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Lord of the Rings Media Movies Space Science

Newly Formed Solar System 117

Posted by Zonk from the dubbed-mordor dept.
xPsi writes "An article in New Scientist reports that a team of astronomers from UC Berkeley and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have used the Hubble space telescope to image a dust ring in orbit around Fomalhaut, a nearby star about 25 light years away. The ring 'offers the best evidence yet that a nearby star is circled by a newly formed solar system.' Oddly enough, from the Earth's vantage point, the ring also happens to resemble The Eye of Sauron. One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them..."
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Newly Formed Solar System More

Newly Formed Solar System

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  • Newly formed solar system my ass! (Score:4, Funny)

    by nokilli ( 759129 ) * on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:41AM (#12907730)
    Ours was invented first! We own the patent! You think inventing a solar system is easy? Trivial and non-obvious? Then why haven't you created one yourself?

    Prior art? I can't seeeeeeee you! Can you show that your solar system was invented before our solar system was?

    Yeah, I thought so.

    All your solar system are belong to us. Uh huh. Don't waste your time crying cause I can't hear the tears. All those heavenly bodies? Time for me to get jiggy with each and every one! I got my pulsar right here!

    My IP is bigger than your IP!

    (and to think Bozo patents the "click" and Jobs patents the "wheel". I mean, c'mon guys, keep up. I'm talking planets here! What do you got? A forest and a fruit? -1, I'm-Not-Interested-Anymore.)

  • "Newly" formed? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TCM ( 130219 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:43AM (#12907736)
    I'd say it's at least 25 years old. Pfft.

    You need to speed up your R&D cycle to compete in today's market, Mr. astronomer guys.

  • That's quite a journey... (Score:4, Funny)

    by AtariEric ( 571910 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:43AM (#12907737)
    Good luck getting the ring to that Mount Doom...

    • Nah, it's simple. There's so little mass in a ring you could concevably accelerate it pretty goddamn quickly. Strap a few rockets on, aim it well, and fire, and you can lie back for a littel nap.

      Then again, you might have to wait awhile to see some results.

  • I wonder if they have any telephone poles (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:47AM (#12907750) Homepage
    I wonder if that would be a good spot to post my flyer:

    **Missing!**

    One solar sail. Shiny silver, 10 stories tall, 5 microns wide. Lost near the Sol area, but may be near Formalhaut in about 500 years. Answers to "401.525 MHz". Very dear to our hearts; reward offered.If sighted, please contact the Planetary Society at 626-793-5100.

  • soooo old! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cryptoz ( 878581 ) <jns@jacobsheehy.com> on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:48AM (#12907752) Homepage Journal
    Come on, even Slashdot is usually better at reporting news that's RECENT! I mean, how can you call something that formed 25 years ago _news_? Bah!
    • 25 years ago...3 days ago...this is probably just another repost from some BBS Zonk was using as a kid; we should be used to this by now.

  • Wow, Life Imitating...wait a minute!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Basehart ( 633304 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:48AM (#12907755)
    What if the Earth is some kind of Art Planet, and what we do here really is copied "out there", or at least observed and acted upon, in the same way as in Galaxy Quest.

    Lets face it, that sure does look like the Eye Of Sauron and it sure wasn't discovered before a couple of million beings on Planet Earth saw the movie and started dreaming about it or whatever.

  • How Long? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone know if this is something they were tracking, or did someone just chance upon it and determine it was "newly formed"?

    Yes, I did read the article.

    It would be rather interesting if they've been tracking it. Less interesting if they just chanced upon it.

    And FINALLY -- a *positive* story about the Hubble telescope.

    • Re:How Long? (Score:4, Informative)

      by helioquake ( 841463 ) * on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:59AM (#12907776) Journal
      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.
    • Well since the star has a name like Fomalhaut, rather than 3C247, or even P3567 means we've been aware of the star between 100 and 4 thousand years and this one is probably closer to 4000 years; and it's naked-eye visable. We've had a pretty good idea of what stuff localy is new and what is old more likely it's something that we've just gotten arround to looking at because theirs just some much to look at.
  • ... than the brown eye of Goatse.
  • A midnight post.

  • So now we have (Score:5, Funny)

    by urbster1 ( 871298 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @02:58AM (#12907774)
    a LOTR solar system? What's next, the Star Wars solar system? Oh wait, my bad, that was a long, long time ago.

  • No pupil (Score:5, Informative)

    by ByteSlicer ( 735276 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @03:10AM (#12907802)
    Oddly enough, from the Earth's vantage point, the ring also happens to resemble The Eye of Sauron.

    Actually, the black pupil isn't really there, it's just the Hubble's coronagraph (see TFA). So, while the picture indeed resembles the Eye of Sauron, the system doesn't really look like this seen from Earth.
  • This looks similar to the "Eye of God" the hubble space telescope hubble found. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0305/helix0 3_hst_big.jpg [nasa.gov]
    • The helix nebulae is a well known astronomical object that has been noted well before the Hubble.

      The Hubble just has a better view.

      A decent amatuer telescope will allow you to see it.

      ~X~

  • My favorite ring-related heavenly body: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Humorously_Inept ( 777630 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @03:38AM (#12907859) Homepage
    Hoag's Object [hubblesite.org]. So unusual they call it an object!
  • But does this new solar system have a flag? No so I claim this solar system the shobyeyelordyringy - *places flag and yells FLAG*

  • Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but I thought the Sun (proper noun) was a star (common noun), and that Sol (also proper noun) was another word for the Sun, and that therefore the Solar System (also proper noun) specifically refers to the Sun and the planets surrounding it, not to any other star systems.

