Astronomers Watch Star Devouring Planet 97
jamstar7 writes "According to Universe Today, 'Astronomers have witnessed the first evidence of a planet's destruction by its aging star as it expands into a red giant. "A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system, when the Sun becomes a red giant and expands all the way out to Earth's orbit some five-billion years from now," said Alex Wolszczan, from Penn State, University, who led a team which found evidence of a missing planet having been devoured by its parent star (abstract, pre-print). Wolszczan also is the discoverer of the first planet ever found outside our solar system. The planet-eating culprit, a red-giant star named BD+48 740, is older than the Sun and now has a radius about eleven times bigger than our Sun. The evidence the astronomers found was a massive planet in a surprising and highly elliptical orbit around the star — indicating a missing planet — plus the star's wacky chemical composition.' Five billion years or so is a long way off, so it's likely none of us has to worry about it. But still, watching a star eating its own planets is not only cool in its own right, but also provides food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood. And, of course, putting more funding into astronomers' and physicists' hands now can give us a closer estimate of when it'll happen. It's all in the math..."
Red giants, the scourge of not our time. (Score:2, Insightful)
But still, watching a star eating its own planets is not only cool in its own right, but also provides food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood.
1. Solve the fossil fuel crisis. ...
47819121. Solve for the survival of the descendants of the human species after the sun goes red giant.
47819122. Profit!
I think there's a couple steps missing.
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Space travel to another planet (or moon) within our solar system is absolutely possible, and if we can find a way to live sustainably for a billion years, I'm sure we can save enough energy to send a breeding population to Titan or so.
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Space travel to another planet (or moon) within our solar system is absolutely possible, and if we can find a way to live sustainably for a billion years, I'm sure we can save enough energy to send a breeding population to Titan or so.
And even if we did this, what will life on Titan be when the sun is a red giant and Jupiter has become the first planet instead of the 5th?
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and if we can find a way to live sustainably for a billion years
We have about 0.5 billion years before Earth looks like Venus, coincidentally about the same length of time since multicellular life first evolved. We evolved in conjunction with the a biosphere that probably is unique. The likelyhood of our very long term survival is remote, the chances of our distant ancestors still being the same species is even more remote.
What about space colonies, terra-forming, Dyson spheres, etc? - Despite the hype and cynicism that surrounds SETI, "Fermi's paradox" (AKA "Where a
Re:Red giants, the scourge of not our time. (Score:5, Interesting)
A sufficiently advanced and long-lived civilization comes to realize that its sun is a liability, not an asset.
Of course reaching the end of its life and going nova or red giant is bad. But even well before that, stars are known to throw nasty flares and Carrington-type events [slashdot.org]. And go through dim/bright cycles (almost all stars are variable to some degree, including ours).
Colonizing the moon or Mars doesn't guarantee survival of the human race. The only real way to do that is to move the planet far away from the star -- a.k.a. Fleet of Worlds. This is part of the wisdom contained in the Known Space books.
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OTOH, in a billion years we may have the technology to prolong the life of a star.
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OTOH, in a billion years we may have the technology to prolong the life of a star.
Someone might even find a way to reverse entropy.
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OTOH, in a billion years we may have the technology to prolong the life of a star.
Someone might even find a way to reverse entropy.
Or even invent a machine where we can go back to a point in time of our choosing to escape the destruction of the planet.
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A sufficiently advanced and long-lived civilization comes to realize that its sun is a liability, not an asset.
That's why the early advanced civilizations engineered most of the coalescing hydrogen into a multitute of gas giants instead of the stars most would have ended up in. Providing them with vast reservoirs of unspent fuel for the future. Also accounting for the 'missing mass' of dark matter. As soon as we can figure out whey they encased them in a non-reflective dyson-sphere-like structure.
Re:Red giants, the scourge of not our time. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I have it right, humans have been around in anatomical form for about ~200,000 years. And in about one billion years, the sun will begin expansion. Let's also say that in only 500,000,000 years it will already be unlivable on Earth for the reasons you mentioned.
