our computer chips to be made of meat because they're silicon, right? get it? we all gotta gang up and write our congressmen and get NASA more money (sample letter-to-congressman on my homepage)!"-type comments, strewn with sub-scientific crudspeak memorized from stinky sf books by guys who are dead now (except for AC (-larke)).
/., because 1) their first names are all AI (which is cool and dorky and reminds us of RMS), 2) Google (the one true search engine) will get more hits when we all go looking for pictures of them because we don't know who they are (and not knowing everything pisses us off at /.), and 3) they're already naked (usually))(and nested parentheses are also cool; use some!)).
1)
2)
3) AC (-oward) mocks 2) (above), misspells "masturbate," makes me laugh my ass off.
That's, er, Funny.
I'd give it a 3.99 (close to perfect, but -.01 for that "masterbate [sic]" thing, and -1 for poor taste in petrified women (for future reference: Ai Hayama, Ai Hiyoshi, Ai Ijima, and Ai Mizuno would be good choices for
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
I'd argue that wine-making is possibly more complex than astronomy. You have to take into account the seasons, soil, exposure, neighboring plants. Then there's the species of grape and its history. Then you have grapes. Now you have harvest time, initial fermentation techniques, container(s), humidity and temperature of storage it each point in development. Sometimes you mix grapes. Finally, the part that makes it *more* complex, worming the correct secrets out of the handful of stubborn French guarding their methods, for each field and hillside separately it seems, down through the centuries.
Or... Maybe he meant Santa-Cruz wine.
Shows what you know. Intel already admitted to the Intergalatic Department of Justice (it's iDOJ -- you can choose your flavor) that it has a monopoly and is guilty of using questionable business tactics to drive out such competitors as Zxdxntf of Kablax-2, or Gfrndl of Rumifgh. In fact, Intel even admitted in a leaked memo that it stole the name "Itanium" from Ddenddendden of Qwattle.
Or maybe I made that up? Ha! I sure had you going...
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
Then you might end up with single celled animals that can withstand enormous gravity. Nobody can be certain and anyone who immediately says, "Oh thats impossible" could set themselves up for a big fall. We've already seen new wonders in our own solar system that scientists would not have predicted. The universe is VAST. What makes you think we've examined a large enough sample of it. Brad
Well if its in our solar system then its possible a few years away. Interstellar and we are talking a few hundred anyway. Nearest star being about 4 light years away and the fact we havent invented any quantum drives.... Brad
Now whats the question? Brad
Has anyone thought? If these planets are of gas giant class, and do support life, on a solid surface, it is going to have evolved to be real paranoid about heights. No friendly alien space travellers from there I think!
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Posted by Tven:
How did this discussion get from a scientific discovery of planets to an argument over operating systems?
For a start, these planets have not actually been identified as planets - not even the Gemini array on Kitt Peak in Hawii or the experimental SUSI optical interferomiter at Naribri in Australia has the resolution to observe planets in orbit of the closest stars, let alone any star far enough away to have a chance of statistically containing planets.
Secondally, their mass has been observed by watching how the star "wobbles" - how the author of this article can claim they have Jupiter mass is beyond me! I havn't studied beyond 2nd year Astrophysics, but as any amature astronomer knows, the "wobble" is the effect of the whole mass orbiting the star - these "planets" are just as likely to be chunks of moon sized rocks randomly orbiting just like an astoriod belt, or half a dozen uranus-mass gas giants!
Thirdly, the "zone capable of supporting life" exists arround the orbit of ANY star - as exciting as this sounds, all this zone is is the area where the temperature of an object as it rotates toward and away from the star, averages out so that water is capable of remaining in a liquid state. The presense of water has NOTHING to do with whether or not the planet supports, or is even capable of supporting, life.
Finally, there are FAR more parameters to determining the likely hood of life than just water! The presense of life on earth is just a statistical considence, with nothing special in the universal sense - the presence of a moon to protect the surface of the planet from excessive metor strikes, the presense of a Jupter mass giant to shield the planet from both internal and external objects, a star of the correct class to live for long enough to even see life appear, but not small enough so that the energy output is too small.... the list goes on.
And everyone here is arguing over which alien culture uses Windows 98?
1) Find niche market for space travel. Not cruises, maybe more like minerals or fuel more easily found on close by planets etc.
