Scientists Find Solar System Like Ours

mlimber writes "The NYTimes has up a story about the discovery of a solar system that is analogous to ours. Of the 250 or so exoplanets found thus far, 'few of them are in systems that even faintly resemble our own. In many cases, giant Jupiter-like planets are whizzing around inside the orbit of Mercury,' whereas in this new system, 'a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star about half the mass of the Sun, at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun.' The researchers used gravitational microlensing to detect the planets, and two of the lead authors of the paper to be published in Science are amateur astronomers, one of whom describes herself as 'an ordinary New Zealand mother.'"

Scale Model

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

A world populated by 3 foot tall humans! How cute!

Re:Scale Model

[by Anonymous Coward]

The Mytbusters often start with scale experiments before moving on to the real thing. Why shouldn't God?

Re:

[Ethanol-fueled (1125189)]

Because god dosen't exist, duh.

Re:

[Enrique1218 (603187)]

how do we know we not the scaled experiment?

Can we name the system Krypton?

[usul294 (1163169)]

Will children of aliens born in this system react when they leave the red sun of OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, and grow up with the Yellow sun of Earth?

Oblig.

[Penguinisto (415985)]

I, for one, welcome our

(/me gets a whisper in the ear...)

...oh, shit, you mean they're real!?

Umm, err, ahh, I gotta go now.

/P

You got it all wrong:

[kryten_nl (863119)]

They welcome their new terrestrial overlords.

Re:

[Penguinisto (415985)]

Only in Soviet Russia.

Word

[slashdotinmyface (1163909)]

How does an ordinary mother from New Zealand get her hands on a microwavey optical device thingy?

Re:Word

[Lazarian (906722)]

She (and another colleague) worked with the data provided by the instrument and found a way to extract more information from the observations.

Amateur astronomers contribute a great deal to the field. It's not necessary to have access to expensive research equipment to make useful observations of interest to the scientific community. Many comets have been discovered by amateurs, for example.

Re:

[techno-vampire (666512)]

Many comets have been discovered by amateurs, for example.

You mean like Comet Hammner-Brown? [barnesandnoble.com]

Re:

[vux984 (928602)]

How many solar systems and or comets must you discover to graduate from "amateur" status?

Like most things you graduate from amateur status when you start getting paid for your work.

Re:Word

[Oktober Sunset (838224)]

Because her brother Rodney needed help with the maths.

NYT Got Lensing Effect Wrong

[cmacb (547347)]

Seems to me it is the star that is 21,000 light years away that would have the planets, not the one that is 5000 light years away. The lensing effect is provided by the intermediate star. Unless I'm mistaken they need a new (or any) science editor at The Times.

No, it's like a scanner

[localroger (258128)]

As the distant star passes across the background, the way it is lensed reveals the structure of the nearby system.

Re:NYT Got Lensing Effect Wrong

[Sleipnir64 (1239742)]

Being a graduate student at one of the universities involved, i did some modeling on this event (although we weren't quite up with the game, so our findings weren't used in the report).

The term 'lensing' is a bit of a misnomer, as that implies that you're looking at the source star; which is essentially a giant flashlight that allows us to probe the lens for information about it's planets.

The lens star acts to bend the light from the source, creating multiple and distorted images of it (which are too close together to resolve). Observing the sky from earth, these multiple images have the effect of increasing the net flux measured (in laymans terms, the star gets brighter).
When the lens star has planets (especially, as in this case, one close to what as known as the 'einstein ring') it causes large perturbations to the (otherwise fairly simple) lightcurve. With appropriate mathematical models and massive amounts of computing power, the parameters that give the best fitting theoretical lightcurve can be found.
Combining this with external information and a good dose of physical and statistical insight, it is possible to say to a reasonable degree of confidence (usually never 100%) that you have found such and such a system.

In reality, the astronomers who measure the data are only a very small part of the overall picture, but the media find a much better story in "amateur astronomer finds extrasolar planets" than "scientists use computer grid to minimize 10 dimensional chi^2 hypersurface" so they get all the attention.

Re:NYT Got Lensing Effect Wrong

[Enrique1218 (603187)]

The closer star is the one with the planets. The one 21000 years provided the light however, the closer one acted like the lens. You can read this article [wikipedia.org] for more information. Basically, the perfect alignment of the two stars produces a magnification of the furthermost stars light. If the intensity of the outer star is plot against time, the graph will show a hump when the stars aligned. If there is a planet around the "lens" star that is pretty far away, the planet will cause a deviation in the light intensity curve when it aligns with the stars. Thus, the planet acted as another lens in the system further magnifying the light from the furthermost star.

Nice try.

