The discoverers knew the ring-like object was there beforehand. It was observed in infrared light first. What is unprecedented is the clarity of the feature in visual light and accurate knowledge of its geometry (the center of the ring (ellipse) isn't exactly coincident with the central star, which implies some other gravitating object is present).
If the presence of a planetary system weren't suspected, I doubt they would have gotten orbits to use the HST to observe this.
As for the "newly formed" stuff, it has nothing to do with the Hubble picture. It merely is a speculation based on the fact that the star is A-type star (like Vega) that hadn't evolved too much (I don't remember how old, but it's nowhere near as old as the Sun...) Anyway, add the word "astronomically" in front of "newly formed" to make a better sense out of the phrase.
The end of free Internet content will come when Web browsers start blocking online advertisements by default
Then let it end. I'm fed up with the business model of running intrusive advertizing that means nothing but annoying to the viewers.
I'd pay some extra $$$ for better content and service. I know many slashdot readers (read students) are too used to getting many things for free. But that business model CAN'T work for long, as the providers of information need to make some profit somehow. Either you yield to the advertiser's demand or stand against it.
Well the choice is yours. I am to choose against annoying flashy ads and pop-ups (not that I'm getting any of these with Firefox).
Yes, but it's not that low. Actually higher density than the bubble that the Solar system lives inside (as you say, solar wind clears the way). Solar wind is less denser than interstellar space, believe or not.
it wasn't pushed out by the solar wind
They were pushed out. It is just that the gas pressue of interstellar space is in equilibrium with the gas pressure of solar wind. Pushing didn't cease to exist all of sudden, you know?
The rest of points I totally agree. I wanted to mod you up, but the two points above bothered me a bit.
While I'm not 100% sure about this comparison on mid-frame vs. Canon D1 (that's a nice camera), I'd like to say I stand corrected and ask politely to mod the reply up.
I believe that digital images looks "shaper" since high frequency foureir component is always present in these CCD detectors. In analog, such forier compnent tends to be smeared out.
The depth is controlled by the property of CCD itself. For a very expensive professional version of a CCD, saturation probably occurs about 32,000 electrons per pixel. For a commercial version, it'd be much less than that. To-date, there is no CCD camera (that I know of) which can achieve a dwell depth of 1e9 electron per pixel (or 32 bits).
To beat this, one can read out a CCD very FAST. Or more realistically use something like a CMOS detector that sort of allows you to read out from each one of pixels in real time.
Most of digital camera uses a cheaper quality CCD with a shallow dwell depth, i.e., saturation occurs too quickly and hence only achieving low dynamic range. Spatial resolution isn't that great either, definitely not opimizing the quality of lenses available in some cases (Nikon D* series, etc).
And converting a color CCD image to B&W isn't the same, since the pixel filtering is likely involved (if it's a professional digital camera with multi-ccds and a beam splitter, it might be ok).
And obviously you never looked at mid-frame size camera. Digital media is approaching to 35mm camera, but nothing beyond that.
Editors rarely check grammar or misspelling. If you are a paid customer, you do get to inform editors of such typographical errors...if you want, that is.
Actually I find that typo entertaining. Solar sail, solar rail. Amazing what one character can do to mislead.
Here is one misconception, though. Often energetic particles in the solar wind isn't strong enough to penetrate through Earth's magnetic field. Mostly they get deflected, instead. But when the particles interact with the magnetic field, they stretch the Earth's field line. And sometimes the stretch is severe enough that the field lines get snapped (i.e., imagine a rubber band) to merge together (called magnetic reconnection). This happens at a downstream of the solar wind "eddying" around the Earth. When the fields snap, it releases its internal magnetic field energy, feeding it into heat/kinetic energy of the local particles. These particles are still charged and likely bounded by the magnetic fields;and these charged particles streams down the field lines and eventually collide onto the atmosphere near the magnetic poles. That's what you see as "bright" and "filamental" aurorae on Earth.
When there is a major CME hitting onto Earth, some particles do penetrate through the Earth's field and interact with the atmosphere directly. These tend to generate reddish, diffused aurorae that have been seen in low magnetic latitudes, if I recall correctly (but I can be wrong about that).
Man, I have quite a few paid leave days to spend and this would have been a great geek opportunity to spend part of them...being a science/history geek, this would have been a nice thing to visit.
