New Transiting Extrasolar Planet 25
Shooter6947 writes "A new transiting extrasolar planet has been announced -- the only other known object that passes between its star and the Earth each orbit, a situation known as a transit, is HD209458b. The new planet, OGLE-TR-56b, is 0.9 times the mass of our own Jupiter and 1.3 times Jupiter's radius. It is the closest-in extrasolar planet yet found, with its year being only 1.2 days! Read about it from a cnn.com article or from the original scientific paper."
Sounds like paradise (Score:3, Funny)
Hold off on the colony ships.
However good the odds are that there are Earth-like planets in the galaxy, what are the odds that any are within reach of any human exploration that will ever take place? It's a big place, and barring "warp drive" the prospects of anything more than observation seem dim.
Amazing what astronomers can do with impossibly minute signals over unimaginably great distances, esp. the inferences of size and density. I wonder what alien astonomers looking at our solar system are thinking? (Something like: "No chance intelligent life could exist there.")
Re:Sounds like paradise (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a 29-hour year. A 29-hour day isn't impressive in any way.
It's a gas giant. Colony ships wouldn't be useful even if it was at a livable temperature. Granted, overly large moons might be habitable for some gas giants, but we'd have to be able to find them first.
Molecular oxygen in an atmosphere implies life of some sort, as most non-biological processes reduce the amount of free oxygen. Once you've got evidence of life, you've crossed one of the major hurdles to finding intelligent life.
If you've got enough viewing ability to take spectral readings of individual planets in a system, you can make pretty good guesses about which ones have some sort of life on them.
If our alien astronomers have a technology level equivalent to ours roughly ten years ago or earlier, they're not going to see anything other than the Sun. If they're as advanced as we are, they might be able to see Jupiter, if they're close enough. If they're more advanced, then what they can tell about us depends on just how advanced they are.
Re:Sounds like paradise (Score:2)
Wouldn't this be more likely to be a very large rocky object? That close to the star, I'd expect volatiles to be stripped.
Re:Sounds like paradise (Score:2, Informative)
The writeup says the planet has 0.9 times Jupiter's mass, and the article says it has a temperature of 3100 F. This probably means it is not a true gas giant (whoopsie), but it is still hot enough to melt silicon and iron, so there's still no solid surface. Imagine a planet of magma. Were it to cool off, it should become a very large rocky object.
As it is, there's nothing to land on, and it's too hot for a ship to survive. And even if it were cool enough to safely land on, the gravity would be too high for human habitation.
Probes surviving in this paradise. (Score:3, Interesting)
As it is, there's nothing to land on, and it's too hot for a ship to survive. And even if it were cool enough to safely land on, the gravity would be too high for human habitation.
Hmm. That paints an interesting picture. A few relatively common substances (like aluminum oxide) should be solid at those temperatures. Depending on their buoyancy relative to other components (mostly silicates), you might end up with a solid crust (modulo enough convection churn to make the San Andreas fault look like a nice picnic spot). This of course assumes that enough oxygen was bound into oxides in the first place, instead of mostly being bound as water and being stripped early in the planet's life/blown away to the outer system during accretion.
As for dropping probes into that ocean, an aluminum oxide shell should work quite well. Tungsten carbide-coated graphite might work too, being even more temperature-resistant, as long as it doesn't alloy with the surface material. It would be neat to try, though I doubt we'll get a chance any time soon
How would you set up the electronics/instruments on the probe, though? Diamond semiconductors, carbon or tungsten wires, aluminum oxide optics? It's an interesting thought experiment.
Re:Sounds like paradise (Score:3, Funny)
And they'd be right!
Re:Sounds like paradise (Score:3, Insightful)
The odds kinds of depend on how long a trip we decide is worthwhile. In principle, we could build large, slow vessels that cross the distances between stars over generations. In the next twenty or thirty years, I would be surprised if some sort of 'hibernation' technique were not developed that could be applied to long trips. (I'm sure it would be designed for other, more profitable purposes, but would be useful nonetheless.) The real problem is that we have no good way (right now) of investigating potential destinations.
Our current detection techniques are inadequate for observing (or inferring) an Earth-size planet at an Earth-normal distance from even the nearest stars. There could be Earth-like planets in our own stellar backyard, but we can't yet see them. All the current observations do is bolster the idea that the formation of planets is not in and of itself an unusual occurrance. To really do a proper planet search, we're going to need some long baseline interferometric telescopes--preferably including some in space so we can get good infrared data. With such telescopes, we can resolve (and do direct spectroscopic measurements on) Earth-size planets at light-year distances, looking for oxygen atmospheres and water vapour.
Such observations (if they suggested any sort of life-bearing world) would no doubt spur quite a bit of research into techniques for interstellar travel. If I were a biologist, I'd gladly spend the rest of my life in space in exchange for a look at alien plankton--as long as I was reasonably sure there would be something to look at once I got there.
I like science. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Heavenly bodies (Score:4, Funny)
The new planet, OGLE-TR-56b, is 0.9 times the mass of our own Jupiter and 1.3 times Jupiter's radius.
My favorite heavenly body is the girl who lives across the street. I've named her OGLE-T&A-36DD. The best thing is that I don't even need a telescope to see her: binoculars work fine for seeing into her bedroom!
GMD
Re:Heavenly bodies (Score:2)
Re:Heavenly bodies (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's a gas ball (Score:2)
found with a quick Google search. [ccdump.org]
really bizzarre composition (Score:2)
I did some back of the envelope calculations, so I might be totally off track, but this seems really funny object.
Re:really bizzarre composition (Score:2)
A iron nuclear reaction is impossible (Score:2, Interesting)
What this means is that any materials south of iron can be fusioned to create energy(though maybe not enough to self-sustain), and any north of iron can be fissioned to create energy, but iron itself is "nuclearly inert" (for lack of a better catch phrase), so it's possible the 'iron planet' is debris of a star, but it could never reach critical mass 'cause it already has.
Re:A iron nuclear reaction is impossible - Sorta. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A iron nuclear reaction is impossible (Score:2)
Re:A iron nuclear reaction is impossible (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually iron is not the most magnetic, some rare earth magnets like molybdenum can be much stronger. I'd say its a coincidence, the atomic properties are to do mainly with the nucleus, whereas the chemical and magnetic properties are more to do with the outer shell of electrons.
Furthest planet ever discovered. (Score:1)
Center for Astrophysics' article [harvard.edu], this is the farthest known planet @ ~1500 parsecs away (50 times farther than any discovered so far).
Not 1.2 days in year (Score:1)
I don't know what you were reading, but the website you link to says:
Orbital period: 3.524738 ± 0.000015 d.
which looks like ~3.52 days in the year to me.