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Space Science

Oldest Planet Ever Discovered 370

Posted by CowboyNeal from the brand-new-old-stuff dept.
crymeph0 writes "NASA has found the oldest known planet in a globular star cluster in the constellation Scorpius. At 13.7 billion years old, it's just slighly (~1 billion years) younger than the universe itself. Get more info from HubbleSite"
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Oldest Planet Ever Discovered More

Oldest Planet Ever Discovered

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  • universe age (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How do they know the universe is 14.7 billion years old?

    • Re:universe age (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lispy ( 136512 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:51AM (#6413380) Homepage
      Err... as far as I remember it as something as:
      We have the bacground radiaton wich decays with time. Knowing the speed of the universes expanse and knowing the decay of the background radiation we can do the math. Caution: I might beterribly wrong here but thats how I remember and since Im at work right now I dont want to google it out...

      Good Luck,
      Lispy

      • Cosmic Microwave Background (Score:5, Informative)

        by Hittite Creosote ( 535397 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:37AM (#6413508)
        The most accurate estimation of the age of the universe [newscientist.com] has been recently carried out [slashdot.org] by the WMAP [nasa.gov] mission, which measured the cosmic microwave background with 35 times the resolution of the previous COBE mission. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus 200 million years.

        • Re:Cosmic Microwave Background (Score:4, Insightful)

          by kardar ( 636122 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @06:58AM (#6413687)
          "the universe"

          this means our universe, the universe we call home.

          but what we don't know yet, and from what I understand this is still under debate, or maybe we'll never know for sure, is whether we will one day say

          "this universe"

          as opposed to all of the other universes, past, present and future.

          I like this concept; it's kind of cool.

          I would imagine that the composition of this planet would be different from the composition of our planet, provided that the globular cluster has less "recycled" supernova remnants. Or is it possible that there had already been supernova explosions prior to the time the planet was formed? Or is this some complex interrelationsip between the white dwarf, the pulsar, and the planet? Some strange type of accretion or something? If that planet contains heavier elements, then maybe it's artificially manufactured by intelligent beings! It would be cool to check it out.

          • The Universe means the system that completely encloses all of our interactions and experiences. If we find something, it cannot not be within our Universe, as we could not interact with it. Therefore even if other Universes 'exist', they cannot exist within our experience.

            • Re:Cosmic Microwave Background (Score:4, Interesting)

              by KDan ( 90353 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:47AM (#6413946) Homepage
              They could exist theoretically, and they could even have consequences on our universe. For instance, if the fundamental laws of physics are symmetrical to the extreme then we might find that each possible law exists in some parallel universe (meaning all possible universes with all possible combinations and variations on the laws of physics exist). None of these other universes would be anything we could interact with, yet they determine (by the particular combination of laws that they don't contain) the fundamental laws of our universe.

              Daniel
              • None of these other universes would be anything we could interact with, yet they determine (by the particular combination of laws that they don't contain) the fundamental laws of our universe.

                That hurts my head just thinking about it. So let me ask you this, if we discover it's theoretically possible to break one of the fundamental laws of physics, and do so, does the parallel universe spiral into oblivion (as we probably would also)?
                • if we discover it's theoretically possible to break one of the fundamental laws ...

                  If you find out you can break one of the laws, that means you didn't understand what the law was. Not that the reality police are going to pull you over for performing an unsafe manouver in an unregistered universe...

                • Re:Cosmic Microwave Background (Score:4, Interesting)

                  by Squiffy ( 242681 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @02:14PM (#6418164) Homepage
                  There's a difference between the laws of physics and the theoretical laws of physics. The laws of physics are unbreakable exactly because that is what we mean by a law of physics: if it can be broken, then it wasn't a law of physics in the first place. If we find it possible to break a theoretical law, it will simply point us in the direction of a deeper theory, which may or may not agree with the actual laws of physics.

              • Re:Cosmic Microwave Background (Score:4, Insightful)

                by grahamlee ( 522375 ) <graham.iamleeg@com> on Friday July 11, 2003 @10:25AM (#6415185) Homepage Journal
                None of these other universes would be anything we could interact with, yet they determine (by the particular combination of laws that they don't contain) the fundamental laws of our universe.

