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Space

13 Free-Floating Extrasolar Planets Discovered 152

Posted by timothy from the where's-my-sister-from? dept.
Maestrogenic writes: "Researchers from the UK have discovered (using a new camera on the UK Infrared Telescope) 13 extrasolar planets, free-floating in the Orion Nebula. None of them are smaller than eight Jupiter masses though. This pretty much proves that vagabond planets are a common thing, and brings the total [number of] extrasolar planets discovered to above 40. Here's the official press release. " Note: the jpeg image linked to on this page is a beautiful shot, and downloads quite quickly.
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13 Free-Floating Extrasolar Planets Discovered More

13 Free-Floating Extrasolar Planets Discovered

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  • Re:And that would be..... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Quoted from the article :

    Caption: An infrared picture of the central part of the Orion Nebula constructed from the three separate images taken with UFTI (the UKIRT Fast Track Imager) on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope.

    Thats why there are bits missing.

    ------------------------------------------------
    Good as Gold. Stupid as Mud.

  • Re:Brown dwarfs and such. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Doh! I goofed!

    They don't fuse lithium, it's detectable in their ir-signature. So they won't cook He-3 either.

    Just ignore the last part of my rant in the above posting.

  • Re:And that would be..... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They had to cut away the images of my internplanetary space resort, Babe-a-lon 5, the favorite stopping place for billions of intergalactic space frieghter pilots.

  • Re:of course... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Way2Slo said:

    We should all feel fortunate, or blessed, that our solar system and orbit turned out to be so beneficial for the sustainment of life. I can't even begin to calculate the odds against it. For the gas that formed our solar system mostly condenced into a large ball (the sun) and the rest formed into much smaller balls that had slightly eliptical orbits. One of which has a perigee far enough away from the sun so that all water is not a gas and a apogee close enough to keep it from being all ice. That does not seem too common, to me at least.

    Well, this sounds a lot like what philosophers call (IIRC) the 'Anthropic Principle' and what I call the 'Cat Blood Argument'*.

    Creationists like to invoke God's Grand Design in how well-suited Earth is for human life, ignoring that it's the other way around--human life is ideally suited for Earth. And even there, there's a pretty broad range, from the hideous cold of Antartica to the furious heat and pressure of ocean heat-vents.

    I can just as easily imagine some critters on Venus ranting about how perfect their atmosphere of boiling sulfuric acid is to life, and how nothing could survive on an arid hellhole like the next planet out...

    *(Why the 'Cat Blood Argument'? Because it always reminds me of a strange little postcard I once saw that said "Isn't it convenient that we breathe oxygen instead of cat blood?")

  • Well, by that definition, ALL planets are 'vagabond' planets. The very word 'planet' comes from the Greek word for 'wanderer.' I think the issue is that it's either incorrect (these planets orbit a stable 'home' like any other planets) or redundant (all planets wander).


    --
  • Doh.

    Twice today I've posted w/o reading closely. Gotta stop doing that. Please to disregard the above moronic comment.


    --
  • > here is the link to the story he mentioned. It really is a great
    >article for us amature star gazers. :)

    >so we have these huge things floating around... suppose one of them
    >entered out system? i suppose it would be captured and begin orbiting
    >our sun also, but think of the damage it would do before settling down
    >(if it ever would).

    >perhaps the next great "comet" movie should be about a free floating
    >planet or star :)

    You've never seen "When Worlds Collide"? The movie is kinda cheesy even for a 50's movie, but the novel is pretty good.
  • Not just orbital perturbation, but tidal forces as well - a mass that size passing closely enough to smaller objects (like our earth, etc), could strip away atmosphere, dislodge oceans, cause earthquakes, or even break them up.

    now THAT'S damage.

    Ever see the classic sci fi film, "When Worlds Collide"?

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • 5-7-5? I thought it was supposed to be 3-7-5. . .

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • ...small object like the Moon has too little gravity to hold an atmosphere. Err, why? It's not like you need 1G to hold 1 atmosphere. Venus has slightly less gravity than Earth, but her air pressure is 90 atmospheres! Titan, one of Saturn's moons, is roughly the size of our moon, but it's atmosphere is 60% thicker than ours. Why, when we KNOW about moon-sized objects with thick atmospheres, do we say a moon-sized object has too little gravity to hold an atmosphere?

    --

  • So what is the problem? Thes planets do move form place to place without a fixed home.

    Yeah, and they probably beg for spare change to buy drugs too. Clearly they are in an interstellar slum -- otherwise they'd be given a free bus ticket to somewhere else so as not to lower property values.
  • As opposed to midget gas giants? : )
    "I coulda been a star, but I just ran out of gas."
  • There's an really scary HG Wells short story on this theme. It looks like it's going to collide with earth or screw up the orbit but juuuust misses. IIRC. Haven't read it for ages. Title is something like "the second sun".

    --
  • And your point is...what?

    Why would finding an inhabited class M planet bother Christians? Do you know enough about orthodox Christian doctrine (not the rantings of someone on the fringe of the Church, mind you) to explain why this should be a problem? Or are you thinking of some narrow stereotype of Christians you picked up from TV?

