Multiple Asteroid Belts Found Orbiting Nearby Star

Kligat writes "Scientists have found two asteroid belts around the star Epsilon Eridani, the ninth closest star to our solar system. Epsilon Eridani also possesses an icy outer ring similar in composition to our Kuiper Belt, but with 100 times more material, and a Jovian mass planet near the edge of the innermost belt. Researchers believe that two other planets must orbit the 850 million year old star near the other two belts. Terrestrial planets are possible, but not yet indicated."

Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who dont want to RTFA but want some reference on why this is important, let me put a quote for you:

"Studying Epsilon Eridani is like having a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young,"

More Informative Article

[tirerim]

This one [sciencenews.org] actually gives some information on how they detected the belts (short version: it's based on infrared emissions that could only come from rocky debris).

And here [arxiv.org] is the actual paper on arXiv, if you want the full technical details of their methods.

Re:heresy!

[Flounder]

The canon home of Vulcan is 40 Eridani, not Epsilon Eridani. So, no scientific conspiracy.

Re:heresy!

[pushing-robot]

Frighteningly, I seem to be even more of a Trek geek than you are — Vulcan is in the 40 Eridani star system, aka Omicron Eridani, not Epsilon Eridani.

Re:This is off topic, but...(Fiction recommendatio

[pushing-robot]

To be fair, Epsilon Eridani is featured in quite a few [wikipedia.org] works of fiction.

3 rings - not 2

[denzacar]

From TFA:

Astronomers have discovered that the nearby star Epsilon Eridani has two rocky asteroid belts and an outer icy ring, making it a triple-ring system.
The inner asteroid belt is a virtual twin of the belt in our solar system, while the outer asteroid belt holds 20 times more material. Moreover, the presence of these three rings of material implies that unseen planets confine and shape them.

Two rings of rocks, and one of ice.

Re:Astrologers thing they are so smart

[MichaelSmith]

I bet they can't even accurately predict what the odds are of successfully navigating through this asteroid belt.

Easy. Just stay out of plane.

Re:Astrologers thing they are so smart

[Fluffeh]

(It'd take me only 10 parsecs to figure it out. That's how good I am at).

It would take you around 300 000 000 000 000 kilometers to work out if you can get through something roughly 8 975 880 000 km wide?

You too can read about what a parsec [wikipedia.org] and astronomical unit [wikipedia.org] is in the privacy of your own home.

Re:Not to rain on this parade but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use three different technologies, you could probably do it with a three-figure (years) travel time. 1. Ion engines with solar panels for near-solar acceleration; 2. some kind of nuke battery once you're too far from the sun for the solar panels; 3. solar sails for deceleration once you reach e Eridani (put that solar wind to work). No good for people, but fine for a probe.

Re:Not to rain on this parade but... actually

[rdavidson3]

> Anyway, the Oort cloud may well be like the Alps were to Bronze Age man: impassible > except in certain locations and conditions.

That's silly. The density of the Oort cloud is very, very low. It consists mostly of kilometer-size objects seperated by tens of millions of kilometers. It does not form any sort of a barrier.

Given that we are going to moving fairly fast and the depth of the Oort cloud is large (wikipedia has the depth between 2000 and 5000 AU and in some places 50000 AU deep). That chances of hitting something more significant, and who knows what other objects are between us and Epsilon Eridani.

So i think we need to map the Oort cloud before we even think about leaving our own solar system. And something else to think about is I remember hearing awhile ago that the trajectory of the Voyager is changing because of some unknown mass (dark matter???).

Its too risky to fire a ship into the unknown and expect that it will survive.