                That's just an exercise in quasi-philosophical tautology. The two situations, (i)our Universe is unique and obeys the Physics we observe, (ii)our Universe is one of many, and obeys the Physics we observe, are completely identical within the realm of experiment. To argue whether one or the other is the true situation is like trying to argue whether or not the Universe is a computer sim; every piece of 'evidence' for one case is identically 'evidence' for the other.

        • The universe can be very sensitive about her age. We can't simply ask outright, because she might get offended and decide to give us the big Crunch or the cold shoulder.

          We can make educated guesses, but in the end we're better off guessing low. I wouldn't say The universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus 200 million years. I would say she doesn't look a day over 8 million years old....and then change the subject.

    • Re:universe age (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Valar ( 167606 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:53AM (#6413392)
      You judge the age of fairly close objects, using nuclear models, compare with red shifts. Then you look at the red shift of far away objects and try to extrapolate age, IIRC.

    • It is mentioned in the Bible ... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ..somewhere near the start..

    • Re:universe age (Score:4, Funny)

      by carlos_benj ( 140796 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:54AM (#6414900) Journal
      How do they know the universe is 14.7 billion years old?

      Simple. They cut it in half and count the rings....
    • You take a REALLY BIG CHAINSAW and cut the universe in half. Then you count the rings. TADA!

  • Having taken one semester of astrophysics... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:45AM (#6413356)
    at not being an expert by any means, I wonder how they detected it. I assume (because it is so massive and in a binary system) they detected it by the normal "wobble" method. Does anyone know?

    • Re:Having taken one semester of astrophysics... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jarlsberg ( 643324 ) * on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:50AM (#6413376) Journal
      Yup. Here's info from Hubblesite: The story of this planet's discovery began in 1988, when the pulsar, called PSR B1620-26, was discovered in M4. It is a neutron star spinning just under 100 times per second and emitting regular radio pulses like a lighthouse beam. The white dwarf was quickly found through its effect on the clock-like pulsar, as the two stars orbited each other twice per year. Sometime later, astronomers noticed further irregularities in the pulsar that implied that a third object was orbiting the others. This new object was suspected to be a planet, but it could also be a brown dwarf or a low-mass star. Debate over its true identity continued through the 1990s.
      • > it is a neutron star spinning just under 100 times per second

        I didn't read the second (Hubble) article. The entire star spins 100 times per second? I would think that this star (any star) would be pretty big, so is that possible? I would think that means it's surface would be going faster than light. Am I misunderstanding something?

        • Re:Having taken one semester of astrophysics... (Score:5, Informative)

          by jafiwam ( 310805 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:03AM (#6414441) Homepage Journal
          Yeah, 100 times a second, a normal star would fly apart, pulsars are not normal stars though and can withstand that spin due to how they are made. (100/s is actually pretty slow, 1K/s and 10K/s are also out there.)

          Pulsars are nutron stars (collapsed due to gravity to the point of overcoming the repulsive force between atoms, so the nucleus of the atoms are smashed together, extremely high density matter just short of a black hole in density) where the angular velocity of the entire system is packed into a tiny space (meters or a few kilometers across).

          Since it still has a magnetic field too, there is a "beam" of photons that get channeled out away at the poles, sorta like a flashlight spun on a string.

          If earth is in the beam, we see a "pulse" of light energy coming from the star. (There's a proably a bunch we do not see as they do not point at us at any time during the spin.)

          Counting the pulses tells you how fast the star is spinning and to a certain extent it's age (as the pulse slows down over astronomical time).

          Since the spin has a lot of angular momentum (A LOT) it is extremely regular, and serves as a nice clock to use against stuff going on around the pulsar and between us and it. (Think atomic clock to synch GPS with, same concept.)

          Or something like that.
        • When a star becomes a neutron star, it loses its outer layer of plasma, hot gasses ,etc. It becomes a much smaller ball of compressed atoms. (From the force of gravity overcoming repulsive forces between electrons and nucluei) I seem to remember being told by my physics prof. that a teaspoon of neutron star matter would have a mass pretty close to that of the entire earth (!!!)