    I'm a Christian, I've read the Bible, I have a solid understanding of Christian orthodoxy, and I _expect_ that God has created more than one planet with life as we know it. (Actually, I believe they might be experiencing life better than we know it; the effects of the Fall may be limited to our little planet.)
  • For something not meant to be flamebait, you sure opened with an inflammatory subject line.

    What I originally said does not necessarily imply what you concluded. I don't know whether A&E (sorry, but the first time I read that, I thought you were talking about the cable network, and I'm still giggling about THAT image) had sex prior to the fall, because the Bible is silent on that. I don't know why they wouldn't have; they were created male and female for a reason. Sex did not spring into being after they ate the fruit.
  • ...about the guy who keeps going from planet to planet trying to catch up with Christ?
  • There's another report Here [bbc.co.uk].
  • The picture is really nice, but I don't see anything that tells me which dots are stars, which are dwarfs, and which are planets. Is there a better caption somewhere?
  • Damn, I want one of those things as my secret interstellar base for launching invasions of planets.
  • I forget the title, but a missionary lands on a planet where the aliens must test everything.

    They crucify the missionary, expecting him to rise up again on the third day.

    And a robot one.

    Someone a robot gets known as God's incarnation.

    A fanatic injures the robot with a laser, in the side. It takes about 3 days to repair the wound.

    For the life of me, I can't remember the titles.

    George
  • Anyway, Christian Fantasy is fairly well represented, but this is the only novel of Christian Science Fiction I've ever seen.
    When I was a young Catholic lad (I'm much better now, thank you) I read C.S. Lewis' trilogy that starts with Out of the Silent Planet. (I was given the boxed set by my great aunt, a nun.) Much of Cordwainer Smith's work also incorporates Xianity into SF. So you can either seek these out or avoid them, as suits your taste.

    Of course, there are many SF stories that feature Xianity in some way without being Xian, like (IIRC) Clarke's The Star.

  • No matter what I do, no matter what planet I collide with, I'll never get to collide with Sol III...
  • We've had test cases in our own history. The first voyages to the New World, to Cathay, and the uknown reaches of Africa were seen in those days in the same kind of light that voyaging to another planet would seem to us. The peoples inhabiting those unseen far off lands did not have their humanity taken for granted. Science Fiction has explored the topic at length, usually in short story format. Bablylon 5 touched the subject occasionally, and Deep Space 9 missed a great opportunity by ignoring the topic altogether. (What would Christians and Bajorans have to say to each other? Or better yet, how about Bajorans and the followers of Islam?)

    The most likely reactions depend on two possiblities. 1. The discovery is nothing more than a statistical phomomenon, a radio anomaly that's significant enough to be artificial, but too distant and weak to be intelligible. In that case, most religious types, like just about everyone else would pretty much ignore it once the novelty has passed off.
    2.The second possibility is evidence on the level of Carl Sagan's Contact. In that scenario, you probably will have a spectrum of reactions ranging from rejection to outright accomodation into existing worldviews. I would suspect that most Christian leaders would think long and hard before pronouncing an alien race free from Original Sin, and might even start thinking about missionary programs like the predecessors of centuries ago.

    Religions evolve as the world expands. Sometimes it's just moderate ways, like the continual pushback of Armageddon by the Jehovah's Witnesses', others more dramatic and profound as formerly suppressed groups (i.e. women, minoriites) start flexing economic muscle.

    As to the impact of actually finding a habited habitable world? (I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO USE TREK TERMS) Unless we actually pick up a stray radio broadcast from a twin to Arecibo out there, the technology required to do so is far enough away, that by the time (if) it's developed, we'll be changed enough to make answering the question now, a meaningless exercise.
  • trying to remember it from my Patrick Moore "Universe" book, thanks Mum for the xmas pressie...

    Your right that planet is derived from the greek word wanderer. This is because the ancient greeks couldn't understand why when observed that most of the stars moved from right to left during the night but some didn't follow the same path, but moved (and wandered) across the sky, sometimes even moving backwards and looped across the nights sky!

    In fact these stars where the now known planets orbit as observed from the earth etc etc etc.

    The rest, as they say, I learnt on TV!

  • G-type star, dammit! M-type planet, Earth. Or somethin'.
  • Hubble was launched in 1990, and has an estimated 15 year life span, what will be around after it.

    Wow, I had no idea it would only last that long. Kinda makes me think how much we've spent to get that minor amount of time out of it.

    Also makes me wonder how much longer it might have lasted if it used something better than a 486.
    TheGeek

  • An interesting feature of this study is that no planets have been found under 8 Jupiter masses. It may indicate that there is a limit to how small these free-floating planets can be but even more sensitive surveys will be needed to confirm this.

    What would it take to detect a moon(earths) size mass that far out? Thats a very small target, even 8 Jup's is a pin prick.
  • Yeah, but they (origins) expect them(my wayward moon) to be by in a system.

    ...small object like the Moon has too little gravity to hold an atmosphere. However, an object this small could be detected in a nearby system because it would be only 12 times fainter than Earth. It could be recognized because it would show no atmospheric absorption features in its spectrum.