[uhlume (597871)]

No, the NYT got it right. You need to stop skimming TFA and assuming you know what it's talking about based on a few words you happen to recognize.

From said article:

"The new discovery was made by a different technique that favors planets more distant from their star. It is based on a trick of Einsteinian gravity called microlensing. If, in the ceaseless shifting of the stars, two stars should become perfectly aligned with the Earth, the gravity of the nearer star can bend and magnify the light from the more distant one, causing it to suddenly get much brighter for a few days.

If the alignment is especially perfect, any big planets attending the nearer star will get into the act, adding their own little bumps to the more distant starlight."

Emphasis added.

In other words, the "lensing effect" of the nearer star doesn't behave, as you clearly imagine, like a cosmic telescope lens to make the distant star system more clearly visible to viewers on earth. Rather, its presence (and the presence of its attendant planets) is betrayed by the distortions they gravity introduces in the transmitted light as they pass between us and the more distant star.

Mothers

[arizwebfoot (1228544)]

two of the lead authors of the paper to be published in Science are amateur astronomers, one of whom describes herself as 'an ordinary New Zealand mother.

We've all known that mothers can see things no else has managed to prove.

Sounds like...

[Atario (673917)]

Our solar system's version of Mini-Me.

technique even more important

[nguy (1207026)]

Perhaps even more important than the system they found is how they found it: through gravitational microlensing. The technique is quite general and powerful.

Skilled amateurs

[Psychotria (953670)]

two of the lead authors of the paper to be published in Science are amateur astronomers

Thank goodness for areas of science where "amateurs" can still make significant contributions. The other ones that springs to mind are biology and Comp. Sci. Physics, chemistry etc are out of the league of most people (myself included) where the best we can do is learn what others have already done. To be published in Science is a wonderful achievement. Kudos to them.

life as we know it

[whitehatlurker (867714)]

"Neither of the two giant planets is a likely abode for life as we know it"

Funny, that's what Jovian scientists say about Terra. Well, except for the giant planet part.

ANOTHER Solar System?!?

[Mish (50810)]

There is only one Solar System [wikipedia.org]

For those who care, the "SOLar System" is named because of the system of stars around... (wait for it) Sol (the name of our Sun).
To find another Solar System would indicate that they've found that our Sun occipies two points in space and time and has another seperate group of stars associated with it.

What they've found is another "Star System" like ours.

I'm not posting to be petty, just for those that are interested. :)

Re:ANOTHER Solar System?!?

[StonedRat (837378)]

Actually I think the correct term is "planetary system". A star system would be a group of stars that orbit each other.

Re:ANOTHER Solar System?!?

[by Anonymous Coward]

So do you live with your ego in the center of your "ego system", or do you merely bask in its glow from one of the planets that orbits it?

Re:ANOTHER Solar System?!?

[AeroIllini (726211)]

Yes, lots of people trot that explanation out.

However, keep in mind that our sun was named Sol in Latin, and that name was assigned long before anyone knew that the sun was just a special case of a star (namely, it's the closest star). Back when people started using Sol to refer to the Sun, it was considered a separate entity from the stars, just as the Moon (Luna) was separate from the sun.

However, now that we have hundreds of years of astronomical data proving that our sun is really not different than many other suns, I don't see a problem with calling an external star system a "solar system" just like I would have no trouble calling Phobos and Deimos a "lunar system". Sun and Moon, the English equivalents of Sol and Luna, have become genericized as we found out that our sun and moon were not special; they are just examples of common objects in the universe.

You will also note that the British seem to have no trouble confusing the word "continent" with the specific place "The Continent". This is exactly the same issue as "solar system" vs. "The Solar System", and exactly as pointless to argue about, since it doesn't hinder communication at all.

This is a non-story.

[Caspian (99221)]

There's only one feature of our Solar System that's remotely interesting: Earth. Sure, the other planets are pretty, and may hold promise as sources for raw materials and-- much later-- targets for terraforming. But what makes our solar system "like ours" is Earth, period. The rest of the planets seem completely mundane.

When I read the headline, I was somewhat shocked-- "So they finally were able to resolve an exoplanet that was small, warm, rocky and bore the signature of water?" But no, it's Yet Anothe

This is big news

[Orp (6583)]

Finding another solar system with Jupiter-like planets in circular orbits at decent distances from the parent star is big news. There has been speculation (and I would imagine it will continue) that our solar system with its roughly circular orbiting planets was rather anomalous, especially with most of the extrasolar planets discovered having mostly whacked out orbits (of course the method of detection favors this type of discovery to some extent). Highly elliptical orbits would lead to horrible seasonal variations, as well as potentially unstable orbits for multiple planets. Jupiter helps protect Earth and the inner planets from comets and asteroids. I would imagine that the likelihood that life exists in the universe has just gone up (specifically, n_e in the Drake equation).