          So the angular momentum remains the same, but because the star has such a smaller diamter (hecnce lower rotational inertia....a
    • Yes, they used a variant of the "wobble" method known as the "giggle" method.

      I'm sorry.

    • Re:Having taken one semester of astrophysics... (Score:5, Informative)

      by astrophysics ( 85561 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:58AM (#6413415)
      Sort of... The planet is in orbit around a binary consisting of a pulsar and a white dwarf. Previously, the pulsar had been observed and small variations in the arrival times of the pulses allowed them to detect the white dwarf companion. Further analysis of the pulsar arrival times allowed them to infer the existance of another distant companion, but there was still considerable uncertainty in the mass and orbit, so it wasn't clear if it was a planet or brown dwarf. These new observations pin down the mass of the white dwarf, which, when combined with several additional years of pulsar timing data, demonstrate that the mass is about 2.5 Jupiter masses.

      But, the really interesting part of this paper is that since they now have directly observed the white dwarf around the pulsar, they can measure its colors and infer it's age. Previously, there were two leading theories... 1. That there was a pre-existing pulsar-white dwarf binary and then the planet was captured from it's orbit around a star which passed by the pulsary-white dwarf binary. -or- 2. There was a pulsar-star binary which interacted with a star-planet binary, kicked out the original star, replacing the old stellar companion with the new star, and leaving the planet in a wide orbit. The new star evolved, expanded, transfered mass onto the pulsar, spun up it's rotational speed, became a white dwarf, and circularized it's orbit around the pulsar. The planet stuck around in a wider orbit and perturbed the inner binary slightly, imparting a small eccentricty to the pulsar-white dwarf binary.

      Since we now know the white dwarf is young, scenario 2 is vastly more likely, and so we now better understand the formation mechanism for this system. That's the real news behind this discovery.

      BTW- The original paper is avaliable in today's issue of Science and I think it should be readable for someone with one college astronomy class.
      • How about the third option: In a pulsar / white dwarf binary, the white dwarf's orbit intersects the pulsar's beam. The pulsar has heated the white dwarf. This has had two effects: (1) the hotter white dwarf appears spectroscopically younger; (2) some of the evaporated material (mostly carbon) has recondensed and accreted into a planet-mass body.
      • BTW- The original paper is avaliable in today's issue of Science and I think it should be readable for someone with one college astronomy class.

        Not necessarily, a true geek would sleep through astronomy class. Well, most of it anyway - but only upon hearing the words "binary star system"

    • Re:Having taken one semester of astrophysics... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Random Walk ( 252043 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @06:00AM (#6413555)
      As usual for Hubble press releases, not only is the release dumbed down to the max, it also provides no link to any additional information. Seems like they feel compelled to hide the dirty details of science from the masses.

      The PDF of the full paper is available from the website of Stephen Torsett [thorsett.org], one of the authors of the paper. As this is a Science [sciencemag.org] paper, it is fairly readable.

      • Um... how very scientifically-elitist of you...

        This is NOT some Cal Tech astrophysics dept release. This was a press release DESINGNED for the casual reader, so obviously it is not very detailed. Mainstream scientific articles are usually written without the advanced scientific details (which, for some reason, you decide to label as "dumbed down to the max"). I am a medical student, and we often have to read the original New England Journal of Med articles about "mainstream" medical stories. Let me tel

    • Re:Having taken one semester of astrophysics... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:39AM (#6414240) Homepage

      It's a four step process.

      • Declare exactly what sort of infinitesimal readings you expect object X to produce, should it exist.
      • Declare that you have found that infinitesimal reading, thereby proving both the existence of object X and the validity of your theory.
      • ...
      • Tenure!

    • Re:Having taken one semester of astrophysics... (Score:4, Funny)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:19AM (#6414565)
      Actually they heard it complain how the younger planets don't give it any respect these days. Don't get it started on those whipper-snapper black holes eating up everything in sight.

  • A planet younger than the universe? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pilybaby ( 638883 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:45AM (#6413358)
    Now that IS impressive!

