Newfound Planet Has Earth-Like Orbit

[Ian David]

Source: Space.com

Newfound Planet Has Earth-Like Orbit
By Ker Than
Staff Writer
posted: 02 August 2007
03:09 pm ET

A planet outside our solar system with a year roughly equal to Earth's has been discovered around a dying, red giant star.

Only about 10 red giant stars are known to harbor planets; the new solar system is among the most distant of these.

<snip>

The finding, to be detailed in the November issue of Astrophysical Journal, was made by a team led by Penn State astronomer Alex Wolszczan, who in 1992 discovered the first planets outside our solar system around a deadly, radiation-spewing star.

A bloated parent

The new planet, spotted using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas, circles its bloated parent star every 360 days and is located about 300 light-years away, in the constellation Perseus.

<snip>

The red giant star is twice as massive and about 10 times larger than the sun. Its planet is about the size of Jupiter or larger and was discovered using the so-called wobble technique, in which astronomers look for slight wiggles in a star's motion created by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets.

Read more: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070802_redgiant_planet.html

[nebenaube]

1. don't get excited...

it's probably toasted.

[Demeter]

2. It's Safer Than Paraguay, Though

I bet we could take up a collection for the B/C regime, to send them to the ultimate safety!

[ericgtr]

3. Yep

and this is what we have to look forward to..

[originalpckelly]

4. It might be important, because it's at the right orbit for life...

and before the star when red giant it may have provided the planet with a good environment to create life. The life on that planet may have left and escaped and could be somewhere out there among the stars.

[Uncle Joe]

7. If life from such a planet was advanced enough to escape,

I would imagine they would also be able to detect life sustaining planets such as ours, with all the endless possibilities out there it seems to me, only a matter of time before we're discovered as well, if not already. I believe this is just another currently minor, but could become a major reason to start thinking of ourselves as global citizens instead of just national ones, lest we all become Native Americans, with the resultant consequences.

[Harry Monroe]

13. And I think they'd bypass this planet

Or determine that we, as a human species, were a threat to the rest of the galaxy and destroy us. Our sorry ass record speaks for itself.

BTW, the most likely way they would be able to detect us is through our radio and television waves, all the crap that has been traveling out from this planet for the past 80 years. A frightening thought; think of all the shitty television programming we have been spewing out to the cosmos since the early '50's. My God, if I were an alien and intercepted and viewed some of that garbage, I'd come to the conclusion that either there was no intelligent life on Earth whatsoever, or that Earth must be destroyed for the safety and security of the rest of the cosmos.

[Uncle Joe]

18. The scenarios are endless,

they could be benign or hostile, if they were of Klingon type, our ignorant war like ways may appeal to them or on the other hand, they may need our resources. They may be escaping something worse and looking for refuge.

Also, they may have used the wobble technique thousands or tens of thousands of years ago to detect us and if Earth could support their life, and they were advanced enough for space travel, I see no reason why eventually, they wouldn't come here.

[originalpckelly]

38. Quite frankly, I'd be very surprised if they weren't like us.

We're here for a reason, the same evolution that produced us (albeit with interference from asteroids/comets and volcanoes) is going to produce them, if a "them" even exists.

[TankLV]

44. Oh, god, NO - another bush* family and REPUKES!

God help the universe...

[Buns_of_Fire]

42. Not to worry. "American Idol" is new enough that it probably hasn't reached them yet.

"My Mother the Car", on the other hand... :nuke:

[TankLV]

43. There was a scenerio on that theme a few years back...

Some distant planet was just receiving radio and TV from earth - and it becomes THE entertainment medium of that planet - and they contact us, etc., etc. That was many years ago...

Not to mention the more recent flick "Star Fighters" or something - that actually sought the TV actors' help because they had no concept of "entertainment"...Now THAT would be frightening...

[Harry Monroe]

8. They could be heading for Earth as we speak!!

No intelligent life here, move on aliens!!!

BTW, ever wonder why aliens would travel light years in space just to anal probe us?? Just wondering.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Maybe they're looking for oil?

But seriously if we were able to explore other planets and came across some strange life forms, I imagine we would conduct our own battery of tests, just as we have done and continue to do with other animals here on Earth.

[Piscis Austrinus]

21. Not likely

Stephen Hawking has said that our first encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence is likely to be our only encounter, and that it will spell the end of humanity.