It's not like we find any reason to visit Tennessee these days...
Plates shifted, relatively high richter scale, but keep in mind the Richter scale is *not* a linear scale.
It's logarithmic. So even a small difference can make a greater difference in its energy output. In this case, much smaller than the Sumatra earthquake.
What matters here is the distance and depth of the epicenter, perhaps. The farther away you are, the better off you'd be (sans tsunami) as far as a quake goes.
That sounds all nice, but then the thought is supported only by freshman logics.
To prove this, one must calculate that (1) either radiative or kinetic evaporation (stripping) is effective in this environment (Remember, the magnetic field would make it slightly difficult to make the stripping of gas out of a planet); (2) the heating can be assumed based on blackbody estimate, yes, though nothing is ever that: black-body; also cooling can take place via radiation (and albedo matters, too, which we have no idea what).
I'm saying it's easy to speculate what it is; hell, it might be right at the end. But it's just because it's the simplest explanation (e.g., Occam's razor), it doesn't mean that the explanation must be right. Astronomers tend to fall into that trap too often. (but then this is Geoff Marcy, whom I know to be a very methodically careful man).
As for Roche limit, I don't have to look it up. It won't do you any good since this isn't a simple binary system.
If the radius is not directly/indirectly measured by the authors, then this finding is weak.
If the radius had been determined by the rate of occultation, etc., then I would have believed that the rocky planet solution CAN indeed exist; but if the radius is assumed based on the assumption that the planet must be rocky, then I'm not sure how solid (or shall I say "unique" mathematically) this rocky interpretation is. Sure, astronomers can make the assumption that the cosmic abundance is more or less the same as the Earth. After all that's pretty damned close to the solar abundance and ISM abundance anyway. But that still means that all we know for sure is the "mass" (function) of the planet, not density or composition.
I know Geoff Marcy is a fairly careful guy. There must be a better reasoning to consider it rocky (like, a gaseous planet may not survive intense heat and gas pressure...a Jupiter-like planet may evaporate at a close distance like that). But until I read and verify the quality of this finding, I'd take this finding with grains of salt.
Instead of moderating you down, I'm just going to comment here...
Yes, our Sun wobbles like that. Its wobble is done mostly by Jupiter, but the Earth contributes as much as +/- 3 meters/s, if I recall correctly. And for these guys, it's not impossible to detect such perturbations.
That said, the wobble method (Dopper detection) is good for all sizes of planets. If it is not a single planetary system, that will show up in the radial velocity curve (like it does here..non sinosoidal curve, I mean).
What you should be asking is this: how the hell do they know about the radius of the planet? The mass isn't too hard to determine (Kepler's law would tell you); but the radius isn't. Not in the accuracy claimed here (2 earth radius). Since I don't have an access to the article yet, it's hard for me to judge the accuracy of the radius value. Nontheless, that's where all of you should be pondering about, not about the wobble method.
Amazing that FARK readers are pointing this out better than Slashdot readers...what did we go wrong?
This is a fine example that sometimes a balloon mission is the most ideal for launching scientific mission.
(1) it costs less to launch the observing platform; (2) the structural tolerance to vibration isn't important; (3) the instrument can be recovered and reused (after some repairing...even a soft landing can break something)......etc, etc. It's hard to overrun the cost for $1billion dollars for a mission like this (yeah, take that, JWST!).
That's probably not quite "deconvolution"; it's probably high-pass filtering in Fourier frequency space...to deconvolve, you have to have a proper kernel to "deconvolve" with, which Photoshop has no knowledge of.
Not quite. There are no lenses involved in corrective optics. They are all done with a set of aspherical mirrors (glasses tend to absorb UV, which is mission critical for the HST being an UV telescope).
Slashdot Mirror
The discoverers knew the ring-like object was there beforehand. It was observed in infrared light first. What is unprecedented is the clarity of the feature in visual light and accurate knowledge of its geometry (the center of the ring (ellipse) isn't exactly coincident with the central star, which implies some other gravitating object is present).
If the presence of a planetary system weren't suspected, I doubt they would have gotten orbits to use the HST to observe this.
As for the "newly formed" stuff, it has nothing to do with the Hubble picture. It merely is a speculation based on the fact that the star is A-type star (like Vega) that hadn't evolved too much (I don't remember how old, but it's nowhere near as old as the Sun...) Anyway, add the word "astronomically" in front of "newly formed" to make a better sense out of the phrase.