  • In case of slashdotting - full text of report (Score:3, Informative)

    by Keyser_Lives ( 543481 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:47AM (#6413360) Homepage
    Oldest Planet Is Revealed, Challenging Old Theories By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

    In new observations of a distant region of primitive stars, astronomers have found the oldest known planet, a huge gaseous object almost three times as old as Earth and nearly as old as the universe itself.

    The discovery, based on measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope, challenged scientists to rethink theories of how, when and where planets form. It is tantalizing evidence, astronomers said, that planets began appearing billions of years earlier than previously thought and so may be more abundant.

    Astronomers reported yesterday that the planet is more than twice as massive as Jupiter and is orbiting a pair of burned-out stars. It appears to have formed 12.7 billion years ago, within a billion years of the origin of the universe in the theorized Big Bang.

    "What we think we have found is an example of the first generation of planets formed in the universe," Dr. Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University announced at a news conference at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington.

    A detailed report by Dr. Sigurdsson and his colleagues is being published today in the journal Science.

    Dr. Alan P. Boss, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, who was not involved in the research, called the discovery a "stunning revelation" that will force scientists to revise their ideas of planetary formation.

    The discovery challenged a widely held view among astrophysicists that planets could not have originated so early because the universe had yet to generate enough of the heavy elements needed to make them.

    Planet-making ingredients include iron, silicon and other elements heavier than helium and hydrogen. These so-called metallic elements are cooked in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and accumulate from the ashes of dying stars, which are recycled in new stars and their families of planets.

    The planet was found in the heart of a group of extremely ancient stars, known as a globular star cluster. This cluster, M4, is 7,200 light-years from Earth in the summer constellation Scorpius. The stars there are estimated to have formed almost 13 billion years ago, so early that the region is deficient in heavy elements.

    Astronomers had assumed that such primitive stars could not have planets, and observations of other globular clusters seemed to support that view until the detection of the "Methuselah planet," in Dr. Boss's phrase.

    The Sun and its planetary system are about 4.6 billion years old, products of what astronomers call the third generation of stars. By that time, the gas and dust of interstellar space was richer in heavy elements. In less than a decade, astronomers have discovered planets around more than 100 Sun-like stars in the Milky Way, Earth's home galaxy.

    The research began in 1988 when a pulsar, a rapidly spinning stellar remnant, was discovered in the M4 cluster. Further observations revealed that the pulsar was linked gravitationally with a white dwarf star, an object that has exhausted its nuclear fuel. Later, astronomers noticed irregularities in the pulsar signals, betraying the presence of a third object, which was orbiting the other two.

    The recent Hubble telescope examination determined the mass and other properties of the object. It cannot be seen, only inferred from its effects on the pulsar's motions. And the neighborhood is an unlikely place for a planet. It is almost surely a planet, astronomers said, but not one that is likely to be hospitable to life.

    The research team also reported that the distant planet probably has had a tempestuous life, surviving the shock waves of stars aborning and dying explosively all around. The small star and its planet probably formed in the suburbs of the star cluster, then migrated toward the center and came too close to the ancient pulsar, which captured them. The three objects together were themselves flu

  • Heavy elements (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ramk13 ( 570633 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:48AM (#6413364)
    What struck me the most from reading about it is that enough heavy elements (Fe, Si, etc) were around at the time to form the planet. That was one of the main reasons it was thought that planets couldn't have formed that early - you only had light gases around. So apparently it doesn't take a few billions years of fusion to get enough solid material for a planet. I wonder what other changes this will bring about in terms of the search-for-life campaign. The window just got a little bigger.

    • Re:Heavy elements (Score:5, Informative)

      by astrophysics ( 85561 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:08AM (#6413435)
      Yes, this is another interesting aspect of the story. We now have a much firmer constraint on the planet's mass, so if you define planets and brown dwarfs by their masses, then we are much more confident that it is a planet, and not a brown dwarf. However, we still don't know how it formed. Traditionally, brown dwarfs are assumed to form by direct collapse, while planets are assumed to form first by accreting a rocky core. Of course, we don't really know how this "planet" formed. Alan Boss advocates that it may have formed via direct collapse, like a brown dwarf, in which case the low metal abundance probably isn't so important. However, many scientists think that the accretion of a core first is more likely. Since we know that this planet exists and almost certainly formed in a low metallicity environment, that might be difficult in this case. I suspect someone will now attempt to simulate accretion of a planetary core in a low metallicity disk. I look forward to reading about their results.