    The hidden pratfall is that you need a SUN some where near by, I was thinking free floaters ...

    Cool links, tho
  • At the very least, an inhabited Class M planet would get a number of groups behind an effort to build starships; they'd want to send missionaries.
    --
  • They don't fuse lithium, it's detectable in their ir-signature. So they won't cook He-3 either.
    The outer layers would only be depleted in the elements being fused in the core if the two exchanged matter between them; as long as the convective zone didn't reach down into the places where fusion was going on, you'd expect the surface composition to remain pretty much unchanged by the transmutation going on below.

    He-3 can cook with deuterium, but given the probability of having a collision between He-3 and D vs. hydrogen and D, it seems awfully unlikely that it would contribute much to the energy production of a brown dwarf. Once the deuterium was gone, fusing He-3 to He-4 requires another weak interaction, which is unlikely as you noted.
    --

  • . I thinks its just great that /. is paying attention to this story, but how much will the other press and people?
    What does it matter how much they dwell on it? This is Slashdot, News for Nerds. If the mainstream media ignore it, it's the general public's loss; why should it be ours too? (I just love the sensawunda I get from these great photos.)
    --
  • I know you're being silly, but you'll notice most "images" you see from space are actually mosaics. Take any picture you've seen of a planet close up from Voyager or something like that - these are all many smaller pictures put together to create the big one. They only put together what we needed to see the planets and left the rest off.

  • Actually, a lot of work has gone into making it possible to write IRAF scripts in Python rather than cl. I've yet to try it, but I'm told it's about ready for use. (An abstract [hawaii.edu] is available.)

    Of course, tcl is also used. Most of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey [sdss.org] software is written in Dervish [fnal.gov], which is a Fermilab branch of tcl.

  • I think he means:

    Knowledge is not a short term investment with direct payback. It is a long term investment that will most likely pay off in a completely unforseen way. We need to invest in Space and Space exploration to continue the diversity of knowledge that we have inherited and are currently reaping.

    /Duncan
    Duncan Watson -Rock climbing, Encryption, privacy
    PGP Fingerprint -PGP Key on www.keyserver.net
  • The story is kind of interessting, but more
    interessting are the pictures i think. When i
    looked at them i noticed that they had removed
    the upper right and lower down corner. Just
    cutted away (i suppose everyone who
    saw thoose pictures noticed that). Wouldent
    it be great to know what it actually
    would be under there....
    Will we never know? Why are they like this? Who do govs keeps seacrets? Why cant just everything go "opensource".
    i would like to finish this one with a citate

    "What we are is Gods gift to us, What we become is our gift to God"
  • Of course they have to cut away alien spacecrafts, spacestations and spaceworlds. If it doesn't exist, we can't see it and vica versa.

    - Steeltoe

    What do you do to limit yourself today?
  • just because they aren't bound to a star doesn't say they move more/quicker.
  • Despite the fact that astronomers have proof of many extrasolar planets, the public hasn't become fascinated with them at all. I thinks its just great that /. is paying attention to this story, but how much will the other press and people? In my opinion, until we can get some great visuals of these planets, projects to study this branch of science will remain underfunded. Thats a bad thing. I know that these planets are pretty far from us, and pictures of them might be hard to do, but something needs to help re-excite the public on space. Hubble was launched in 1990, and has an estimated 15 year life span, what will be around after it. Can the new X-Ray telescope do that function? We need better support for our astronomers. I'm no expert on the area, but more space telescopes could help. I don't see the great usefulness of our impending International Space Station. Maybe money spent on it could be better spent on science elsewhere more effectively. What can we do, because I really don't know.
  • actually there's a chunk of data missing in each corner, of various dimensions. take a look in a graphic manipulator and mess with the brightness to get a better look. sure, the image is made up of many smaller images, but i always wonder about the images left out. yea, ufo's and smiling aliens say some of the geek responses, funny, ha ha... and keep believing the government is opensource. anyways, good observation and very nice citation.
  • Has anyone seen that ancient film 'When Worlds Collide'? Pretty cool to think it could actually happen (although I'd reckon we would be less likely to find life on an extrasolar planet, seeing as solar power is the primary energy source of most life on this planet, excepting only geothermal powered life forms and theoretically certain computer programs).

  • Man was that a bad show or what? Still, I planted my kiddie butt right in front of the tube for every episode since it was just that and Star Trek episodes you'd already seen three or four times. Thanks for the memories, I'd forgotten all about it.
  • In the top corner there is an alien smiling and waving for the camera.

    In the lower corner, there is another alien taking a picture of us.

    Don't tell anyone I told you, mmkay?

  • There is a moderately informative article in the current Scientific American about the entire topic of brown drarfs. Recommended reading for those who are rusty on the topic.
  • Zan:
    :I assume you meant:
    : If 13 < Mass < 75 jupiters then Deuterium fusion: brown dwarf.

    Correct. Thanks. I also had trouble w/ the
    last "less than" symbol. HTML did something w/ it so I had to just say "less than."
  • These objects cannot be more distant objects since the molecular cloud behind them obscures any background objects. We can only see the object in front of the cloud, the Trapezium Cluster, any random foreground stars, and the planets and brown dwarves in question.

