Transit Method Reveals Many Extrasolar Planets 174
eldavojohn writes "You might recall not too long ago the first photo of an extra solar planet or, more recently, the mapping & speculation on these planets that lie outside our own solar system. Long since those first few spotted in the 90s, we're now starting to find them in droves due to the popularity of a method that relies on the planet passing directly between the viewer on earth and the star that it orbits. Be sure to check out Space.com's list of the most interesting extra-solar planets. Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates?"
Pegs that variable in the Fermi equation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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RonB
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Re:Pegs that variable in the Fermi equation... (Score:5, Funny)
Quite the opposite actually...
"You cannot prove that I exist", says God, "For Proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing!"
"Ah", says man, "But the planets lining up nicely like that so that we can see them is a dead give away isn't it. It proves you exist, and therefore by your own logic you don't. QED"
"Oh bugger I hadn't thought of that" says God and disappears in a puff of logic.
Sorry Mr Adams.
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Which is pretty much the reason for the existence of all gods throughout history; to provide an explanation for something that was otherwise unfathomable. And of course once a thing becomes "fathomed" that particular god is no longer needed, and disappears.
I also might preemptively mention that "this is different, and also he's a really really smart guy way smarter than you
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Um, you do know that the Universe is flat, right? Just like Earth. :)
perhaps not so lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
Given all that then it's not too surprising that there be a preference for this favorable occultation geometry.
Finally I note that we are not really interested in planets that don't rotate in their orbital plane since otherwise they'd be roastingly hot on one side and freezing on the other.
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Yes, but wouldn't there be a certain ring that is exactly 70 degrees? Also, you'd have an endless supply of geothermal energy. The hot-as-lava side could double as an incinerator--no trash problems. Obviously terraforming would be impossible but I'd think you could establish a permanent colony there.
Re:perhaps not so lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no expert, but I'd be willing to bet that what you'd really get is a ring that fluctuates violently between the hot and cold extremes of the two sides of the planet and is constantly bombarded by gigantic storms. I mean we're basically talking about a permanent clash between hot and cold weather fronts.
Huge temperature deltas do not result in nice smooth gradients between them.
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Re:perhaps not so lucky (Score:4, Interesting)
You forgot (Score:2)
Re:perhaps not so lucky (Score:5, Informative)
"Finally I note that we are not really interested in planets that don't rotate in their orbital plane since otherwise they'd be roastingly hot on one side and freezing on the other."
The rotation of the planet has nothing to do with the detection of planets in this method, only the orbit determines the ability to detect it. So while some planets may or may not be rotating on the correct axis to support multiple seasons, it isn't accounted for in this type of study because they can't detect this with the transient method.
Also, there are actually a large variation of planes that can be detected with this method. Imagine our solar system as a disk. Then imaging looking at it from the top view. This view does not allow the planet detection using the transient method. However, angle your view down until you can see just one of the planets cross over the sun. From this angle on, and twisted up to 360 degrees, is where this transient method works. So actually, there are many planes of orbit which can be used to detect planets with this method. And assuming that a percentage of these planets are within the habitable distance from their star, and that a percentage of these rotate on a reasonable axis, then they could contain life. But nothing in these studies is determining that any of this is the case. Right now they are just looking for ANY planets. so we can detect extrasolar planets even if their orbital planes are perpendicular to the galactic disk, so long as they are close to parallel to our viewing line of site. With this in mind, you can imagine that if you can view stars in our galaxy from 360 degrees around our planet, that we would be able to detect every orbital plane angle available in the galaxy, depending on which direction we are looking from the earth. So while we can't see all of them, we can see a very large subset of them with this method.
Also, the reason that all the planets in the solar system follow close to same typical plane of orbit is because of the way solar systems form. They start as a gaseous body collapsing. As the rotation of the gas nears closer and closer to the center of the nebula, the rotational inertia causes the forming of a disk due to inertia. The same thing happens to drag car tires when they spin fast (they turn more disk-like). From this disk-like nebula the planets form. The center typically ends up with something larger than a gas giant (the sun, or a couple of suns) and the other planets turn into gas giants (Jupiter) or solid planets (i forgot the name, but they gain gravitational pull and pull in particles from the nebular disk)
So this is why the planets are all in one plane of orbit. If all star systems are formed in this general method (something that is assumed) then it is fairly easy to say that they should all be in a single plane. But each system does not necessarily have to be in the same plane relative to each other just because they are in the same galaxy. Each nebula forms independently and collapses typically from an outside force, but not necessarily on the same rotational plane.
Also, the planets have their own disks associated with them. The moons and rings of Uranus and Saturn and Jupiter follow different planes. They don't necessarily need to follow the same plane as the solar system. This is because each of those planets also formed independently of each other. The spin of those depends on the angular momentum of the local mass as it formed, which would be different than the parent nebular disk especially when you take into account collisions of forming bodies. The same could be said to happen on the galaxy level, if you compare the galaxy formation to solar system formation.