    • Re:Heavy elements (Score:5, Informative)

      by tbone1 ( 309237 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:09AM (#6413439) Homepage
      This isn't entirely odd. Theories may have changed since I was in grad school ten years ago, but back then it was thought that the first generation of stars would produce an abundance of massive, quick-dying, supernova-candidate stars. (This is because only H, He, and a bit of Li existed; long story.) This is where you get things like Fe, Si, etc, forming. Also, the deaths of the two stars in the center of the stellar system may have "enriched" the planet.

      It is odd, but not completely unexpected.

      • Re:Heavy elements (Score:4, Insightful)

        by astrophysics ( 85561 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:17AM (#6413467)
        Yes, we knew that stars formed in low metallicity environments. But it might have been that the first generation of stars didn't have enough heavy elements in their disks to form planets. Now we know that at least one did form an object with a mass a few times that of Jupiter. Maybe this planet formed by direct collapse (like a star or brown dwarf), which would imply that maybe many modern giant planets form by direct collapse. Or maybe this planet got started by accretion (like most scientists think modern giant planets formed), in which case I suspect some theorists will have to think of some new wrinkles to explain how that can happen with so very few heavy elements in it's disk.

      • Re:Heavy elements (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Betelgeuse ( 35904 )
        Yes. This is true. But remember. . . most of these super-massive stars that we think formed early on in the universe formed Type II Supernovae. This means that the heavy elements (i.e. Fe and everything heavier) would be locked up in the core of the remnant (i.e. black hole or neutron star). This means that these elements can't really go into forming new things like planets. It probably wasn't until Type Ia supernovae (i.e. main sequence star accreting onto a white dwarf until it explodes) started forming t

    • Not necessarily (Score:4, Interesting)

      by archeopterix ( 594938 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:23AM (#6413481) Journal
      What struck me the most from reading about it is that enough heavy elements (Fe, Si, etc) were around at the time to form the planet.
      The article says it's a huge gaseous object so perhaps the heavy elements weren't necessary.
      • First, there's no direct evidence that it's gaseous. We just assume that since it's so massive.

        Second, the hypothesis that it formed via direct collapse from the disk, would be consistant with it being nearly all gaseous. However, most scientists beleice that the planets in our solar system formed by first accreting a bunch of rocky material to form a core which then accumulated a bunch of gas. Doing that in a low metallicity disk seems like it might be a bit difficult. But I expect others will try to

    • Re:Heavy elements and eating into the timeframe (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nimblebrain ( 683478 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @06:03AM (#6413562) Homepage Journal

      Well, they're begging the question somewhat, but it seems true that globular clusters metal deficient [uq.edu.au]. Jupiter's atmosphere is 82% hydrogen, 14% helium and only a trace of heavier elements. Who knows what goes on at the core, but that would seem to indicate that planets don't need rock to form.

      That said, if we found some moons around it somehow at some point in the future, there would be a lot of questions that need answering.

      Is it worrying anyone else, though, how thoroughly we're cutting in to the upper estimate of the age of the universe according to Big Bang Theory? Prior guesses on the age of the universe in BBT were in the 9-12 billion range [fofweb.com].

      Invoking tweaks on inflation theory and 'anti-gravity' via the cosmological constant, the upper limit has been moved up to 15 billion years. Now here we are with a planet... a close planet (all things considered, 7200 light years isn't that far away on a grand scale :), that's 13 billion years old plus star and cluster formation time, and some of the other observations from the furthest visible reaches coming back from ye olde Hubble... how much further can we cut into this without jeopardizing the 15 billion year estimate?

      Something to consider...

    • Re:Heavy elements (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Random Walk ( 252043 )
      What struck me the most from reading about it is that enough heavy elements (Fe, Si, etc) were around at the time to form the planet.

