Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Major Biggles on April 25, 2007, 05:39:59 PM
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i saw a news video earlier today on this. was just wondering if anyone else has heard about this and whether they have a proper article on it? the vid i saw was rather brief and not too detailed, but aparently an earthlike planet has been discovered not too far from our solar system. it's size density and distance from it's star are all very similar to earth.
they haven't seen it yet, but can amazingly tell all this from the gravitational effect. they believe it's very similar to earth makeup wise too, due to it's density. exciting news!
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Found this on it. Pretty interesting, but still a lot of questions to be answered
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
2 hours, 13 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."
The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.
There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.
"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."
The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."
The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.
What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.
The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.
The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.
Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.
However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.
Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.
The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.
"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."
Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.
Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.
"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."
Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.
"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."
The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.
"I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet."
Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.
Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.
But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.
Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.
Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.
The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.
Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.
A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.
"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.
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On the Net:
The European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org
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Krypton?
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awesome, i'm moving and declaring part of Texas.
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Travelocity is offering some awesome rates to visit
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it's very cool. i hope things like this will promote a bit more interest in astrophysics. another space race would be cool :)
interesting that most stars near us are red dwarfs too.
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The Romulans are coming:noid
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Have they claimed that humans are responsible for global warming on that planet yet?
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Astrology is so cool!
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Originally posted by RAIDER14
The Romulans are coming:noid
This looks like a good spot for a Kiligons in orbit around Uranus joke.
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Originally posted by eskimo2
Astrology is so cool!
Yikes! (http://asstrology.com/)[/b]:huh
(http://asstrology.com/animations/Anima55180.gif)
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Red Dwarf?
(http://www.dan-dare.org/Dan%20FRD/RedDwarf8Crew.jpg)
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it is a red size challenged star
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I know, I couldnt help myself :D
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It takes 13 days to orbit it's sun. Why the hell is ours so slow?
I say we ignite rockets to speed it up. A 365 day year is so slow and boring.
Imagine having a birthday party every 13 days.
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I'd be like being stuck in a 60's porno with bad red lighting 24x7.
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Originally posted by Shifty
This looks like a good spot for a Kiligons in orbit around Uranus joke.
Well, no need for me to post now.:rolleyes:
:D
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
It takes 13 days to orbit it's sun. Why the hell is ours so slow?
I say we ignite rockets to speed it up. A 365 day year is so slow and boring.
Imagine having a birthday party every 13 days.
Actually, in order to increase the orbit speed (reduce orbit time) you need to loose energy, not gain more... This is one of the amusing aspects of gravitational potential wells. Loose energy, get hotter...
I never understood birthdays. What is so special in completing a revolution around the sun? Did we had to push earth around it? If I fly in a spaceship and catch the earth again after a year without circling the sun, did I get older? Is circling the sun by sitting on a rock is an achievement?
I propose measuring our achievement of circling the sun in radians, the total phase of rotation we have completed. It is not your age, but a prestigious rank indicating your contribution to the common effort of circling the sun. I have currently completed 64.3*pi radians.
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Originally posted by Meatwad
Red Dwarf?
Best "Sci-fi" series EVER. :D
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Originally posted by bozon
Actually, in order to increase the orbit speed (reduce orbit time) you need to loose energy, not gain more... This is one of the amusing aspects of gravitational potential wells. Loose energy, get hotter...
I never understood birthdays. What is so special in completing a revolution around the sun? Did we had to push earth around it? If I fly in a spaceship and catch the earth again after a year without circling the sun, did I get older? Is circling the sun by sitting on a rock is an achievement?
I propose measuring our achievement of circling the sun in radians, the total phase of rotation we have completed. It is not your age, but a prestigious rank indicating your contribution to the common effort of circling the sun. I have currently completed 64.3*pi radians.
Would you care to explain a tad better?
AFAIK orbit speeds are, if anything, slowing down. So are rotation speeds. Our earth has a considerably longer day now than a billion years ago.
(oh, I only refer to your first lines)
As for the rest, you're having fun ;)
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Somebody said that Wal-Mart already has locked down franchise rights on the planet.
Might be a good place to send all the Liberals too. that way they'd have a fresh new world to screw up, without Conservatives butting in to annoy them.
Oh, and this Birthday gig? Seasons man, seasons. If the planet is anything like ours, weather wise, and you have an eliptical orbit as do we, and life evolved their sort of like Earth's... Well, Cold, you hibernate... Warm, you breed.
Would make interesting study in accelerated life cycles, yes?
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The coca-cola company recently notified the authorities that the so called red dwarf star was just a large coke ad on the sky and the gravity shifts around it were caused by Roseanne Bar hovering about looking for McDonalds.
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Originally posted by Angus
Would you care to explain a tad better?
AFAIK orbit speeds are, if anything, slowing down. So are rotation speeds. Our earth has a considerably longer day now than a billion years ago.
I was refering to the attempt to make the year shorter. For that purpose you need a closer orbit since according to Keppler's law, for all planets:
R^3 / P^2 = constant
Where R is the orbital radius and P is the period.