It excites me greatly to know that before I die, rocky inner planets similar to ours will most likely be discovered!

Time-Delayed Discoveries

[Kelson (129150)]

I always find it interesting how many astronomical discoveries are based on years-old observations. It's incredible that we're collecting so much data that it takes this long to process it all, ask the right questions, make the right connections, double-check, cross-check, and confirm.

Re:Time-Delayed Discoveries

[gstoddart (321705)]

I always find it interesting how many astronomical discoveries are based on years-old observations. It's incredible that we're collecting so much data that it takes this long to process it all, ask the right questions, make the right connections, double-check, cross-check, and confirm.

Hmmmm ... what does that make me think of .... oh, yeah.

"Well, our object collison budget's about a million dollars. That allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg'n your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky."

You'd have to look at a lot of sky a lot of times to be able to spot most things. It's not like the first time you look at something it coughs up its secrets. I'm not even remotely surprised at the sheer scale of this.

You're looking at an enormous number of enormous things, whose timelines span an enormous amount of time. And, then you have to be able to spot differences that are barely perceptible -- like, what, way less than angstroms, right?

I'm sometimes amazed we find anything. Imagine, how many times you'd have to look at the same star to be able to know when it's going to get illuminated by a star a few thousand light years behind it, and then measure the planets around it.

It really does make my head spin at times. It really does reinforce that the universe is way bigger than we can really and truly wrap our heads around.

Cheers

Astronomy isn't the only amateur friendly science

[LM741N (258038)]

I seem to remember that most all the great electronic inventions of the last century were made by amateurs. You can argue that electronics is a subset of physics, but lets keep semantics out of this.

And it continues. Amateur radio operators continue to innovate and their work many times gets picked up by universities and corporations.

Re:Astronomy isn't the only amateur friendly scien

[Dunbal (464142)]

Computer programming is also very amateur friendly. Corporations that throw money into development only end up making similar copies of what already exists. The true innovation has always come from startups and no-names.

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

Because it's relative in scale to us, the star is half the size of our sun. The large gas giants are about half as far away from the star, as ours are to our star, etc., etc..

Re:

[fmobus (831767)]

I Am Not An Astronomer, but I'm not sure direct, linear comparisons are valid in the context of energy/radiation propagation in a 3d space. Could anyone enlighten me here?

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[Dachannien (617929)]

Insolation (sunshine intensity) decreases with the square of the distance to the star. However, the relationship between star volume/mass and its radiation are more complicated than that, and TFA doesn't go into details.

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[CorSci81 (1007499)]

Actually, the mass/luminosity relationship is (roughly) L~M^3.5. They never mention the exact size of the star, but if we assume it's half as massive as the sun it's luminosity is right around 9% of solar (I'm rounding a bit). Take into account you've got a factor of 4 increase in insolation by moving it to half the distance and you can see the inner planet gets something like 36% of the insolation of Jupiter. Granted, I completely made up the mass of the star, but it gives you an idea of what's going on.

And for the record I was an astronomer.

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[Thomas M Hughes (463951)]

Yeah, that IS like ours then ...sorry! I forgot about scale etc etc /sarcasm

Easy to fix. It's "like" ours for certain values of "like".

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[provigilman (1044114)]

A PC and a watch aren't very similar, but a PC and a laptop are, even if they're different scales. One could also assume, from knowing that they're somewhat similar, that the laptop might contain some of the same components such as an HDD, RAM and a modem/ethernet/wifi device.

The same applies here. We're seeing a sun that's roughly half the size of our Sun with at least two planets roughly the size of some our gas giants that are orbiting it at half the distance. Since previously we've only seen stuff that would be impossible in our solar system, this is the closest we've come to it.

Now, no one is saying it's identical. The two large planets could be the only things in the system, or there could be some small rocky worlds closer in that we can't see yet. The fact that two planets that we can detect are similar in scale to two of ours could infer that there are other planets similar in scale to our own in orbits similar to our own.

There could be a Mars-size planet in orbit more like that of Venus, but because the sun is smaller and cooler it might actually be temperate like Earth. Out of what we've seen so far, this is the best hope for finding Earth-like life, or a possible colonization opportunity for humans.

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[Hamstaus (586402)]

A PC and a watch aren't very similar, but a PC and a laptop are, even if they're different scales. One could also assume, from knowing that they're somewhat similar, that the laptop might contain some of the same components such as an HDD, RAM and a modem/ethernet/wifi device.