These are just my points of view of what I have studied. Many people will have different points of view formed from the same observations.
Re:perhaps not so lucky (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't. See http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?num
Our own Solar system is not at all aligned with the galaxy. If it were, the milky way would appear more east-west in the night sky, especially during the equinox.
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I think that the presumption is that solar systems do generally basically orbit in the plane of the galaxy. OTOH, there are LOTS of "captive star streams" that one would expect to have different orbital inclinations. (Also, lots of things can perturb an orbit.)
OTOH, look at how thick the "plane of rotation of the galaxy" is. It's not a plane, but rather a wobble. And it's dubious t
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Think about it your self, do a bit of reading, and make up your own mind.
But... but... I referenced an answer from professional astronomers. And while I gave the example of our own solar system, their answer says "They're oriented in all different directions. The size of a solar system is so much smaller than the size of the Galaxy, that the Galaxy's structure has no impact on the
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However, in the previous poster's comments, he's right too - even conceding a tendency to form solar systems on a plane (and I would guess this is only a TENDENCY, not a majority), even then the odds that a planet would pass directly betwee
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Or, a naive argument from astrophysics (IANA astrophysicist, although I am a physicist): Perhaps the disk of a new-formed star is typically rather thin (in the direction perpendicular to the ecliptic). Then material undergoing gravitational accretion to form planets would all c
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Generally, almost everything that spins also wobbles around the axis of spin at least a little bit. All other things being equal, I assume solar systems as a single gravitational whole also wobble (over an extended time frame, no doubt). If so, at any given instant there will be some small percentage of systems where their orbital plane lines up with our line-of-sight in relatio
Galactic plane (Score:2)
The galactic plane is inclined at 123 degrees from the ecliptic. Its only a single example but your hypothesis has no basis. The torque that would bring the oblate, rotating sun and galactic core into the same plane are vanishingly small.
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I'm no cosmologist or astrophysicist, so take this with a grain of salt, but here goes.
A solar system condenses from a rotating gas cloud. Becuase of this the axii of rotation of the condensates (suns, planets, etc.) tend to line up.
But also the Galaxy (spiral galaxies only!) condensed from a gas cloud. Because of this the nebulae (thicker gas clouds within it) have rotational axii that tend to line up.
So stars within a spiral galaxy will tend to have aligned axii of rotation. And their p
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Really? Then why'd he go and bury all of those dinosaur bones and radioisotopes to test our faith?
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Our solar system is off galactic plane by around 63 degrees or so. The solar (stellar) plane is a function of the angular momentum of the dust cloud (assuming the solar system creation model we have is correct). The galactic plane, is the same thing, only on much larger scale of the galaxy (duh).
One would think that the total aggregate angular momentum of the galaxy would strongl
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One would think wrong. Stars move in all sorts of weird directions in our galaxy, and they definitely spin in just about any direction you can imagine.
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Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates? (Score:3)
Re:Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates? (Score:5, Funny)
I certainly hope it contains the same easy-to use ergonomic AJAX functionality as Web 2.0...I hate having to reload an entire Earth page every time I want to do something...
We already have it (Score:2)
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Yes, as long as we don't kill ourselves first.
Yeah, except we already have found a good Earth 2.0 candidate and it's called Mars. Using roughly apollo-era technology, we can get there in a mere 9 months. Without the discovery of some loophole in physics that allows us to travel significantly faster than we are currently capable of, any other candidate will take more than a lifetime to get to. Using existing or near-term feasible technology we could slap multiple bases on Mars within a decade, and begin a terraforming process that could very well be
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That said, if I'm wrong about that, and I'm certain I am, maybe a complete terraform isn't possible. But that doesn't mean you couldn't build any number of football-pitch sized pressurized bubbles.
Ummm....It's The Wobble Method That's Tops (Score:5, Informative)
WOOT!!! Earth 2.0 (Score:2)
ROCK ON!
2 cents,
QueenB.
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Why would anyone look for Earth 2 again? (Score:2)
Earth 3? (Score:2)
Third Earth? Well, if that's your choice of destination I suppose you're free to go there, but I'd suggest you avoid going anywhere near the Onyx Pyramid. Just a helpful safety tip.
Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course; space is big and there are bound to be tons of great planets out there. I just hope there is no one already living on our soon to be discovered new colony planet so we can move in quicker.
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Yep. And every second of extra speed counts, with Alpha Centauri being a mere 42 trillion km away.
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Barring that, hopefully we can develop some kickass motherships and tripod walkers.
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Seriously, unless you're planning on making a minor revision on a planet, you could just call it Earth 2 and not sound geeky
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Can we really expect to find a place that will enable us to plant crops and raise animals for food, yet has no indigenous life forms?