    And I just have to say that this whole thing is cool. If anyone knows of any sites related to planet discoveries or other astronomical coolnesses... I'd love to see some URL's posted!!

  • And if you're more of a hardware buff, there's the NASA Image Exchange [nasa.gov]. Searchable index, and if you waffle with the URL, you can force it into giving you the large copies of the image, suitable for use as desktop pictures.

  • So what is the problem? Thes planets do move form place to place without a fixed home.

    Grtz, Jeroen

  • 'Normal' planets rotate around a fixed reference point (the sun, which isn't fixed either I know) so you could say they have a home. These 'wandering' planets do not seem to be orbitting anything.

    Maybe 'Orphan' planets is a better description though?

    Grtz, Jeroen

  • Totally. It was so ridiculous... Even so, it has odd parallels to these "floating planets" Yes, space 1999.
  • This article reminds me of an old T.V. series with Martin Landau where the moon left earth orbit, and was just sort of floating around the universe.
    It's interesting to note in the article that the smallest "free floating" planet is eight times the mass of Jupiter. In theory, these planets could have their own lunar systems in orbit, so the result would be a dark (non-solar) system... Just a thought.
  • Maybe they are just visiting aunt Margareth?
    Seriously, maybe this is answer to intergalactic
    travelling. Now I just have to figure out how to
    make the Sun move where I want it.
    Hey wait a minute - what if we already are on that travel?
  • I seem to remember some crappy star-trek book I read which starred that dude with the cool shades (black dude, I forget his name) in which he was in the academy and was going to go watch to giant planes colide to make a sun
  • How about just "Really big conglomerates of matter, not big enough to form a star, floating free in the universe until they find something better to do"?

    I know, but I'm bored and have nothing better to do. :-)
  • ... I wonder what would happen if a couple of them collided? (Unlikely, but let's just say.) Exactly how many Jupiter masses would one need to start up a viable star?
  • Most scientists agree that _liquid_ water is essitental to life. Yes, they are guessing but it seems a reasonable, educated guess. That was the basis for my little observation as well. Your assumption is that there are no ideal conditions for life. That life can happen anywhere and everywhere no matter the conditions. It's a great assumption for science fiction. Unfortunately, it ran into some problems when Mariner 10 found no life on Mercury, Pioneer and Magellan found none on Venus [I'm afraid the criters didn't make it], The Apollo astronauts didn't see any life on the Moon, and 9 different probes sent to Mars didn't find any there either. Looks like your assumption isn't doing that well.

    If I may be so bold, your assumption did not do so well because it was not based upon observations or facts. Might I sugguest more scientific method and less philosophy when you are talking about science.

  • Re:Brown dwarfs and such. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How much easier is it to fuse deuterium than raw hydrogen?

    Several orders of magnitude easier. The problem with the fusion of protonic hydrogen isn't getting the nuclei to overcoming coulombic repulsion. Helium-2 just isn't *stable*, so it immediatly disintergrates.

    Occasionally though, He-2 will stabalise by emiting a positron and a neutrino so that the He-2 turns into deuterium.

    This decay process takes place by the weak nuclear force, so it's very slow. Once we get past this point, the rest of the cycle to fuse hydrogen into helium is relatively easy.

    What's the natural distribution of Deuterium to Hydrogen in the universe?

    About 1 in 6000 atoms of hydrogen is deuterium. This appears to be fairly constant throughout the observable universe except in a few instances where some process will either increase/decrease it with respect to this value.

    For example, some of the literature discusses some processes that will produce higher than expected values around some types of stellar phenomena ( type II nova and super-nova ), but no one has apparently been able to really confirm this at the moment.

    How long would a brown dwarf burn for before fizzling and cooling off?

    Sorry, no specific data on that one. The only tid-bit that I can add to this point is that it's also believed that Brown Dwarfs probably also fuse lithium. If that's the case, they will probably also use up the available helium-3 content as well. So overall, they will be using deuterium, helium-3, lithium-6 and lithium-7 for energy production until these are exhausted.

    That might keep it going for a while, but only in the infra-red region. This really isn't my area of expertise, but I doubt that they would be emitting in the visible region of the spectrum ( but don't take my word for it ).

  • Now that you mention it, that sounds right. Somewhere, I have the anthology, I think.

    R is for Rocket, perhaps?
  • Stock LyX does include the astronomical format file . . .

    I think this was one of the earliest journal formats included, though I'm pretty sure it came after the AMS set.
  • Thousands of years, I'd expect, from when it was first detected, and when it got anywhere near our system.

    It's not a foregone conclusion it would be captured--it could have a high enough velocity to prevent this, and just get its path bent.

  • *Please* do not create your own brown dwarf within the city limits. This activity should only be done in areas of the desert with no flamable plants.

    The fire you could start in a crowded area would make the great fires in Chicago and San Francisco look like birthday candles . . .
  • The galaxy is a computer, and the universe a beowolf cluster . . .

    The bad news is that our galaxy is running windows . . .
  • (now I remember)
  • This is all a part of the Great Whelk of Zantragonia IV's plan to build the Universe's largest Web Browser, and thus get a gratuitous mention on Slashdot.