The same applies here.

My god... it's full of laptops ?!

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[popmaker (570147)]

Yes it is, but it only costs about $27 million.

Re:

[SQLGuru (980662)]

Maybe we're just looking in a universe based funhouse mirror.....we are really seeing ourselves from some other time (future or past).

Layne

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[eln (21727)]

It's actually very similar to ours, except the planets are all out of order and all the people there have, for some unknown reason, goatees.

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[Guppy06 (410832)]

We're here and alive because Jupiter is big enough and close enough to suck up most comets and asteroids that might wipe us out, but small enough and far enough out that it doesn't suck us up. Most of the extrasolar planetary systems we've seen to date fail the second qualification.

Re:Misleading headlines suck

[wizardforce (1005805)]

then again, some models predict that it had little effect on the number of asteroid/comet impacts. The reason we see a lot of systems with large, close orbiting jovian [gas giants] worlds is because they are much easier to spot- that may change in a few years with better techniques/telescopes.

Re:

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

They must be lonely and have a fetish for 3-breasted green space-babes, or something.

Odd I have a sudden urge to watch some Star Trek: TOS...

Re:Umm, misleading?

[rjmnz (165487)]

Of course it is "like ours".
Astronomers are struggling with models of solar system formation which could explain the formation of our solar system. AFIK all extrasolar systems to date are so extreme that the models don't even start to work. This is the first system where the planetary distribution is comparable to ours. Remember the rocky dwarfs in our solar system represent an infinitesimal component of the mass. Don't attach too much significance to the rocks just because we happen to live on one.
The science is understanding the formation of planetary systems in which this one is very much like ours.
The science (fantasy/fiction) is discovering earth like planets themselves. I would also bet that when we get to finding earth like planets the gas giant distribution should be sol like.

Re:

[Kelson (129150)]

Our solar system: Large gas planets farther out, small rocky planets close to the star.
Most star systems discovered so far: Large gas planets close in to the star with no room for small rocky planets in the habitable zone.
This system: Large gas planets farther out, with enough room that there could be rocky planets close to the star.

Re:meh

[TapeCutter (624760)]

I for one look forward to reading his rebuttal in the the journal of science.

Confirming my impression of Dolts Who Say "meh"

[Gary W. Longsine (124661)]

So let me get this straight. You were once near a research program, but not actually a part of it, and the head of a department, but apparently not the head of the department doing the research, dismissed it out of hand, before the research was published, implying to you the data was noisy? Your ass just fell off. Let me hand it to you, so you can re-attach it.

Perhaps it didn't occur to you that in some cases you can pull signal out of noisy data by looking for regular repeating patterns? Or with maybe some other techniques you hadn't thought of? Maybe some technique described in the research paper, or its references?

Here's the thing. Getting signal from noise is hard, but often possible. As a species, we get better at it as time goes on. If signal could never be pulled from noise, radio, television, cell phones, and the internet wouldn't work. Heck, even without any fancy schmancy scientific instruments, we're pretty darn good at it. A big chuck of most brains (including yours) is devoted to the task. In fact, you couldn't use spoken words to communicate with somebody else in a bar where everybody else was talking, too. Seismographs couldn't detect earthquakes from the other side of the planet, because there are too many people having raucaus sex and too much truck traffic at any given time.

Take this signal, for examle, the pattern of posts dismissing something with a wave of the interjection "meh [slate.com]" when they clearly have no concept, amidst the general noise of Slashdot posts. If I see it once, I think it's just a random person, spouting off, maybe pre-caffeinated, maybe late at night, maybe not thinking it through, whatever it is. When I see "meh" many times, and every time it's from somebody who is seriously and totally lacking clue, then I wonder. Is this "meh" some sort of signal for someone who doesn't realize the limits of their own knowledge? Is there something about the "meh" meme which causes it to preferentially survive in a cesspool of incompletely formed thought, and die out amidst the frenzy of competition in a curious mind? Is "meh" a signal which indicates intellectual laziness? Perhaps it's related to the phenomenon of the unskilled being unable to correctly assess their skill? (This applies to all of us, in domains of our in-expertise. I'm not insulting you, merely pointing out that we all need to become more aware of the areas of our in-expertise, in order to avoid looking like idiots.)

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments [apa.org]
(Also available in this HTML version [geocities.com] if you prefer.)
Overconfidence [behaviouralfinance.net]


Your geek card is hereby suspended for the weekend, which you should devote to reading about signal processing and astronomy. You are also prohibited from using "meh" for one year.

The Fundamentals of Signal Analysis [agilent.com]
Extrasolar Planets [wikipedia.org]