    So, saying "Newly Formed Solar System" makes no sense, because there is only one Solar System, and we are in it right now, and it is not newly formed. It makes about as much sense to call something else a

    • When a planet orbits a star, that star is it's Sun. The Sun is not a singular entity.
      • Hmm. I thought that star is then its sun, and that the Sun, when talking about stars, refers only to our own sun. Right or wrong? (Doesn't make your point less valid either way - I'm just curious.)
      • However, as I understand it, our Sun's name is "Sol".
        • No, our sun's name is "The Sun". In Latin langages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, etc.) it is "Sol". Science Fiction writers use the latin term simply to give some extra flavor, but it is just an adoption of the latin term in English. Helios is the greek version (aka Helium, Heliopause, Perihelion) of the same word, if you want to get even more exotic.

          Personally, I like simple Anglo-Saxon when talking in English, even if the words are "vulgar" due to ancient repression of aboriginal En
    • Yes, you are being picky. This is one that most languages (especially English in this case) simply don't have a reasonable general term for, mainly because until very recently there hasn't been a need for such a term.

      The use of the term "solar system" is, however, a very widely recognized term that most people in the general public are familiar with, and when it is suggested that another "solar system" was found around another star besides the Sun, most people hearing that phrase instantly understand exac
      • Regardess of which term is correct, the public will accept the most publicized version of the term. That's why it's so important to get the most appropriate term into circulation early enough for it to be publicized as the "Correct" version.

      • actually.... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by goldberry ( 887347 )
        According to Wikipedia "A star system or stellar system is a group of stars (and possibly smaller bodies such as planets or asteroids) that orbit one another (systems with planetary bodies orbiting stars, are referred to as solar systems or planetary systems)." So really, if we want to get technical, "planetary system" would be the most appropriate. Not that it matters.
  • Fomelhaut... is the 18th brightest star.. in the world... Or so said Danger Bob, anyway. Yeah... I got nothin'. --Jed

  • More like the eye of the Great Old Ones (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Art ( 3335 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @04:10AM (#12907928)
    Lovecraft [mythicimages.com] claimed that some of the Great Old Ones lived on or near Fomalhaut. Maybe it is not the eye of Sauron, but something far worse.

    And now that we can see it, it can see us. And it will come for us in our dreams. And lick the sweet icor from our brains.

    Enya! Enya! Cthulhu fthagan!

  • More Info (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kf6auf ( 719514 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @05:28AM (#12908074)

    This dust cloud was first published in 1989 in the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society.

    According to "The Age of Gliese 879 and Fomalhaut" in APJ v.475, p.313 (1997) Fomalhaut is 200 +/- 100 million years old. While this is a large margin of error, this still confirms that circumstellar dust disks can persist in A stars for several hundred megayears, which it is believed can then form planets.

    According to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society v.334, p.589 (2002) it is estimated that the ring has the mass of 20-30 Earths.

    While not known for certain "Submillimeter Observations of an Asymmetric Dust Disk around Fomalhaut" in APJ v.582, p.1141-46 (2003) implies that the ring offset and the clump with 5% the mass of the ring is likely caused by a large planet close to the star, but I don't know what this no-visible-planet observation means for that theory. Dark matter?

    And I could not for the life of me find the distance that ring is from Fomalhaut. Anyone know?

    And thanks for that link to the Eye of Sauron, I had been wondering what that was.

    • That's interesting. If that planet has 5% of the mass of the ring, and the ring has 20-30 times the mass of earth, it means that planet has 1-1.5 times the mass of earth.

      And the Eye of Sauron is something that resembles the picture taken by the HST :-P

  • Yeah, okay... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zarf ( 5735 ) on Saturday June 25, 2005 @07:15AM (#12908265) Journal
    Oddly enough, from the Earth's vantage point, the ring also happens to resemble The Eye of Sauron. One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them...

    Zonk, to you everything looks like "The Eye of Sauron" ... a latte with that swirly cream, a sundae with a cherry on top, a toilet seat, anything vaugely circular ...

    It's called Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder and you need to get help before you get on that white ship with Gandalf.

  • - because Lovecraft has got dibs!

    Kulakovich
  • *gollum* *gollum*

    It sees everything, precious. It never closes! *gollum* *gollum*
  • That's a little close, right? (Cosmically speaking, of course)
  • I sought to snort of dust
    in orbit ringed 'round Fomalhaut
    Ah! a huff of Fomalhaut-dust!
    No dope have tried, nor reefer-fried
    by hash, so high igh i I
    smoked some coke(noTM), or did I crack
    back to the white li{,n}e, eh? no, no wine
    the windows broke so am I, no joke :(
    To airs above arose my nose
    to sniff a whiff of cosmic scent &&
    forget the meth ESC death ^D
    echo like Nan say no 2> blow

    exhale foul fume of pot

    pierce thy gaze b'yond Solar rayz
    to gaze | daze
    the ringing dust of Fomalhaut
  • Okay ...
    If faster then light travel were possible ...
    And a solar system w/ intelligent life could form in less then 25 years ...
    The ppl from one of those planets ...
    Could visit earth ...
    To watch their solar system form?

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