2) expand into more useful stuff, like supporting human life for long periods of time.
3) we can go off to some of these planets. Jupiter size is big, but not enough. We can float around in their atmospheres with cheap & cheerful outfits to make the air breathable, liquidise the water, move around in the more gasseous surroundings suggested by the article.
Because we are going to outgrow the earth. And the earth's lifespan is not limitless. It's a race between technology, time, pollution, and our belief that we deserve to do so.
Hemos, Hemos, Hemos:
You know, these planets are probably billions of years old and Slashdot is JUST NOW reporting on them? Whatm are submissions *THAT BACKLOGGED*? I thought this was suppsed to be a NEWS SITE!
Six jumbo-sized planets have been detected orbiting stars outside our solar system, and five of the newly discovered objects are just the right distance from their suns to support life, astronomers said on Monday. MESSAGE BOARD Star gazing The discoveries, made with the massive Keck I Telescope in Hawaii, were a great leap for planet hunters, who have identified a total of 28 so-called extrasolar planets in the last five years. The recently found planets orbit stars that are about as big, bright and old as the Earth's sun, and the planets range in size from slightly smaller to several times larger than Jupiter -- the largest planet in our solar system. They are probably made of the same inhospitable stuff as Jupiter, the scientists said: hydrogen and helium gas. But five of them are squarely in what astronomers call the habitable zone, which could allow the existence of liquid water -- a prerequisite for life. This makes them different from most of the extrasolar planets found before this. "These (five) planets are just the right distance, with temperatures in one case around 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42.22C) -- like a hot day in Sacramento," Steven Vogt, an astronomy professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, said in a statement. Besides Vogt, the discovery team also included Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California-Berkeley, Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C. and Kevin Apps of the University of Sussex in England. Their findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. One of the planets, HD 192263, was also recently detected by a team in Geneva, Switzerland, the U.S. team said. These scientists did not actually see the new planets, but detected their presence by watching for a telltale wobble in the stars they orbit; the wobble is caused by the gravitational pull the planets exert on the star. No Earth-like planets are likely to be contained in these new planetary systems, Vogt said. Jupiter-sized planets in oval-shaped or eccentric orbits -- instead of the neatly stacked, circular orbits of our solar system -- would have such gravitational force as to quickly eject any Earth-type planet, he said. But he said if these big Jupiter-sized planets are like the giant in our solar system, they may have numerous moons orbiting them. "For a planet in the habitable zone of its star, such moons offer the possibility of liquid water and the eventual emergence of life," Vogt said.
"``For a planet in the habitable zone of its star, such moons offer the possibility of liquid water and the eventual emergence of life,'' Vogt said."
Quick if we leave now we can get there in time for life intelligent enough to tell us when we get there that we shouldn't have bothered!!
dave
AMSTERDAM - Microsoft CEO William H. Gates III enthusiastically welcomed the discovery by scientists in Hawaii as "a new and untapped potential market" yesterday while at a computer trade show in Amsterdam Tuesday, where he was giving a keynote address.
"I have already called our Redmond office, and we are sending probes to the new planets as I speak. Since we believe this planet to be already conquered, why not get a head start in our next logical step?" quizzed the multi-billionaire. "We will have enough trouble forcing out resistance from their local populations; I see no reason to let others here on Earth complicate matters by getting to these markets before we do."
A telephone interview with an anonymous source at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington revealed that most of the probes sent were designed "about five years back for just such an occasion" to gather crucial data on possible life-bearing extraterrestrial planets, including climate, population, species traits, and pertinent laws regarding patents and corporate monopolies. The probes were also armed with high-powered laser weapons to "make damn sure we get there first." The source claimed that the probes would take "a couple years, give or take" to reach the new solar system, but when it was pointed out that a machine built five years ago could only have run version 3.1 of Windows, begging the question of how the probes will fare from the 'Y2K syndrome,' the source declared the interview over and abruptly hung up.
Microsoft stocks rose sharply upon news of this impending galactic conquest, closing at 98 1/4 in extremely heavy trading.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
Even an Orion class ship (if we built one) would take ~ 16 years to reach Alpha Centauri, one way. That's only 4.3 light years. The CLOSEST one here is 65, the furthest 192! So (for those of you not keen on doing the math): it would take about ** 240 YEARS ** with the fastest possible ship we could build. ...the unfortunate thing being, however, that the treaty that bans nuclear explosions in space means that we could never even assemble such a ship. Since nukes in space are banned, we'd have to go with a conventional method, such as an Ion engine. I don't even want to figure that one out, it'd take thousands of years to get there!