Nah...
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And those space habitats will have wars over who gets the sunniest bit of orbit, the habitat with the biggest population wanting part of another that has a less people but more hydroponics capacity (because they have more space due to less of it being taken up by people), and the same old "we want what they've got" crap tha
Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates? (Score:2)
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Bowman 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bowman 2.0 (Score:4, Funny)
Don't you mean... (Score:2)
Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates? (Score:3, Funny)
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Earth 2.0 candidates (Score:2, Offtopic)
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Version (Score:3, Funny)
How about making the current one stable first?
That's not how the number system works (Score:4, Funny)
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Uh....yeah.
~X~
Heresy (Score:2)
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The current one is fine. It was here before us, and will be here long after us.
How about we kick condesending butts like your's into the sun?
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Extra Solar (Score:2, Funny)
I mean "extra salt" = more salt, right ?
so we can ... (Score:3, Funny)
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I'm sure some lovely genetically engineered cybernetic ally
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Does a really big potato gun count as sane method?
As for utter darkness during trip, just ignite Neptune and bring it with us.
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now that we can find them (Score:3, Interesting)
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If you've read stuff by Larry Niven, what started everything was probes. And then hibernation ships that caught up to and passed some probes by.
How lo
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Aside from the lifetimes of "Are we there yet?", you know the offspring would just take the fact that they're on an interstellar voyage for granted, and they wouldn't even appreciate the arrival. "This is the planet my great grandfather wanted to visit," they'd say. "Let's check out Earth."
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Standard SF options (Score:2, Interesting)
While we don't have the tech in place to make the trip now, we do have ideas of what could be done. We just need to get some cheap Earth to Orbit launch facilities in place so we can start research and development of the tech needed. (Rutan's SpaceShipX ships. Space elevators. Catapult launch from high altitude sites.)
Once we have a lot of people and equipment in space, we could do such things as build generation ships and take the slow route. Whether powered by Sol base lasers, atomic bombs (Orion), i
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Not all extrasolar planets are hundreds of lightyears away. The closest known so far is only 10 lightyears away. At .5 c that's 20 years. Give the colonists a free World of Warcraft subscription and off you go.
I cannot be alone (Score:3, Funny)
...when I say if it is actually called "Earth 2.0" that I would seek Kevorkian's "assistance." (Joking, of course.) The moniker is used way too much! Instead, I feel we should call the planet "Godzilla" so it would be entertaining to hear people scream its name in excitement upon viewing it for the first time.
Updated stats (Score:2, Interesting)
I recommend going to the top-10 list found
Earth 2.0? (Score:2)
How about "earth-like planets"? Or "planets like ours"?
Honestly... phrases like "earth 2.0" and "web 2.0" (not to mention WiFi, which really ought to be pronounced "whiffy") make me wonder about the collective intelligence of the technically inclined.
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Space.com... the worst website in the universe? (Score:3, Insightful)
God, what a mess the "Top 10 Exoplanets" site is! Bright orange background that is absolutely physically painful to look at, requires 10 click-throughs to read the whole article (when each page has about a paragraph of text), the text itself is in little iframes that require you to scroll to get past the first few sentences - and don't get me started about the content (what little there is). If you haven't visited it... don't.
Better index of extrasolar planets (Score:2)
Looking for Earth 2.0? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
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We'd have to work around that nasty speed of light thing first.
True, that's a big problem compared with the popular "space opera" notion we've gotten from Star Wars, Star Trek, and so forth. But if we could get a vessel up to 10% of light speed, we could get to Epsilon Eridani in about 107 years, which isn't an impossibly long timeframe.
Of course, the fastest we've gotten any space craft going is about 0.02% of light speed (Helios 2 @ 241,350 km/h), if I've done my math right, but that took advantage of the solar gravity well to accelerate into a tighter orbit, rat
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Light actually travels slightly faster than you think it does. 20 light years means that at lightspeed, you'd need 20 years to get there. Ofcourse we can't reach lightspeed, but at half lightspeed, we'd need 40 years, and at 10% of lightspeed, it's 200 years. A long time, but a lot less than 450,000 years.
Minor Detail... (Score:2)
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We also don't have a spaceship that can go there in 450,000 years. Not one that can carry people, anyway. When you want to go beyond Earth's orbit, I'm afraid you're going to have to build a custom vehicle to get you there. And we can build one that can go 10% of light speed. We're just not willing to spend that kind of money.
There are NO extrasolar planets. (Score:2)
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More precisely, the new definition [iau.org] does not attempt to classify extra-solar bodies as either planets or not-planets. It starts out like this (emphasis mine):
The IAU's working group on extra-solar planets [ciw.edu] does offer a working definition, subject to change. [ciw.edu] See Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] for more details. See also rogue planets. [wikipedia.org]
I'm not sure how serious you're being (Score:5, Interesting)
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