Google is floundering?
Do you consider Google's ads intrusive?
I think not. On contrary I agree wholeheartedly that the Google's business model may be the way of the future.
By slashdot linking to that ZD article, IE users are helping increase hit counts on the doubleclick advertisements.
I don't know if you guys find that sort of amusing...
The end of free Internet content will come when Web browsers start blocking online advertisements by default
Then let it end. I'm fed up with the business model of running intrusive advertizing that means nothing but annoying to the viewers.
I'd pay some extra $$$ for better content and service. I know many slashdot readers (read students) are too used to getting many things for free. But that business model CAN'T work for long, as the providers of information need to make some profit somehow. Either you yield to the advertiser's demand or stand against it.
Well the choice is yours. I am to choose against annoying flashy ads and pop-ups (not that I'm getting any of these with Firefox).
Sounds like clogging in the fuel line, leading to explosion of the final state booster to me.
Man, I wonder how many nukes Soviets would fail to launch back in the cold war days.
A couple of minor comments here.
There is a low density of hydrogen gas out there
Yes, but it's not that low. Actually higher density than the bubble that the Solar system lives inside (as you say, solar wind clears the way). Solar wind is less denser than interstellar space, believe or not.
it wasn't pushed out by the solar wind
They were pushed out. It is just that the gas pressue of interstellar space is in equilibrium with the gas pressure of solar wind. Pushing didn't cease to exist all of sudden, you know?
The rest of points I totally agree. I wanted to mod you up, but the two points above bothered me a bit.
Segway counts as a stealth startup failure, doesn't it?
Does it?
While I'm not 100% sure about this comparison on mid-frame vs. Canon D1 (that's a nice camera), I'd like to say I stand corrected and ask politely to mod the reply up.
I believe that digital images looks "shaper" since high frequency foureir component is always present in these CCD detectors. In analog, such forier compnent tends to be smeared out.
Umm, no.
The depth is controlled by the property of CCD itself. For a very expensive professional version of a CCD, saturation probably occurs about 32,000 electrons per pixel. For a commercial version, it'd be much less than that. To-date, there is no CCD camera (that I know of) which can achieve a dwell depth of 1e9 electron per pixel (or 32 bits).
To beat this, one can read out a CCD very FAST. Or more realistically use something like a CMOS detector that sort of allows you to read out from each one of pixels in real time.
While this guy could state it better, how is this a flamebait?
Most of digital camera uses a cheaper quality CCD with a shallow dwell depth, i.e., saturation occurs too quickly and hence only achieving low dynamic range. Spatial resolution isn't that great either, definitely not opimizing the quality of lenses available in some cases (Nikon D* series, etc).
And converting a color CCD image to B&W isn't the same, since the pixel filtering is likely involved (if it's a professional digital camera with multi-ccds and a beam splitter, it might be ok).
And obviously you never looked at mid-frame size camera. Digital media is approaching to 35mm camera, but nothing beyond that.
This mission is tested on Earth polar orbit; there are less space debris in there.
Besides this is a validation and verification mission. If it gets punctured by debris, that's a new lesson learned.
Editors rarely check grammar or misspelling. If you are a paid customer, you do get to inform editors of such typographical errors...if you want, that is.
Actually I find that typo entertaining. Solar sail, solar rail. Amazing what one character can do to mislead.
....Huh?
I should've been moderating you up...but..
Here is one misconception, though. Often energetic particles in the solar wind isn't strong enough to penetrate through Earth's magnetic field. Mostly they get deflected, instead. But when the particles interact with the magnetic field, they stretch the Earth's field line. And sometimes the stretch is severe enough that the field lines get snapped (i.e., imagine a rubber band) to merge together (called magnetic reconnection). This happens at a downstream of the solar wind "eddying" around the Earth. When the fields snap, it releases its internal magnetic field energy, feeding it into heat/kinetic energy of the local particles. These particles are still charged and likely bounded by the magnetic fields;and these charged particles streams down the field lines and eventually collide onto the atmosphere near the magnetic poles. That's what you see as "bright" and "filamental" aurorae on Earth.