:-)
(the furthest would take 714 years in an Orion... time to get to work on that time distort technology!!)
Nevermind the little detail that we don't actually know if there is anything THERE!!
Moral: Space is vast.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
At most, one of these planets might be a double-planet system, each approximately half the total mass detected from the star wobble (i.e. they'd still be Jupiter-class). Three or more objects just don't maintain long-term stable orbits unless the third, fourth, etc. objects have insignificant masses compared to the first two.
The most likely configuration, based on known objects in the Solar System and planet-formation theory, is a single planet with moons (if any) far smaller than itself. Luna and Charon are anomalously large compared to Earth and Pluto, and their mass ratios are 80:1 and 10:1 -- 1000-1 seems to be more typical.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
One interesting issue is that of radiation shielding -- as most of you are probably aware, the Earth's magnetic field shields people on, say, the Shuttle from lots of nasty critters.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. A further problem in a spacecraft approaching anything near the speed of light is that everything in its path becomes a nuclear catastrophe. But I don't think these problems are all that hard to overcome.
I remember seeing a design for an intersteller craft that used a big scoop in front to tunnel and then accelerate material through the center of the ship, expelling it out the rear. The problem would be that the scoop would quickly be destroyed and there is still nothing to prevent radiation from the sides of the ship.
My solution (which I call the Squid Drive (TM)) would replicate the magnetic shielding of the Earth. A large tesla coil would ionize everything in front of the ship, then huge magnets would create rippling mangetic fields that accelerate the particles down the side. Picture a squid moving through the water by rippling its side fins (hence, the name I chose). You get both shielding and propulsion from the same source. Acceleration is only limited by the availability of material to pull/push.
Of course, I may just be a crackpot.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Instead of asking what if this or what if that, we should start concerning about something else. Even if any of these planets are habitable, how are we going to get there. We should start thinking about space travel, also, and not just planet discovery.
The closet "possible" habitable planet is Mars. To get to Mars from Earth would take about 2.5 months in a rocket. (Mars from Earth=36 million miles) (Rocket speed=25,000 miles/hour) I am no scientist or anything (just a kid in college) and giving only estimates but is it a realistic possibility for humans to get anywhere deep in space.
--keep other factors open on the subject not just discussing one topic--
open mind = open source
Huge nuclear powered spaceships assembled on the moon which rotate in order to produce gravitation (like in Arthur Clarke's writings) is the solution. These huge CITIES IN THE SKY can take man to other planetary systems or the planets of our own system. It is important therefore to make a moon base. And something else : Isn't anti-gravity when a magnet placed over another magnet on the side (with the same polarization) stands in mid air and doesn't fall down? What makes the magnets cancel gravity?
They're basically pulling this stuff square out of their arse.
:-)
1. They can't actually see the things, just get info on distance from the "wobble" effect.
2. Not being able to see them, they can't get any kind of spectroscopic data to make a guess at atmosphere.
3. Without an idea of the atmosphere, there's no chance in hell of guessing surface temperature. Period.
The so-called "habitable zone" is based entirely on distance from the star in question (and the star details, of course). By that measure, the Earth is in the habitable zone (would always be too cold, the atmosphere traps the heat coming in).
That Steven Vogt guy who says one planet is around 108 degrees is completely full of it. It may be that if it's airless, but atmosphere plays a huge role in temperature.
Also, pressure plays a role in what point water becomes liquid or not. Not everything is about temperature.
BTW, if it's airless, there's no liquid water there anyway, having boiled away into space.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Isn't anti-gravity when a magnet placed over another magnet on the side (with the same polarization) stands in mid air and doesn't fall
down? What makes the magnets cancel gravity?
No, it's not anti-gravity, it's magnetic repulsion.
What next, helicopters induce anti-gravity by rapidly rotating thier rotors?