      High-mass stars are very short-lived, and one can expect that the first supernova goes off within a few 100000 years (most heavy elements are from supernovae). It will take a lot of time to completely mix the heavy elements with the rest of the interstellar gas, but at least some small regions will become enriched with heavy elements rather quickly.

  • I understand now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by borgdows ( 599861 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:50AM (#6413375)
    NASA has found the oldest known planet in a globular star cluster in the constellation SCOrpius.

    Go back to your planet Darl!
  • "We have been talking about a single planet from a single globular cluster," he said. "We ought not to extrapolate from a sample of one, and first look more closely to see if there are planets in other clusters."

    This Dr. Richer is not fit to be quoted in an article linked to here. This space is for speculation that
    1. There was a civilization on that planet 12.7 billion years ago,
    2. There's water or oil on it
    3. 20 years from now it'll be a more popular space tourism destination than the moon.

  • Detecting planets. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by asciimonster ( 305672 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @04:58AM (#6413409) Journal
    It's a pity that we still have to detect planets by there gravitational pull on the suns they orbit. This will only alow us to "see" gaseous giants (like jupiter) who have lotsa mass. The earth-like planet have much too little mass to ever see with this method.

    I know people are tring to detect the reflection of the stars (of it's sun) light, but that's pretty hard since you have to filter it out from the light directly recieved from that star. But if we would really try and be lucky, could we see the planet directly when another planet is blocking our view of the star?

    Just my $0.02. $0.04 with inflation correction and VAT.

    • Re:Detecting planets. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Valar ( 167606 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:03AM (#6413425)
      Ah, but if our solar system is anything like a normal solar system and/or the computer models are true, then systems with large, detectable planets probably have smaller planet as well. Some of them might even be similar to Earth in size and composistion.
      • Perhaps planetary systems evolving in dense star populations are significantly different to the solar system.

        Perhaps extragallactic planetary systems are significantly different to gallactic systems.

        There is no 'normal' until we have a real comparison. These extra solar giants are fascinating but are only 'visible' to us because of their size. My personal view is that for any planetary system to support technology and intelligence (preferably in the same species, lol) would have to have a gas giant to hoo

    • Re:Detecting planets. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Random Walk ( 252043 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @06:13AM (#6413580)
      First, towards 2010 those searches using radial velocity variations (i.e. 'gravitational pull', 'wobble') will become sensitive to Jupiter-like planets (planets detected so far are typically more massive than Jupiter, and closer to their parent star), thus planetary systems like ours will become detectable (Jupiter has a 12-year orbit, thus the main problem is the long time baseline required).

      Second, there are several projects planned, like the 'Darwin' project of the European Space Agency (ESA) that will specifically target earth-like planets. Here [space.com] is a short description of Darwin, and links to some other projects.

  • I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:01AM (#6413422)
    How many civilizations have looked at Sol with their telescopes and determined the presence of Jupiter from our star's wobble?

    Would they conclude that it was unlikely that life could evolve in this system for one reason or another based upon their own standards?

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Surak ( 18578 ) *
      I wonder how many civilizations have buzzed by in their spacecraft looked down at [SCO || Microsoft || **AA || GW Bush || CmdrTaco's house || insert your favorite here] and said: "Nah, no intelligent life down there, guys. Let's go on to the next one." :-P

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      Would they conclude that it was unlikely that life could evolve in this system for one reason or another based upon their own standards?

      If they did then they are an incredibly short sighted race, so much so that they probably wouldn't have got much beyond "banging the rocks together", let alone to radio astronomy. We are detecting Jupiter sized planets with a growing regularity, yet do we conclude from this that there are no other Earth type planets in the same star system, located in the zone necessary

      • Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:31AM (#6413496)
        I think you've missed the point.

        There are several planetary systems that we have discovered that have been ruled out as having evolved life as we know it.

        The system in the article is a prime example.

        The x-ray emissions from the pulsar would prevent life as we know it from ever starting, much less evolving.

        Those are our standards. We have only ourselves as a basis for comparison.

        Perhaps there are very alien forms of intelligent life that would not consider our system capable of supporting biology because we lack a strong x-ray source.