    The plan is simple. Planets are simply giant capacitors. IIRC, it's not very much, but 8 x Jupiter's mass should be a good start. Black Holes give you resistors (the internal resistance of a Black Hole is 33 ohms, according to Roger Penrose). You can turn Gravitational lenses into simple gates, allowing you to construct memory and processing elements.

    Unfortunately, the 40 planets so far obtained will not be sufficient, and The Greak Whelk demands the turning over of Saturn and Outer Mongolia to complete his Great Plan.

  • Hydrogen can not fuse with itself, it has only a proton, and so can not bond to another proton.

    This is false. In fact, the proton-proton chain is the primary method of fusion powering our Sun. In the unstable nucleus formed by two fusing protons, one of them ends up emitting a positron, thus loosing its charge and becoming a neutron (it also emits a neutrino). The new deuterium nucleus then fuses with another proton, becoming 3He (He with only one neutron), and a gamma ray is emitted. Then two 3He nuclei fuse, forming ordinary He and emitting two protons.

    --

  • If you're fond of astronomy pictures, you should know this wonderful site : Astronomy Picture Of the Day [nasa.gov]. Every day, it presents a picture related to astronomy, along with a small paragraph that gives some explanation. All previous pictures are still available. This site is a must see ! :-)
  • Calling these "planets" is a little misleading...these are stars that never got big enough. They are giant gas giants...

    --
  • I was just reading this article [astronomy.com] in Astronomy [astronomy.com] by Marcy & Butler (leaders of the team which has found more extra-solar planets than any other). So far, due to the nature of the sample and techniques used for locating them (mostly Doppler shifts) most everything found has been very very big (up to 8 Jupiter masses) or Jupiter-sized things in absurdly close orbits -- 3 days at 0.05 AU for instance. During the formation of planetary systems, lots of smaller proto-planets would be flung out of the system by gravitational interaction with more rapidly accreting objects.

    There is also some controversy about when and where our gas giants formed -- there is mounting evidence that they formed much closer in, then drifted outwards to their current locations.

    --

  • The current (2000-04) issue of Scientific American has an interesting article on brown dwarfs. The author describes a technique for differentiating brown dwarfs from low-mass stars by looking for lithium in the spectra. Lithium is quickly burned up by fusion in normal stars.
  • Nice haiku. Sorry I can't respond in kind. :)

    Conceivably yes, but the odds of two free-floating planets colliding is probably smaller than the odds of a couple hundred 747s colliding in midair and falling on your head. The combination of two big bodies (stars, planets) is called coalescence and has never been observed. Space is very big and planets are very small. Very nearly all of the mass concentration happens during the earliest stages of stellar birth.
  • I haven't been able to see the pics yet because the server is apparently already /.ed, but it is very unlikely the areas were removed. It's common in wide-field astronomical photos for the final image to not be rectangular. This is because the final image is composed of several smaller images, not because something was removed.
  • It automagically removes any sorts of defects that are common to CCD observations

    You mean like images of little green men waving at the telescope like a bunch of morons standing outside a morning-show studio?
  • Especially when you consider that Jupiter and Saturn are still cooling off (emitting more energy than they absorb from solar radiation) after however many billion years....
  • You forgot c) when there's an enormous spectacle to be had. Landing on the moon didn't make any money and it didn't have any direct benefit for mankind (albeit plenty of indirect benefits), but like with the Mars rover, the American public sat up and took notice when NASA sent home some really pretty pictures. If NASA were to contrive some mission where they wanted to detect the effects of nuclear explosions in zero-g, as long as they took appropriate photos and silenced a few environmentalists, the masses would have their bread and circus and be happy about it. If you just think of how many millions of dollars are spent on fireworks displays annually....
  • I assume you meant:
    If 13 < Mass < 75 jupiters then Deuterium fusion: brown dwarf.
  • another NASA funding cut; when will people realize that knowledge cannot and shouldn't be measured in dollar signs?

    Everything can be measured in dollar signs. You clearly think we need to spend more money on it, which means you're thinking of it in dollars. If you can't measure it in dollars, how do you determine how much money to spend on it?
  • So these planets have >8 Jupiter masses, but 13 Jupiter masses (the limit for a brown dwarf).

    I think this simplifies to "really big gas ball". Or perhaps a "black dwarf".. Neat to see the distinction between star and planet blurred. It's all big spectrum...

    Cool though. I didn't realize Brown Dwarfs actually underwent fusion for a short period. How much easier is it to fuse deuterium than raw hydrogen? What's the natural distribution of Deuterium to Hydrogen in the universe? (Same as in water on Earth?)

    Red Dwarfs burn their hydrogen forever (well, about 15 billion years+, longer than the current age of the universe) but really dimly. How long would a brown dwarf burn for before fizzling and cooling off?
  • Check out Origins [nasa.gov].

    and

    Terrestrial Planet Finder [nasa.gov]

    for more info on future directions in planet finding.