I disagree with Hawking, because in order to remain in existence long enough to develop a technology that can reach across the gulf of interstellar space, a sentient species would have to be able to coexist harmoniously with other lifeforms. Human intelligence has given rise to a dizzying array of opinions and viewpoints on matters ranging from the mind-numbingly trivial to the blood-curdlingly vital, and our own future is in doubt largely because of our differences with other members of our own species.

It makes sense to me to asume, therefore, that any extraterrestrial would likely leave us alone. We are no threat now and will not be for centuries, and our biology is highly specific to our position in space. Any creature wanting our resources would likely have a similar biology - hard to imagine when one considers the relatively small range of temperatures and conditions we can endure. Extraterrestrials might well be hardier - survival of the fittest almost dictates that they would be - but it would be difficult to imagine a race whose preferred range of living conditions would be much similar to our own. Titan (the Saturnian moon) would seem to me to be at least as good a candidate for extraterrestrials' exploration as our own planet.

Peace
PsA

[reprobate]

25. In addition, any species that could invent and build the technology to cross

interstellar space would undoubtedly NOT find any of our resources of interest.

They would likely not even find anything to talk about that we would in any way understand.

[Uncle Joe]

30. What is of interest to us in going to other planets, such as Mars or

even studying planets, we will never visit in even our grand children's lifetimes?

I believe it's possible, something we take for granted could be of great value to them. The west was far more technologically advanced than the Middle East during the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries and yet we wanted their oil, and to this day most of us can't talk to most of them.

[Thor_MN]

36. Well, as fast as we are filling up the planet, we might make a decent "domestic" animal

We are somewhat useful at performing work, and if we taste good, who knows?

[TankLV]

46. 'It's a...a...COOK BOOK"!!!!

Don't GO!!!!!

[davekriss]

48. How to Serve Mankind

(One of my favorite episodes!)

[Uncle Joe]

27. Except, I believe we're continually evolving as a species,

the United Nations; Earth's first deliberative body, not counting the League of Nations only came in to existence in the late forties, a mere blink of an eye ago, in relation to human history. Also there may be other planets out there with conditions similar to our own.

As I mentioned on another post, the scenarios are endless, submerged beneath the ocean is a hostile environment for humans, but we don't have a problem with harvesting it's bountiful resources or visiting in submarines. I agree with you on Titan, however I don't believe this precludes them from exploring us as well.

Peace to you
U.J.

[rjones2818]

32. DALEKS!!!

Haven't you seen Doctor Who?

Exterminate...exterminate...exterminate!!!!

:scared:

[Norrin Radd]

41. It's possible the some extraterrestrials are so ancient and advanced

beyond our understanding, that they can manipulate and traverse time on the quantum level, so our (relatively) primative present might not hold much interest for them.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. Or perhaps we are them...

[TankLV]

45. They probably have the EAR "thermometer/probe" but just want to have some fun...

[Piscis Austrinus]

17. No, the parent star is much too massive

and therefore too bright. Imagine the sun ten times as bright as what we know now. Talk about global warming...

However, if B/C convert to Mormonism, my guess is that's the planet waiting for one of them. Let them decide then whether global warming and a toxic atmosphere are of as little import as they would have us believe today.

If life evolved on planet like that, it would be of a form incompatible with that of Earth. We might be able to communicate with such a lifeform, given that it would have to be of some intelligence, but we could never share an ecosystem.

Peace
PsA

[originalpckelly]

39. True, I didn't see that, I just thought it was a star like our sun that had gone red giant.

Why are they talking about this? Yeah, same orbit, but with a star so large the sweet spot for life would be farther away.

[IChing]

5. Krypton was wiped out during the red giant's expansion.

The jupiter size planet is all that is left of its outer solar system
the inner planets and Krypton were wiped out... Doesn't anyone read superman?

[zehnkatzen]

6. And it's so far away...

...that if you got in a modern spaceship today, and went as fast as you could, you'd still never get there. Ever.

[Harry Monroe]

12. A physics question...

If your car were traveling at the speed of light (suppose for the sake of this worthless question, you could physically do so, your infinite mass notwithstanding) and you turned your headlights on, would you see them??

Just wondering.