Even though that the velocity in a shorter radius is greater (more kinetic energy) the total energy is lower since you are "deeper" in the potential well.
potential energy: -T (always negative and get more negative as radius decrease)
kinetic energy: K (always positive)
Virial theorem for a "relaxed" system: 2K=T
total energy: E=K-T=-1/2T
In other words, you have to loose energy in order to get (and stay) closer.
The earth rotation (around itself) slowly gets syncronized with the orbit around the sun due to tidal effects. This is what happened to the moon by the earth's tide force and its spin is now syncronized with its orbit around the earth.
btw, the ESO release (there's a link to the letter submited to A&A):
http://eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2007/pr-22-07.html
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Originally posted by bozon
...The earth rotation (around itself) slowly gets syncronized with the orbit around the sun due to tidal effects. This is what happened to the moon by the earth's tide force and its spin is now syncronized with its orbit around the earth.
btw, the ESO release (there's a link to the letter submited to A&A):
http://eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2007/pr-22-07.html
What the majority of the world just read: "Earth rotaing around itself" and the sun being affected by our tides Imagine that, eh? :lol
Yes I know most about solar tides, Earth/Lunar Tides, and so on and so forth... But the odd side of my brain just grinned when I saw how you put it. Did you know the Moon is getting further away from Earth each year? Why, what will aLGore blame that one on?
Now I am no astrophysics prof., or rocket scientist, but even a layman can figure that Keppler has it all wrong if he thinks an object, (in this case a planet) has to be closer to a sun to travel faster. All that proves is a perception of velocity due to proximity.
If you want a real good aneurism, try figuring out the velocity of the both planets:
Planet A rotates at 28,000 mph, while orbiting its Sun every 13.5 days at a distance of 7 million miles in a circular orbit. (I know circular orbits are an impossibility, but humor me)
Planet B rotates at the same speed, but from a further 90 million miles out, and matches Planet A's solar orbit of 13.5 days.
How fast is each planet travelling around the sun?
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If it is a very cool planet then we could move there and heat it up!
neat how it all works out huh?
lazs
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whats cool about this discovery is that it rotates in the planetary "COMFORT ZONE" tempetures from 0 to 40 degrees...means Liquid WATER!!!
water in its liquid form means a big BIG chance of 'LIFE'...biological for sure, maybe even animals, who knows...
once we get better instruments and more Data, maybe we'll actually be able to determine life forms...
and imagine, we are just starting to look out there for planets, 3 to 4 new discoveries every month... :O
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Originally posted by Odee
If you want a real good aneurism, try figuring out the velocity of the both planets:
Planet A rotates at 28,000 mph, while orbiting its Sun every 13.5 days at a distance of 7 million miles in a circular orbit. (I know circular orbits are an impossibility, but humor me)
Planet B rotates at the same speed, but from a further 90 million miles out, and matches Planet A's solar orbit of 13.5 days.
How fast is each planet travelling around the sun?
The numbers for planet A do not match. With the given velocity and period, assuming circular orbit and negligible mass of the planet relative to the star, the distance is more like 1.5 million miles (velocity*period = 2*pi*radius)
For planet B, at a distance of ~100 million miles, the escape velocity from that same star will be about 5,000 mph. Give it a velocity of 28,000 mph and you'll never see it again...
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Have they claimed that humans are responsible for global warming on that planet yet?
silly arent you, can't have a civil discussion without dragging your little piece into other threads.
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Originally posted by bozon
The numbers for planet A do not match. With the given velocity and period, assuming circular orbit and negligible mass of the planet relative to the star, the distance is more like 1.5 million miles (velocity*period = 2*pi*radius)
For planet B, at a distance of ~100 million miles, the escape velocity from that same star will be about 5,000 mph. Give it a velocity of 28,000 mph and you'll never see it again...
Actually, if we're about 93 million miles out, and that new planet is 14 times closer, then it would be around 6 million miles from the sun, or more accurately 6,642,857.1428571.1428571... etc. yes?
Regardless, the real question should have been interpreted as:" how fast does a body have to be to maintain geosynchronus orbits around a sun?" All the other kahkah was BS fluff
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Do you think the Aztechs, Egyptians, and all the other pyrmid worlds of ancient time are on this planet doing the same thing again with the help of Aliens?
Whats the reason why we can't move to Mars? I know the atmosphere is not quite like ours, but I think its somewhat close.
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Originally posted by VooWho
Whats the reason why we can't move to Mars? I know the atmosphere is not quite like ours, but I think its somewhat close.
First part ignored. As to the second; Mars' atmosphere is VERY tenuous. Mostly CO2, and very thin at that.... nearly a vacuum, even at lower elevations.
Could we live there? Yes, we have the technology to do so. Could we terraform Mars to be more habitable? Probably, although they would be colossal projects.
Will we ever do so? I don't see the political or social will to do so in the foreseeable future. Maybe 100 years after we've had fusion power available on Earth, there will be enough interest.
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As to the search of Earth-like worlds.
I think we'll be very limited to more guess-work than proof to their existence until we get the big extra planetary observatories into space to look for them. Need to get above the Earth's atmosphere with many telescopes working in conjunction over thousands of miles distance form one another in co-orbit, to get the kind of optical resolution to actually see an extra solar planet.