We would still have ~2500 'lifetimes-of-humanity-thusfar' to figure it out.
Not. Worried.
Re:Red giants, the scourge of not our time. (Score:5, Funny)
So your plan is to procrastinate for half a billion years then pull the mother of all-nighters?
pride of the human race you are.
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A sufficiently advanced and long-lived civilization who subscribes to the theory of heat death comes to realize that its universe is a liability, not an asset.
Such a civilization has two obvious choices: find a mirror universe to colonize which is not fading to black due to differing physical characteristics, or find a way to travel back in time.
Re:Red giants, the scourge of not our time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course reaching the end of its life and going nova or red giant is bad. But even well before that, stars are known to throw nasty flares and Carrington-type events [slashdot.org]. And go through dim/bright cycles (almost all stars are variable to some degree, including ours).
Actually, even if the Sun behaves in a perfectly orderly fashion, life on Earth will be doomed long before that since the total radiative output of the Sun will gradually increase as the Sun will be moving on the H-R diagram main sequence. It could easily be unlivable here in just a few hundred million years.
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food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood
How about a little perspective here? Humans won't be around in four billion years. Hell, we haven't been around for two million. We'll either become extinct, or evolve into something else. In fact, I've been writing a little fiction [slashdot.org] about our descendants ten million years from now, who call us "protohumans".
Headline is vague (Score:3, Informative)
I would have been far more interested to know what kind of crazy planet was capable of devouring stars.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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That is why I propose we change its name to Urectum to end that stupid joke once and for all.
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Where the sun don't shine.
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I would have been far more interested to know what kind of crazy planet was capable of devouring stars.
Uh,... Uranus?
I always thought that Venus was the only crazy planet, especially in *that* time of the month. Of course, with Venus having no moon and with its day being longer than its year, it turns out that that time of the month happens on Venus pretty much all the time.
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Vague title (Score:1)
Re:Vague title (Score:5, Informative)
The original article from Penn State is much clearer
http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2012-news/Wolszczan8-2012 [psu.edu]
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I think it would need technically need to be "star-devouring" to mean a planet that devours stars. As it stands, it is not strictly speaking ambiguous, unless you relax the rules somewhat. Since this is the Internet, though, I supposed relaxed rules are the norm, so you do make a valid point.
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It's perfectly clear: http://partiallyclips.com/2005/09/22/witness-stand/ [partiallyclips.com]
Obligatory (Score:1)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
I [wikipedia.org] felt a great disturbance in the Force [wikipedia.org], as if millions of voices [wikipedia.org] suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
I hope Jor-El got Kal-El off in time.
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Just grab your towel and your copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy". You DO have your copy, don't you??
Of course I have a copy of my towel.
wait wut?
If we survive, sun-expansion is laughable. (Score:1)
5 billion years? We'd actually be well established in other solar systems and have the ability to engineer our own solar system from scratch using our current one as resources for it.
Sometimes I almost wonder if those "hurtling stars" are in fact versions of these that have been built by some advanced civilization.
The ability for a star to just be launched out of alignment with the galaxy just seems unlikely. Very unlikely.
Literal starships in every sense of the meaning.
Huge container around the star, ven
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That's not the way the puppeteers did it.
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Given some stars come from other galaxies that the Milky Way swallowed and also some stars are ejected from clusters it is not surprising some stars are "launched out of alignment with the galaxy"
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Back in my day we didn't devour 'em, we just rocked 'em like my friend Sonny here: http://www.facebook.com/officialsonnymendez [facebook.com]
What about Hotblack Desiato and Disaster Area? They rock planets on seismic orders of magnitude.
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Which is close to what the submission used which was 'Astronomers catch a star in the act of devouring a planet'. Soulskill was trying to be an editor but did a shit job at it.
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Wish he wouldn'tve screwed up the formatting too... Original submission [slashdot.org]
A star devouring planet? (Score:2, Redundant)
Woah! That's some incredible planet. I'd have thought it would be the other way around.