        • Since there are billions of stars in our galaxy, there are billions of potential star systems to study for evidence of life. If searching for life, I think it is quite reasonable and intelligent for astronomers and scientists to play the odds and direct their limited resources towards studying those stars and systems most similar to our own. I do not believe astronomers and scientists are ruling out the possibility of life in drastically different systems, I think they are simply narrowing down the best po

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BlueWonder ( 130989 )

      How many civilizations have looked at Sol with their telescopes and determined the presence of Jupiter from our star's wobble?

      To detect our sun's wobble, the other civilizations would have to understand the concepts of space and time. I think it is unlikely that extraterrestrial beings think in such categories.

      I mean, we humans already know (from quantum mechanics) that the concepts of space and time are of limited value as models of reality, although we cannot escape the way our brains are hardwired. Ex

      • Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tkittel ( 619119 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @06:54AM (#6413663)
        > I mean, we humans already know (from quantum mechanics) that the concepts of space and time
        > are of limited value as models of reality, although we cannot escape the way our brains
        > are hardwired. Extraterrestrials will probably think in completely different categories, which
        > are as much beyond our imagination as space and time are to them.

        I think it is a fairly model independent assumption to say that any intelligent lifeform must be rather complex and therefore orders of magnitudes larger than the typical quantum mechanical regime of atoms and molecules.

        To be able to have a level of consciousness it is also a fairly safe assumption that the physical proportions of a being ('s "brain") must be small enough that the speed of light doesnt seriously restrict the exchange of information between the various parts of the brain.

        Therefore any (or at the very least, most) intelligent life should exist in a regime where the classic concepts of space and time are an EXCELLENT approximation to reality.

        Why you think it is UNLIKELY that they would think in concepts of space and time* is beyond me.

        *:there is btw. nothing wrong with the concepts of space and time. For instance time is NOT just a "fourth dimension" as some folks believe. And QM doesnt discard space and time.

        from-a-physicist-who-is-tired-of-the-ravings-of- ra ndom-science-fiction-fans

    • Three of them concluded there couldn't be intelligent life. Two got as far as visiting before deciding the area was a dump and the final one broadcasts live 24/7 from the planet on a dedicated TV channel called "Xdfugy Dskak" which the closet translation for in English is "Big Brother".
    • The doppler method, conducted from the surface of the earth is limited to about 3 meters a second. This limits it to large planets and/or planets that orbit quickly, i.e. close-in. Thats why most of the 110 or so planets discovered this way are "wierd", very large, or very close to their Sun so they orbit in weeks. Jupiter is too small and too far out to be generate a detectable wobble.
      Space-based woble methods may give a lot more detectibility because they avoid atmospheric blurring. Also a new satelli

  • Obvious Name Suggestion: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stromthurmond

  • Planet or Brown Dwarf (Score:5, Funny)

    by patch-rustem ( 641321 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:11AM (#6413446) Homepage Journal
    From the article:
    Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? Hubble's analysis shows that the object is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, confirming that it is in fact a very large gnome.

  • Oldest planet (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:15AM (#6413459)
    In an interview, the planet attributed its longevity to never smoking or drinking and eating a balanced diet of meteorites and cosmic dust. However, the planet suffers intermittently from Alzheimer's, and currently believes itself to be the Imperial Death Star.

  • how would they know it had any heavy elements? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dido ( 9125 ) <dido@NoSpAM.imperium.ph> on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:27AM (#6413488)

    It could be, and most probably is a gas giant like Jupiter. If so, then why should its formation so early in the universe be such a big surprise? Jupiter itself is largely made up of light gases which would have been present in abundance in such regions in the early universe. The fact that there's a supernova remnant there (a pulsar, the article says) tells me that any heavy elements (if they are required) could have come from the results of that explosion.