We could do it today, I just don't see the money being spent on it.
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The laymans language answer to a previous post.
In order for the Earth to get farther from the sun it would need to speed up. this would increase the length of our year.
To get closer to the sun we need to slow the planet down. The slower we travel around the big yellow ball, the more gravitational pull it has on us, pulling us closer in.
The faster we spin around the big guy the less pull it has on us and we get farther out.
This doesn't affect our length of day though. That is a happenstance of our rotational speed. Our day is about 24 hours because..wait for it....our world is roughly 24,0000 mile around and spins at roughly 1,000 mph. There you go. 240,000 miles around, 1,ooomph and 24 hours in each day.
pretty cool huh?
RTR
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I made it after hours on the 7th day....I had some extra dirt.
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Originally posted by RTR
The laymans language answer to a previous post.
In order for the Earth to get farther from the sun it would need to speed up. this would increase the length of our year.
To get closer to the sun we need to slow the planet down. The slower we travel around the big yellow ball, the more gravitational pull it has on us, pulling us closer in.
The faster we spin around the big guy the less pull it has on us and we get farther out.
This doesn't affect our length of day though. That is a happenstance of our rotational speed. Our day is about 24 hours because..wait for it....our world is roughly 24,0000 mile around and spins at roughly 1,000 mph. There you go. 240,000 miles around, 1,ooomph and 24 hours in each day.
pretty cool huh?
RTR
I believe our days are longer due to the moon slowly moving away from us, which is causing us to spin slower.
Or so I watched on the Discovery channel. I can't remember how far each year, but it is moving away from us.
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It's moving away at about 1inch a year, lengthening days here at about 1second/50k years.
As it is, the moon's orbit distance will stabilize at (if I remember right) 1.6 times its current in about 12 billion years (again off the top of my head). That's longer than it will take the sun to either go red giant in ~5BY (possibly frying earth and/or screwing up the moon's orbit, e.g. sending it into Earth), or grow dim and spare both; although that's much less likely.
Before that happens, though, the Milky Way is due to run into a nearby galaxy (Andromeda, I think), in 2BY or so, with a possible second pass around 9MY later, depending on the first one's result. Considering what we can see of our own galaxy in the night sky, it would make for quite a sight.
And if anyone has stuck around long enough to see it, the solar system also makes short trips outside (top and bottom-side) of the galactic disk's buffering from intergalactic rays etc, every 32MY, as it waves along its path around the center of the galaxy.
I've seen a few articles suppose G581c, the new planet, is tidaly locked to its sun, the way our moon is to Earth. It would be pretty hot and cold on either side of it.
Has anyone heard anything about radiation hazards from the sun? It's standing pretty close it.
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Originally posted by moot
Has anyone heard anything about radiation hazards from the sun? It's standing pretty close it.
That was my first thought so I looked into it briefly. The star is M3 aged dwarf, so it is quite cool and the near UV radiation from the photosphere is pretty weak. Even a thin atmosphere will protect you. These type of stars have very small corona and so the far UV and x-ray are normally low and insignificant. It was not detected in the ROSAT all sky (xray) survey. However, these M dwarfs have occasional coronal flares that reach similar temperatures and luminosities as our suns flares and are probably followed by large coronal mass ejections. Being so close to the star, a flare directed at the planet might make things... errr.. unpleasant to say the least. If the planet has a strong internal magnetic field protecting it, this might alleviate the problem somewhat. Still, such UV/xray flashes and ion storms will have significant effects on the atmosphere and on living creatures.
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Originally posted by tedrbr
Could we live there? Yes, we have the technology to do so.
the latest information regarding mars atmosphere is, it is far
more dangerous then we thought in the past years.
Without a real atmosphere, radiation from the sun is killing
everything on mars. 10h on mars surface and your DNA is lost.
Mars is really a rusted death planet.
Hey the new discovered earth planet is just receiving our
radio and TV signals from 1986! :)
who knows, maybe someone is listening there.
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Now that they know they have been spotted, its only a matter of time...
:noid
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Originally posted by Gh0stFT
Hey the new discovered earth planet is just receiving our
radio and TV signals from 1986! :)
who knows, maybe someone is listening there.
Great- the first things the aliens will see about our culture is Fonzie jumping the shark.
I am emberassed.
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Originally posted by moot
I've seen a few articles suppose G581c, the new planet, is tidaly locked to its sun, the way our moon is to Earth. It would be pretty hot and cold on either side of it.
Has anyone heard anything about radiation hazards from the sun? It's standing pretty close it.
Tidally locked, but possibly in the habital zone? Sounds like a classic from science fiction: tidally locked planet, frozen on the far side, baked sunward, but with a narrow strip of a "habitable zone" running along the terminator line like a ring around the planet.
All conjecture though at this point.
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did some googling about stuff yesterday, and found a site where people do a lot of photoshopped digital space art. they had some cool tutorials so i had a bash at it, and came up with this in about 1.5 hours:
all done in photoshop. what d'ya think?
(http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/4375/bluepearloq9.jpg)