Largest-Known Planet Befuddles Scientists 385
langelgjm writes to mention that scientists are quite puzzled over the discovery of the largest planet yet. According to study-leader Georgi Mandushev it should theoretically not even be able to exist. 'Dubbed TrES-4, the planet is about 1.7 times the size of Jupiter and belongs to a small subclass of "puffy" planets that have extremely low densities. The finding will be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal. [...] "TrES-4 is way bigger than it's supposed to be," Mandushev told Space.com. "For its mass, it should be much smaller. It basically should be about the size of Jupiter and instead it's almost twice as big." "TrES-4 appears to be something of a theoretical problem," said study team member Edward Dunham, also of the Lowell Observatory. "Problems are good, though, since we learn new things by solving them."'"
Theoretical problem (Score:2, Informative)
Isn't this just another in a long line of gas giants that are too young, and too close to the host stars for our theories of planetary formation?
Re:Theoretical problem (Score:1, Informative)
They determined the radius using the transit method, but they also mention the planet should be ejecting atmosphere due to its proximity to the sun. I wonder if they simply aren't accounting for the gas sufficiently.
Re:I have a theory... (Score:5, Informative)
Go back to school. The hierarchy in science, in order of increasing evidence, is speculation, conjecture, hypothesis, theory.
The word "theory" in common parlance is an unsubstantiated guess. In science, the word "theory" means hypothesis supported by a large body of evidence, where the truth value of the theory is considered very high. Evolution is a theory that has so much evidence in its favor that the IDers are essentially nutcases who can't read or reason properly. It is the IDers that try to equivocate the position by using the common parlance flavor of the word "theory" when discussing science.
Allow me to specify (Score:5, Informative)
Its a Jupiter Brain (Score:4, Informative)
The difference between a Jupiter Brain and a Matrioshka Brain is that the center of a Jupiter Brain is not running off of a gravitationally bound and driven fusion reactor (aka "star"). Most of the energy used by the Jupiter Brain comes from the external solar energy it absorbs (though in theory it could house a number of "small" fusion reactors fueled by hydrogen or helium siphoned from the nearby star).
Side note to the Dyson "Sphere" advocates -- classical "spheres" are impossible (you've been watching too much Star Trek) -- Dyson never used the word "sphere" and made a point of clarifying this in his response to the letters following his original paper. A better term to avoid confusion is a "Dyson shell".
Re:I got it (Score:5, Informative)
Because their theories better fit the data. When they find a place where their theories and those of their predecessors don't work (this planet may be such a case), they work on formulating more general theories based on what they already know. And when they do this, they don't start from scratch each time, but build instead on previous discovery.
That's what science does. It progresses. It works. Would you rather we abandon the scientific method and just make up random stuff without testing it against reality? Even dark matter and dark energy aren't arbitrary: they're provisional descriptions of stuff we're actually seeing happen.
I'm getting really sick of this "oh, we can't really ever know anything because no theory is perfect, so let's just give up on this science thing" attitude.
Re:I got it (Score:5, Informative)
Dark energy is a mathematical placeholder name. There is an observed force which we can measure, but which we have no tested model to explain. We call this force dark energy.
When you say, "maybe dark energy," you demonstrate that you don't know what that phrase means. That's like saying, "maybe the solution to the problem is x!" X is just a variable name, not an answer to a question.
Now that's not quite "seeing x millions of years back," but it's close enough that I understand (I think) where you're going.
Well there are several easy reasons for that: 1) The big bang started as a singularity. You can't measure or view anything through a singularity. It's a cosmic wall through which no information can pass 2) If that were true, then the expansion of the universe would change as we looked out into deep space, and those distant objects would be moving toward us. This is not the case.
Of course, your question (at least, as I understand it) assumes that the big bang was "preceded" by a big crunch (the universe collapsing into a singularity). That may or may not be true, and we have no way to prove that it is or isn't, since we can't extract information about what happened before the singularity.
Here we are -> ( *Bang* )
More dumb observations later.
Re:I have a theory... (Score:3, Informative)
It's besides the point, but I don't think we do. Systems thought to be non-functional in the past, such as the appendix, have long since been found to be otherwise.
No, it's the theory neodarwinism that believes that every feature must have an immediate purpose (though not necessarily the same purpose as past or future generations) or it otherwise cannot evolve, as otherwise there's no natural selective pressure on that feature. The point of Irreducible Complexity is to attempt to prove that there are systems which could not have had a function at an evolutionary step before some critical point, and therefore the existence of those systems are incompatible with the neodarwinian theory. While it is an exceedingly difficult thing to prove, it is at least strongly suggestive, and in my mind puts the burden of proof on the neodarwinists to offer evidence that such systems in fact evolve "blindly" rather than with some "end in view," so to speak.
Re:I have a theory... (Score:3, Informative)
An appendix is not critical, like a heart or brain is. It's not even serious, like eyes. It's on the same level as tonsils. Things that do something, but not so much that they'll be immediately missed when removed.
Also, why should something ever be completely nonfunctional? I have skin. Skin is important stuff. Among all of its important uses, it also has mostly useless photoreceptors. So far, the only use I've heard of for them is trying to beat jet lag by putting bright lights behind the knees. We don't really need them right now, but if blindness becomes a selected trait for whatever reason (Cthulhu waking up and walking around the world would do it, but probably nothing else) those with nonfunctional eyes would start breeding more that those without. Genetic blindness would spread throughout the (drastically depleted) population. And the photosensors would get better, first discerning light and dark, then all the levels of illumination between light and dark, then colors, and so on until we had they best visual senses we could that didn't have issues with the madness-inspiring form of a Great Old One.
That's not what skin does now. But if skin does that in the future, the future people will say the same things people say now about evolution and useless organs, without consideration of what was there first.
Re:Theoretical problem (Score:1, Informative)
I will repeat once more that this entire situation is extremely unfortunate. You, with everybody else, will one day come to realize how it is so. But so long as you restrict your own awareness of what EU Theory states, you will unfortunately not realize that it is doing a better job of predicting our observations than the mainstream theories. That there is so much animosity and hostility about all of this is what saddens me. Science was never intended to be like sports or politics. We don't root for our home teams or vote on what reality is. Science is supposed to differ in that it is supposed to be a competition of ideas judged on the basis of the observations and theoretical predictive capabilities. That's unfortunately not the way that it's being treated today, and it makes me very sad to see it so. Predictions increasingly mean very little. On occasions when I've tried to post EU Theory predictions on Slashdot, these *predictions* have been labeled as "Troll". One is left wondering: how will we as a culture ever figure out a theory of everything if we won't even allow people to post predictions to test their theories by?
It's truly quite sad