  • younger than the universe (Score:3, Funny)

    by samanpa ( 586278 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:41AM (#6413513)

    it's just slighly (~1 billion years) younger than the universe itself

    Is it just me or should that read older

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:43AM (#6413523)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • well... (Score:3, Funny)

    by SD-VI ( 688382 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @05:49AM (#6413533)
    I always figured you could tell how old planets were by how universe-weary and crotchety they were. "You damn kids! Read the sign! STAY OFF THE GAS CLOUD!" I guess red shift works, though. And it does fill the holes in my theory. Out of curiosity, isn't it against the odds for the planet to still be around?
  • Could somebody tell me if those billion are 10^9 or 10^12? I suspect the latter, although an American source kind-of implies the former...?

    And isn't it about time something was done to stop this confusion?

    • Re:Billion...? (Score:2, Informative)

      by the_germ ( 146623 )
      It's 10^9 of course. The universe is about 14*10^9 years old, so it cannot be 10^12.

      I agree that one should stop the confusion about what billion or trillion actually mean, though.

      In German a billion is 10^12 and a trillion is 10^18. In English it's 10^9 and 10^12. Don't know how other languages handle this.

  • If this planet or its satellites were populated by a new species, they could litterally be called "older than dirt"

  • When does a planet become a star? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Azahar ( 113797 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:06AM (#6413738)
    I realise that it is a stupid question but I would like to know the answer.

    Obviously a star is luminous and a planet isn't but even a planet like jupiter emits more energy than it receives.

    As to what is luminous and what isn't.. well most people think of the visible spectrum but that is just because we judge visibility that way.

    So, when does a planet become a binary companion?

    • That is most definately NOT a stupid question. A star is defined by core nuclear fusion. However, the definition of a planet is quite controversial. In particular what are the limits that differentiate a planet from a brown dwarf on the large end, and from a asteroid or comet on the small end.

      Astronomers are having discussions about this right now. It is not entirely clear to me what the final definition will be. The current leading candidate for the brown dwarf/planet dividing line is how they form.

  • That's no planet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ralphclark ( 11346 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:46AM (#6413941) Journal
    Hang on, how do they know it's a planet? Couldn't it be a stellar remnant, i.e. the core of a star that has had its outer layers blown off by a nearby nova or supernova?

    Considering that it's orbiting both a white dwarf and a neutron star, and I'd definitely consider both of those to be the ultimate "smoking guns", *and* that current theories deny the existence of sufficient "metals" for planet formation in that epoch, I'd say the astronomers concerned here are jumping to unwarranted conclusions.

  • It's astonishing what we can do these days (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:47AM (#6413949) Homepage

    Because, you know, back when I was a little lad, new discoveries were peer reviewed and independently verified before being announced as fact. Especially so when a single data source is quoted, and especially especially so when they're based on incestuous reasoning: if we're right about what gravitational wobble should look like for bodies X and Y at distance Z, then we've just found bodies X and Y, therefore the theory is right! Tenure for everyone!

    Until we get Hubble II up there to take independent readings which can be independently analysed, this is a theory awaiting review. An exciting theory, but a theory. If you want to believe it, go ahead and believe it, but I'm in no hurry to pencil it in to my Big Book of the Universe.

  • Been reading too much slashdot when.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phoebus0 ( 446231 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @07:58AM (#6414009)
    You glance at the title and see "Oldest patent discovered" and wonder what it was for and who's trying to make money from it.

  • Saying Never (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mrphish697 ( 219802 )
    Globular clusters are deficient in heavier elements because they formed so early in the universe that heavier elements had not been cooked up in abundance in the nuclear furnaces of stars. Some astronomers have therefore argued that globular clusters cannot contain planets. This conclusion was bolstered in 1999 when Hubble failed to find close-orbiting "hot Jupiter"-type planets around the stars of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae.

    Goes to show you that even if the probability of something happening is (se

  • The Shadows! (Score:3)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @08:25AM (#6414158) Homepage Journal
    Great. NASA found Z'ha'dum [scifi.com]--the last place we should send explorers!
  • It's mine! Mine I tell you, mine!!!

  • Space Monkey (Score:3, Interesting)

    by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Friday July 11, 2003 @09:48AM (#6414843)
    This very much lends creditability to the argument that if there is or was intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, there is no guarantee that it would just happen to coincide with the time that we monkeys are hoping around on our world. We may very well indeed be alone if we arived late, or too early to the party so to speak.

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