George
You state that Mars "clearly" had a liquid water ocean early in its history. AFAIK, the only evidence for this are surface features that have been eroded by liquids - and then everyone assumes that the liquid was water! Personally, I'd love it if someone could *prove* it was water, but surely the possibility exists that Mars was colder in its early days, and the liquid was in fact liquid nitrogen, or liquid oxygen or something. Is there any evidence that the liquid was actually water?
In regards to this thread, relating issues/ideas about hyper-oxygenated flourocarbons:
In theory, yes - humans should be able to breath such "liquids" - albeit with more work (due to the density of the liquid). I remember watching a program regarding this a few years back, and they had stuck a mouse (or some other small rodent) into this sort of liquid, and it breathed rather normally.
I don't think such an experiment has yet been done with a human volunteer, however (but please, if it has, let me know!). And regarding premature babies, I haven't ever heard/seen such use - I would be highly interested in any links to such information - however, it sounds possible.
Also, IIRC - the company that made the suits for the Abyss is an actual deep-sea diving equipment manufacturer, and I think they were actually looking into building actual systems similar to what was in the movie, and used the movie as PR - however, what you saw in the movie wasn't real - the people/actors weren't breathing liquid. The movie was SF, but portions of it could be considered - I dunno - "edge" fiction...?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Rare or just harder to detect?
**>>BELCH
you are a dork, so what's your point?
..usin' that 'Secret Planet Detector' thingie
I think someone needs a hug, don't you?
Groovy!
What with all the drinking and whatall, Keith reportedly was able to sustain a fairly significant atmosphere up until (and even slightly beyond) the time of his death.
Hey, at least it shows it can be done, you know?
Precisely because it *is* so 'non-essential'. Past cultures that have 'indulged' successfully in astronomy have been some of the most civilized and successful cultures ever; the Mayans, the Greeks, etc.
Not to mention the fact that evidence points strongly at a cataclysmic meteor impact ages ago, leading to mass extinctions, and the likelihood is that another will follow. No one can say when, but no time like the present to get crackin', I say.
The more we focus upwards and outwards, the less significant our personal differences become.
-kent
**>>BELCH
Linus! Get back to work, damnit. We all have to blow off steam once and a while, but this is going too far. When our new product line of matter transformers is announced, you can shout your plans to whomever you want, but until then I have to politely request that you SHUT THE HELL UP!
We've had them all fooled up until now. DON'T WRECK IT!
This is a secure connection, right?
END TRANSMISSION
Does a moon's position in relation to a star not vary _way_ beyond one foot?
What I remember from when I was a kid, was that the earth's course was nearly a "straight" line through space, with only a divergence of a few feet over a distance of many miles - something like 6 feet every 20 miles or so. (Forgive the non-SI units, it's an artifact of the era I learned this.)
Then followed a comment to the effect that if it were a foot more we'd burn, and a foot less we'd freeze. Strictly BOTE, and assuming my numbers aren't too far off, I'd guess the corresponding orbital diameters as around 80 million miles and 110 million miles respectively. (One significant digit; locally approximating the divergence as linear; for external use only.) That's not quite burn/freeze, but it's at least pushing the lifezone boundaries.
david
Look, a Conan the Barbarian type may be bigger and stronger than anyone else, but the reason why they don't succeed anymore is because we've learned the value of cooperation over "might makes right".
The signal lesson of the first half of the 20th Century was that wars of conquest no longer pay. The second half of the 20th Century was that trade pays, and that free people do better at trading than slaves.
I *do* think things could be different because they already are different. As Robert A. Heinlein's fictional character Lazarus Long said, "You live and learn. Or you don't live long."
If we contact other species, we'd do better to trade with them than conquer them, although it wouldn't hurt to maintain a defensive capability.
MicroSoft(TM):It's not just a bad idea, it's against the law!
on the head of an AC, who keeps banging it against a brick wall.
Would one of these new planets be interesting enough for you if it was found to be cube-shaped?
Really, you should watch how fascinated a small child is by the consistency of oatmeal. Maybe that would lend some perpective. I sure hope my tax dollars aren't going to fund someone who doesn't find extrasolar planets, or a new asteroid interesting. If your an astronomer, it's YOUR JOB to find that stuff interesting. Is it not?
Or maybe you're just switching to decaf today.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be an intelligent life form living, instead of on a planet, on a moon? Imagine how convoluted the star motions would be. Instead of rotating and orbiting around a star, you're rotating and orbiting around a rotating orbiter of a star!