    Just waiting for DS3 to get approved... :)
  • Well, if these brown dwarfs and megaplanets ARE produced in large numbers in our galaxies stellar nurseries, and then sent wandering, I'd guess a few might end up being captured -- say, somewhere in the vicinity of the Oort cloud of a certain M-type star. And since the megaplanets, at least, would rapidly cool, such a captured planet would be dark even in IR and hard to detect, not to mention having a highly eccentric and inclined orbit that would make it hard to locate. Just like the planets speculated about in this space.com article. [space.com]

    I'm looking for more info from the scientists quoted in the space.com articles (Matese and Murray) - I've read the papers before, and they're pretty interesting. They both present circumstantial evidence for dark Jupiter-mass-or-higher companions to the sun disturbing comets in the Oort cloud in a telltale pattern. Not quite the old comet-flinging Nemesis, but pretty close.

    At the very least, this new information could prove that such dark objects exist, and that's half the battle, right?

  • Hmm, gravity too
    weak for coalescence to
    occur frequently?

    Interesting. Thanks.
  • Runty planets--
    even brown dwarfs have more mass!
    (and get warm at night...)
  • I thought I read somewhere that Jupiter radiated energy (but scientists werent sure why or how)?
    It radiates about twice as much heat as it receives from the Sun, and the source is no mystery at all; it is leftover heat from Jupiter's initial formation. At least one of the outer planets is thought to be radiating heat from the freezing of something (helium?) under the extreme pressures of the planetary core.
    So if these planets are eight or more times the size of Jupiter, there likely would be the necessary energy and water to support life.
    Mmmmm, no. The whole thing is a huge ball of gas with no surface, no oceans, and convection currents which keep carrying things down to levels where the temperatures cook most anything organic to charcoal. The Sun has plenty of energy, but nothing at all like terrestrial life could form there. These planets wouldn't be a whole lot better.
    --

  • ...it's a Space Station.

  • Hmmmm.... Yes... Yes I think I can see one of those huge gas giants now! MY GOD it's... It's tremendous! It's... oh... sorry... it's Marlin Brando.

    Easy mistake.
  • You make some good points. Most of the people I know who call themselves Christians would agree with you.

    Unfortunately, it's the self-serving evangelists and their brainless flocks who make their religion everyone else's business, and are most likely to riot at any evidence of extraterrestrial life. All of the intelligent, peaceful, thoughtful people in the world (Christians or not) will have much luck stopping an angry mob.

    Furthermore, it seems like the religious hucksters almost always portray themselves as Christians, which (given the media attention they command) gives Christianity a bad name. In other words, when was the last time you turned on the TV and saw, "Phone the good Rabbi NOW with your pledge if you want to get into heaven!" It just doesn't happen for whatever reason. (I can think of several reasons why that might be the case, but that's too far afield for this thread)

    Dislaimer: I am an avowed agnostic. Take the above as you see fit.

  • To answer questions re: looking for smaller planets -- NASA has plans to launch the Planet Finder Array [nasa.gov] -- a cluster of telescopes designed to do optical inferometry -- in about 2005. It will go into an orbit around the sun at roughly the same distance as Jupiter, and be capable of seeing Earth-sized planets out to about 50 light-years. Further, plans call for the ability to analyze the spectrum of the planet, which will allow for atmospheric analysis.

    A recent issue of Discover [discover.com] magazine had a "field guide" to all the new extra-solar planets that we've found up to now. 47 Ursa Majoris has a Jupiter-sized planet that orbits its star at about the same distance Mars is from ours... Given that 47Uma is a little brighter and a little larger, this planet could very well have habitable moons, and is actually one of the targets for a new radio search, so the science already has applications.

    As for the Hubble issue, I suspect it will be handled like Mir and kept aloft for at least five years beyond its expected life. There are plans for a "Hubble II" that uses a segmented mirror like the Keck [nasa.gov]. (And whomever asked about the X-Ray observatory: no, it cannot take over Hubble's duties -- it is without optical capabilities.)

  • Of course we found these things, after all they were looking for them. It only stands to reason that they exist. As the gasses in a nebula or cloud condence (by gravity) into balls of various sizes, it's easy to see that there will be instances when there is no one ball that is extremely larger than the others and in close proximity so the smaller balls orbit the larger. As these float in space, they lose their heat (gained through condencing) and become frozen balls that just wander until they are trapped in a larger gravitational field. And when they do so, they will have extreem elipitical orbits, unless they are affected by other gravitational forces or they plunge directly into one. (that would be cool to watch) Even if it does achieve a modestly eliptical orbit, it will have uneven temperatures determined by the size and temperature of the star and the distances of apogee and perogee of the orbit, which make it practically impossible to sustain life as we know it.

    We should all feel fortunate, or blessed, that our solar system and orbit turned out to be so beneficial for the sustainment of life. I can't even begin to calculate the odds against it. For the gas that formed our solar system mostly condenced into a large ball (the sun) and the rest formed into much smaller balls that had slightly eliptical orbits. One of which has a perigee far enough away from the sun so that all water is not a gas and a apogee close enough to keep it from being all ice. That does not seem too common, to me at least.

  • I based my guess on observations of the only life sustaining planet we know of. The odds of similar conditions occuring elsewhere are not that good.