Caught in the act? (Score:3)
I guess some hyperbole comes in handy when you're trying for grants and other funding, it's definitely the norm for reporters. In the article though at least the researching team isn't quoted saying they observed it happening, but that they found evidence of it having happened. Another supposed scientist from Spain had to through in the "caught in the act" line though.
Granted something that far away will never be observed as it happened, but it's not like they observed the occurrence as it appeared here. It's like the difference between seeing the blood on the ground and a body and seeing the person being shot. One is seeing the act, one is seeing the evidence.
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It's like the difference between seeing the blood on the ground and a body and seeing the person being shot. One is seeing the act, one is seeing the evidence.
No, its like the difference between just thinking that the gun pointed at your head is loaded and might kill you, and finding evidence that proves you're certainly going to die unless you do something about it.
Re:Caught in the act? (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... this took seven WEEKS to hit mainstream? (Score:5, Informative)
Please don't tell me it was off for peer review!?
Apart from that: Headline and TFS is sensationalist trash. No direct observation of the planet being devoured as suggested, we'll have to wait for the new L2 space telescope for even a possibility of that. All we have is an anomalous Li spectrum which **suggests**, in accordance with **currently accepted theory** of lithium propagation, that a planet **may** have just fallen into its parent star.
Re:Wait... this took seven WEEKS to hit mainstream (Score:4)
Please don't tell me it was off for peer review!?
Apart from that: Headline and TFS is sensationalist trash. No direct observation of the planet being devoured as suggested, we'll have to wait for the new L2 space telescope for even a possibility of that. All we have is an anomalous Li spectrum which **suggests**, in accordance with **currently accepted theory** of lithium propagation, that a planet **may** have just fallen into its parent star.
People run for public office on even less.
They say our planet will be eaten (Score:1)
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" Our planet will be long dead by the time the sun actually touch's earth."
Based on... what? I don
t think our planet will be lifeless until the suns expansion.
Might not be human life.
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" Our planet will be long dead by the time the sun actually touch's earth."
Based on... what? I don
t think our planet will be lifeless until the suns expansion.
Might not be human life.
That's what the martians thought, too.
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Gotta say... (Score:1)
The hubris of of someone thinking humans will be around in 1000 years, much less 5 billion, is astonishing.
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Why is the hubris? we've been around for or 10,000. Why not the next thousand?
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lol
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Because our technology was not advancing as fast as it is now, or capable of the level of destruction that it soon will be. The answer to the Fermi Paradox is that species destroy themselves when technology gets to point where true space travel is possible. Technology advances technology, to the point that technological evolution advances far faster than societal evolution. As a result, technology is created that a species is not responsible enough to handle, and it destroys itself either in the form of w
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Whether we'll still have Americans, though, remains to be seen...
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I'm not sure the (Score:2)
I see this a lot, and it isn't unreasonable to believe, except for the fact that we will collide with the Andromeda [wikipedia.org] in four-billion years. We will likely be torn away from our sun and consumed by other masses before we have to worry about being swallowed
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Galaxy collisions aren't quite like car accidents.
Food for... (Score:2)
"But still, watching a star eating its own planets is not only cool in its own right, but also provides food for thought as to how to keep the human species going long after the Sun starts going off the main sequence into red giant-hood."
Oh, I get it. Food for thought. Delicious.
Relax, this is only an artist's impression (Score:1)
Hate to rain on the exoplanet parade... (Score:2)
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Sunspots don't generally cause spikes in the lithium spectrum.
Just sayin'.
I read that wrong (Score:1)
Geesh (Score:1)
BD+48 740? (Score:2)
Come on now, name it Glactus already!
Star devouring planet (Score:1)
Poorly worded title. (Score:1)
I can't be the only one who comprehended the title as some monster planet that somehow devoured a star and immediately said, "WTF? It has to be the other way around." And sure enough, it is meant to be the other way around.