[Piscis Austrinus]

22. Probably not

since your range of vision shrinks to a point when you reach the speed of light.

Peace
PsA

[tridim]

26. The speed of light is a constant no matter how fast you and the source are traveling.

If you don't believe me take it up with Einstein.

[Thor_MN]

37. Relative to you, your headlights work just fine and move away from you at the speed of light.

Relative to someone on a planet that you pass, there would be a burst of radiation as you went past, all the light stacked up into a split second.

[originalpckelly]

40. You can't not no get that there car faster than light, I done some book learnun:

The formula for relativistic kinetic energy is as follows...

Key:
ek = kinetic energy
m = resting mass
c = speed of light
v = velocity of object/particle/etc.



You'll note that if the car travels at the speed of light and that's its "v", that divided by the speed of light "c" comes to one, one squared is one, subtract that from 1 and you get zero. The square root of zero is zero, and anything divided by zero is undefined (which is infinite in this situation.)

So if that equation is right, and it has proved itself so at least at the high velocities in question, then it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a object with any mass to the speed of light.

Now, we do know from low energy level stuff at small distances that relativity doesn't provide accurate predictions, we can deduce from that that there is something wrong with this and other relativity equations for certain energy levels. It is not a perfect match for reality, although we do know it models reality pretty damn well for most situations, it's highly possible that just like the old newtonian/classical kinetic energy equation (ke = 1/2 mv^2) that it is relatively accurate in a certain range of energy levels, but it fails at the higher/lower energy level extremes.

So your question may be invalid. And since it is unverifiable/unfalsifiable, if that relativistic equation is right, we cannot measure it or make any valid predictions that can be measured about what would happen.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Our modern space ships, are as canoes, crossing the Atlantic,

maybe not even that advanced.

[paparush]

20. um..they are more like trying to paddle a ton of bricks...

[Uncle Joe]

24. Where I was about to make an addendum to my previous post,

even taking your analogy in to account is, that I believe given the right circumstances,it can be done eventually.

I can't imagine how a primitive people would view our current space travel, or nuclear submarines, or those giant colliders which break down subatomic particles, primitive people that may not even know about electricity, other than lightning, I believe this would seem impossible to them as well. Just because our current understanding of science doesn't support it, doesn't mean it can't be done, in the future.

[Salviati]

15. Voyager 1 would only take about 52600 years to get there...

That's not too bad :)

It's currently the fastest moving macroscopic thing we've created and is moving at about 0.0057% of light speed, which works out to be about 17 kilometers per second or 3.6 AU per year.

[Piscis Austrinus]

19. Nope, much longer than that

Voyager's current trajectory will cause it to pass approximately 1/2 LY (light years) from Sirius, but that alone will take around 50,000 years. Remember, it took Voyager thirty years just to travel 10 billion miles. Sirius is about 50 trillion miles away. This newly-discovered planet is 300 light years away, which would take about 2 million years. You'd grow a hell of a beard in your hibernation capsule (assuming you can grow facial hair). And let's not discuss what happens after you run out of deodorant.

Peace
PsA

[Salviati]

34. whoops, you're right...

I divided by the percentage not the speed, DOH! I should have divided by .000057 not .0057... So it should take about 100x as long as I said.

[Endangered Specie]

9. "a deadly, radiation-spewing star" ummm, dont' ALL stars 'spew' radiation?

:shrug:

[zehnkatzen]

10. No, it doesn't...

...according to some brand new faith-based research, all our Sun spews is kitties and puppies and ZOMG Ponies!!!!!

[Posteritatis]

23. Ours has nothing on quite a few stars (nt)

[Endangered Specie]

29. But I bet our radiation is just as 'deadly' as theirs

[Posteritatis]

31. Not really, when theirs puts out orders of magnitude more of it

With some stars, we're talking the difference between a smoke detector and a one-pound block of plutonium. The differences of scale that show up in space are bigger than most people can readily comprehend.

[TankLV]

47. They haven't spent an evening with my dogs then....

Ewwwwwweee!

[MasonJar]

28. Good, send Bush and Cheney and their whole cabal.

[stevedeshazer]

33. Does it have oil?

Regards,

Dick Cheney

[Chichiri]

35. So it might have life. And they might be coming.

TERRA! TERRA! VOTE REPUBLICAN! TERRA!