    Ummmm... my point is, how can you calculate odds with a sample of one? We know exactly nothing about terrestrial-type extrasolar planets, so it's hard to say anything about them -- we can only speculate about the odds of one being like the Earth.

    For a slightly different viewpoint: when I look at the single example of Earth, I see life modifying the planet to keep conditions adequate for its continued existence... and my "educated guess" is that this will turn out to be more common than not -- with the disclaimer, of course, that the conditions which life elsewhere likes may not be what we enjoy. Evolutionary forces will tend to produce life which interacts with its environment to support its continued existence, which may eventually change the environment profoundly; Earth's oxygen atmosphere is a good example.

    And since we have no idea what conditions are necessary for the development of life (instead, we have speculation about what was necessary for the development of life which has now evolved itself and this planet for 3.5 billion years -- not at all the same thing!), it's hard to predict how many planets will have it, much less what the local conditions will be.

    ---

  • It seems that during the cold war, the US was a lot more motivated and interested in space development and exploration than after. I cringe each time I hear on the news another NASA funding cut; when will people realize that knowledge cannot and shouldn't be measured in dollar signs?

    ---------------

  • Coulda been a contender (Score:3)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @10:51PM (#1181077) Homepage Journal
    So are these 13 just wandering around muttering "I coulda been a star!"?

  • Re:Brown dwarfs and such. (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @10:46PM (#1181078) Homepage
    How long would a brown dwarf burn for before fizzling and cooling off?

    According to the article in the current Scientific American, deuterium fusion only lasts a few million years. It takes a very long time for the brown dwarf to cool off from radiative cooling.

  • Re:What I'd like to know.. (Score:3)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @06:42AM (#1181079) Homepage
    no planets have been found under 8 Jupiter masses. It may indicate that there is a limit to how small these free-floating planets can be

    Or more likely, it may indicate that smaller planets have already cooled off to the point where they're not easily picked up by this survey. If the planets all formed about the same time (not unreasonable, if they're in the same cloud), smaller ones would be a lot cooler than larger ones for two reasons: they never got as hot in the first place (less infalling mass means less conversion of gravitational potential energy), and they cool off faster due to their greater surface area to volume ratio (square/cube law).
  • ...suppose one of them entered out system? i suppose it would be captured and begin orbiting our sun...

    No, it would be very unlikely that our solar system could capture one of these, and absolutely the Sun couldn't do it alone (Jupiter or some other planet would have to help).

    It's like the very long, elliptical orbit of comets. What keeps them from being captured into nice, circular orbits near the Sun? It has to do with momentum. Something falling into our solar system from a great distance builds up a lot of speed as the Sun's gravity tugs on it. By the time it reaches the inner solar system, it's got so much momentum that it swings around and shoots back out to where it came from.

    Yes, a rogue planet falling into our solar system could do some damage. But that damage would be in the form of perturbing the orbits of some of the planets/moons/asteroids/comets in our solar family. The odds of collision are astoundingly small.

    Lithium is also one of the (many) ways we know the Orion Nebula is young. The smallest of the Orion Nebula stars are too young to have started fusion, so many still have lithium. However, all of them more massive than brown dwarfs will eventually start fusion and the lithium will vanish (in a hundred million years or so).

  • Re:Perl in astronomy (Score:3)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @03:32AM (#1181081)

    What basically happens is that the data comes in off the telescope, and when ORAC-DR sees it, the data gets reduced. It automagically removes any sorts of defects that are common to CCD observations (flat-fields, bias levels, sky levels), and often produces publication-quality results. We were joking that astronomers wouldn't even have to write their papers. We'd just reduce the data, fill in some fields on a paper template, then ship the paper off to the appropriate journal.

    Yes - you could make an Astronomer version of Lorem Ipsum tied into the LyX. I'm sure half the referees would pass it, and the other half would take it as a direct assault on their chosen field of expertize :-) Just joking folks!

    Having done three nights of observing on UKIRT doing IR spectroscopy, having the automated reduction facility makes life a lot easier. Alas in our case it told our target object kept falling out of the slit, something later (i.e. after we left) found to be a problem with the telescope. Now fixed, but I don't think I'll get another chance at those observations. But such is life - and you really can't complain when you have to travel to Hawaii to do your observing :-)

    And by the way, I'm glad to hear that Frossie's jeep is still in one piece - it was brand spanking new when I was there, and it was great fun bounding over the lava fields in it! Hiya to Tim too - long time no see - thanks for the accommodation!

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • Sci Amer: Discovery of Brown Dwarfs (Score:3)

    by Shotnicam ( 122158 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @11:53PM (#1181082)

    here [scientificamerican.com] is the link to the story he mentioned. It really is a great article for us amature star gazers. :)

    so we have these huge things floating around... suppose one of them entered out system? i suppose it would be captured and begin orbiting our sun also, but think of the damage it would do before settling down (if it ever would).

    perhaps the next great "comet" movie should be about a free floating planet or star :)

    .sigs are dumb!