When there is a major CME hitting onto Earth, some particles do penetrate through the Earth's field and interact with the atmosphere directly. These tend to generate reddish, diffused aurorae that have been seen in low magnetic latitudes, if I recall correctly (but I can be wrong about that).
Man, I have quite a few paid leave days to spend and this would have been a great geek opportunity to spend part of them...being a science/history geek, this would have been a nice thing to visit.
It's not like we find any reason to visit Tennessee these days...
Plates shifted, relatively high richter scale, but keep in mind the Richter scale is *not* a linear scale.
It's logarithmic. So even a small difference can make a greater difference in its energy output. In this case, much smaller than the Sumatra earthquake.
What matters here is the distance and depth of the epicenter, perhaps. The farther away you are, the better off you'd be (sans tsunami) as far as a quake goes.
Nah, probably someone spilled the bottle of beer on console and short-circuited it.
That sounds all nice, but then the thought is supported only by freshman logics.
To prove this, one must calculate that (1) either radiative or kinetic evaporation (stripping) is effective in this environment (Remember, the magnetic field would make it slightly difficult to make the stripping of gas out of a planet); (2) the heating can be assumed based on blackbody estimate, yes, though nothing is ever that: black-body; also cooling can take place via radiation (and albedo matters, too, which we have no idea what).
I'm saying it's easy to speculate what it is; hell, it might be right at the end. But it's just because it's the simplest explanation (e.g., Occam's razor), it doesn't mean that the explanation must be right. Astronomers tend to fall into that trap too often. (but then this is Geoff Marcy, whom I know to be a very methodically careful man).
As for Roche limit, I don't have to look it up. It won't do you any good since this isn't a simple binary system.
If the radius is not directly/indirectly measured by the authors, then this finding is weak.
If the radius had been determined by the rate of occultation, etc., then I would have believed that the rocky planet solution CAN indeed exist; but if the radius is assumed based on the assumption that the planet must be rocky, then I'm not sure how solid (or shall I say "unique" mathematically) this rocky interpretation is. Sure, astronomers can make the assumption that the cosmic abundance is more or less the same as the Earth. After all that's pretty damned close to the solar abundance and ISM abundance anyway. But that still means that all we know for sure is the "mass" (function) of the planet, not density or composition.
I know Geoff Marcy is a fairly careful guy. There must be a better reasoning to consider it rocky (like, a gaseous planet may not survive intense heat and gas pressure...a Jupiter-like planet may evaporate at a close distance like that). But until I read and verify the quality of this finding, I'd take this finding with grains of salt.
Instead of moderating you down, I'm just going to comment here...
Yes, our Sun wobbles like that. Its wobble is done mostly by Jupiter, but the Earth contributes as much as +/- 3 meters/s, if I recall correctly. And for these guys, it's not impossible to detect such perturbations.
That said, the wobble method (Dopper detection) is good for all sizes of planets. If it is not a single planetary system, that will show up in the radial velocity curve (like it does here..non sinosoidal curve, I mean).
What you should be asking is this: how the hell do they know about the radius of the planet? The mass isn't too hard to determine (Kepler's law would tell you); but the radius isn't. Not in the accuracy claimed here (2 earth radius). Since I don't have an access to the article yet, it's hard for me to judge the accuracy of the radius value. Nontheless, that's where all of you should be pondering about, not about the wobble method.
Amazing that FARK readers are pointing this out better than Slashdot readers...what did we go wrong?
This is a fine example that sometimes a balloon mission is the most ideal for launching scientific mission.
...etc, etc. It's hard to overrun the cost for $1billion dollars for a mission like this (yeah, take that, JWST!).
(1) it costs less to launch the observing platform;
(2) the structural tolerance to vibration isn't important;
(3) the instrument can be recovered and reused (after some repairing...even a soft landing can break something)...
That's probably not quite "deconvolution"; it's probably high-pass filtering in Fourier frequency space...to deconvolve, you have to have a proper kernel to "deconvolve" with, which Photoshop has no knowledge of.
Not that it makes sense to many of you...
Not quite. There are no lenses involved in corrective optics. They are all done with a set of aspherical mirrors (glasses tend to absorb UV, which is mission critical for the HST being an UV telescope).
But, but, imagine that cows' re-entry may make a fantastic chunk of roast beef!
Quick, someone, marinade these space cows!