  • Brown Dwarf Background Info. (Score:3)

    by gnarly ( 133072 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @11:11PM (#1181083) Homepage
    Regarding these new discoveries, it will be important to make sure that the discovered objects are actually members of the Orion GMC, and not more distant objects. Spectroscopic measurements will help to do this. The fate of stars/brown dwarfs/giant planets is determined primarily by their mass:
    If Mass > 75 jupiters then Hydrogen fusion: Star
    If 13 > Mass > 75 jupiters then Deuterium fusion: brown dwarf.
    If Mass less than 13 jupiters then no fusion: planet.
    At least that's one way to define the terms. The very informative Sci. Am. article mentioned above can be found here [sciam.com] If you want to Create your own brown dwarfs, and see what their spectra look like, try this site. [nmsu.edu] -chris

  • Re:Its probably good science but... (Score:3)

    by HiQ ( 159108 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @10:57PM (#1181084)
    I think that the press and the public will *never* be interested in science, unless: a) there is money to be made b) it has a direct benefit for mankind The problem with science and new discoveries lies in the fact that you never know beforehand what will come of it; you can compare this with research & development work in the IT world. At least 50 to 75% of the work will never see the daylight in terms of new software; but if you don't try, nothing ever changes. I think the only thing that can be done is to make ends meet, and try to work with the available budget (if any); I really wouldn't know how to get the public's attention. Maybe make space the new and exciting location for a new gameshow? ;)

  • Not necessarily (Score:4)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Thursday March 23, 2000 @06:38AM (#1181085) Journal
    I've seen really brief treatements in a couple of places in science fiction, but the most interesting one is the discussion with the chaplain on the chip in Pournelle & Niven's "The Mote in God's Eye."

    In general, extraterrestrial life poses absolutely no threat to Christianity. The interesting questions come from whether other races our in need of redemption, like ours, or are in some other state.

    ANd then if they are in need of redemption, would our Paschal Sacrifice, be sufficient, or would they need their own Christ?

    Unfortunately, that discussion really didn't carry through the rest of the book.

    Hmm, another interesting one is Lester Del Rey's . . . awe, nuts; I forget the title . . . Anyway, Christian Fantasy is fairly well represented, but this is the only novel of Christian Science Fiction I've ever seen. I recall another short story by someone travelling from world to world, getting closer and closer to Christ's life, death, and ressurection, but never quite making it. Anyway, in Del Rey's story, the first 50 pages are really slow, but the aliens find a dead and bombed out church, a crucifix, and Bible. They slowly translate it, and get caught up.

    *argh* What's that title?

    hawk

  • Perl in astronomy (Score:4)

    by B-Rad ( 66696 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @10:59PM (#1181086) Homepage
    I worked at UKIRT for a year as a software engineer/astronomer. Although I didn't work on the UFTI side (that's an imaging camera, and I worked with their spectroscopic cameras CGS4 and the upcoming Michelle), I worked with the software that probably reduced these images. Most /.'ers would be pleased to know that Perl plays a big role in reducing the data at UKIRT. The software (known as ORAC-DR) that reduces UFTI and IRCAM (the previous-generation imager) data is written in Perl, with calls to specific image reduction tasks written in FORTRAN. And let me tell you this: it was a gem to write. If you've done image processing before with conventional programs like IRAF, then ORAC-DR would be a breeze for you to use. And from the programmer's point of view, it's much easier to use Perl than the "language" that IRAF uses. For one, Perl's waycool.

    What basically happens is that the data comes in off the telescope, and when ORAC-DR sees it, the data gets reduced. It automagically removes any sorts of defects that are common to CCD observations (flat-fields, bias levels, sky levels), and often produces publication-quality results. We were joking that astronomers wouldn't even have to write their papers. We'd just reduce the data, fill in some fields on a paper template, then ship the paper off to the appropriate journal. *heh* When I left there was some talk of dedicating a Linux box to the data reduction (instead of the Solaris box they had then).

    And it's a Perl-friendly environment at the Joint Astronomy Centre (the place that runs UKIRT in Hawaii). My supervisor (Frossie Economou) has written articles for The Perl Journal, she's got a stuffed penguin on her desk, and the license plate for her Jeep? "PERL5". Another software guy (Tim Jenness) has written stuff for Perldl and is altogether cool for Perl (and stereo equipment too...).

    ORAC-DR information is found here [hawaii.edu]. Props to Frossie, Tim, and Chad (who wrote the Apache modules that give the look-and-feel to the JAC webpages -- look for it on CPAN).

  • Slightly off-topic: another astronomic discovery (Score:4)

    by jw3 ( 99683 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @11:20PM (#1181087) Homepage
    It seems that today was a good day for astronomy news :-) I found another interesting bit on the Nature "Science Update" page -- strange new species [nature.com] of gamma-ray sources.

    X-ray and gamma-ray emitting sources (high-energy sources) of radiation are usually signs of something very extremal going on: black holes, supernovas, neutron stars, pulsars. Now, a new family of such objects has been found -- the full article is in today's "Nature". What are they? Read the article, I'm not much of an astronomer :-)

    Regards,

    January

  • Question for astronomers, haiku form (Score:5)

    by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @11:07PM (#1181088) Homepage Journal

    Vagabond planets--
    if enough collide, do they
    alight with fusion?

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