Exoplanet Count Peaks 1,000 116
astroengine writes "The first 1,000 exoplanets to be confirmed have been added to the Europe-based Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. For the last few weeks, astronomers (and the science media) have been waiting with bated breath as the confirmed exoplanet count tallied closer and closer to the 1,000 mark. Then, with the help of the Super Wide Angle Search for Planets (SuperWASP) collaboration, the number jumped from 999 to 1,010 overnight. All of the 11 worlds are classified as 'hot-Jupiters' with orbital periods between 1 day and 9 days."
Hmm... (Score:2)
More like 1000 e19 when the survey is over maybe?
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No, because it'll be a cold, cold day in hell before I'll admit Rigel-7!
Flags (Score:5, Interesting)
And we still haven't planted a flag in every planes in our solar system.
I find it sad that humanity stopped expanding as soon as it became a bit hard. And I don't think it's relatively harder now for us to expand than it was a thousand years ago.
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And we still haven't planted a flag in every planes in our solar system.
What you just wrote seems inappropriate.
I find it sad that humanity stopped expanding as soon as it became a bit hard. And I don't think it's relatively harder now for us to expand than it was a thousand years ago.
It didn't stop, it just got harder to spot for want to be watchers...
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smartass
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Dumas.
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Shawshank?
Either that or A&W Rootbeer [youtube.com].
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Doofenshmirtz
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Hey AC, are you toying with me?
I have access to Dice logs, just so you know in advance.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4366737&cid=45209721 [slashdot.org]
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Then, as far as I am concerned, you may be a different AC than the 2 different ACs I was replying to. To make things clearer, that would be 3 different ACs total ;-)
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Poor ACs, please read my sig.
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Didn't you read my sig?
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I didn't want to mix topics, but next time I talk to that E.S. bastard, I am sure he could do something for me to keep my sig relevant.
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You are most welcome to go plant your flag on Jupiter.
You can even feel free to plant it in Uranus.
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There just aren't any votes to buy off of the Earth, and where is the political power in that?
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mod up please
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But, but, Uranus is not a planet!
Sorry, my mistake tuning over the same realty as yours. Here it is Pluto that ain't a planet anymore. Forgive me, I know yeah yeah the Kuiper belt.
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what's so great about planting flags?
They could plant their dicks in the ground, for as much as I care, as long as they did develop the technology necessary to reach the planet, land, do their business, lift off, come back, and land safely (waiting in orbit for another ship to recover them is ok too).
The flag is just a little prettier for the media. After all, you're going to do gold plaques to immortalize and commemorate the moment. I'm not sure many people would hang in their walls a golden plaque of an astronaut planting his dick in Mercury
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what's so great about planting flags? Scientifically it has no value.
Agreed.
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what's so great about planting flags?
Among other things, it means you have people in pace so that they can do things like that scientific stuff you seem to value. Even in the classic flag planting exercises of the Apollo program, they never spent more than a few minutes on that. For the later missions, they spent days doing actual science and exploration.
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what's so great about planting flags? Scientifically it has no value.
It could refute the hypothesis that they grow when planted.
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than it was a thousand years ago.
There were people on every "corner" of the globe a thousand years ago. I assume that you prefer your history of a European imperialistic bent?
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Reaching space isn't like crossing the Andes or the Atlantic, because those were crossings to hospitable environments. Expanding into space is like Columbus establishing a settlement on the mid-Atlantic rift.
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Expanding into space is like Columbus establishing a settlement on the mid-Atlantic rift.
...except there's no food. Or water. Or air. Or radiation shield from Earth's magnetic field.
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Not above the mid-Atlantic rift, on the happy clappy ocean with air and sun and fishing. On it.
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Still way more doable than in outer space IMO
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"...we have plenty of problems we need to solve here at home before we spend a lot of money to send someone to a cold rock in space."
What a worthless excuse. We will *always* have plenty of problems. We have always *had* plenty of problems.
But it's odd, isn't it - or did you fail to notice - how many of those problems went away as we explored and expanded and, yes, conquered.
Best to get all of our eggs out of this one fragile basket, lest we are overtaken by defeatism: as dangerous as any species-ending
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dunno.. it took quite a while to expand white mans universe through all of americas. such a long while that space age is just a blip.
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Where do you plant a flag on a gas giant?
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I find it sad that humanity stopped expanding as soon as it became a bit hard.
A bit hard? I like that, "a bit hard." As if all we need is a little *gumption* to settle planets with no oxygen, no atmospheric pressure, intense radiation, no water, no soil--all located at distances that would require months, if not years (if not LIGHT YEARS), of travel through the vacuum of space. Yep, just like our explorer forebears, all we need is to toughen up and grow some balls and the other planets will become the new West. Now, if we could just figure out how to live without any of the necessiti
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I find it sad that humanity stopped expanding as soon as it became a bit hard. And I don't think it's relatively harder now for us to expand than it was a thousand years ago.
Dude, you read too much sci-fi and not enough sci-fu. A thousand years ago it was impossible for anyone to visit the Earth's poles, but even they had 1G of gravity and breathable air. No other planet or satellite in the solar system does. We're not talking about thousands of miles to the new world, we're talking millions of miles, in a
Bad subject word choice... "Exoplanet Count Peaks" (Score:4, Insightful)
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So you're saying your mental age peaked at two months?
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If it is your mental image, then it will seem like the supreme realty to you.
With a little training, you will be able to see further although.
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If all meanings are possible, then it is not possible for me to deduce which one you intended. Your intended meaning of the word "peak" becomes just as valid as "minimum", or "potato".
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ok Sockatume, last explanation. After, I am off to work in some fancy bunker.
For a new born, it might seem like a peak. For somebody who has lived a thousand years, it is nothing new.
I sincerely wish you an happy experience as a new born spirit. That's what makes human so compelling.
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Peaks are maxima, though. That's what distinguishes a peak from an upward slope. It's the peakiest thing about peaks, and if you were going to use a peak to refer to a thing that looks like it's peaking, that inherent peakiness is the most important thing you'd want to cinsider.
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I am perfectly aware of the mainstream signification of "peaks". I am an actuarian amongst other things.
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My point is simply that when you choose to use that word, out of all the words that can be used to indicate that something has been an upward trend, you're using the one word that most succinctly indicates that it said property is now in decline. It ain't a great choice.
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Fuck mainstream. Didn't you notice where it got us so far? There is only one truth and many realties in realty.
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Well, as I said, if you're going to communicate, you've got to consider how the recipient will parse the message.
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I am all about parsing and this is no lies.
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Nothing personal, that was just too easy a joke to make.
Re:Bad subject word choice... "Exoplanet Count Pea (Score:4, Insightful)
No, not really. "Reaches", "Tops", "Exceeds", but not "Peaks", not unless the program is now ending and this is the final tally (which it isn't and it's not.)
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Any word you use relates to your own realty, which might be far from what is going in truth. Do I make myself clear enough?
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Any word you use relates to your own realty, which might be far from what is going in truth. Do I make myself clear enough?
No. Your word choice was poor. Had you said, "Any word you use relates to your own truth, which might be far from reality" it might have been more poetic. Your version just sounded like mindless po-mo wankery.
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You got the meanings of truth and realty mixed up according to my standard but then again, I understand what you're saying...
See? It ain't that hard.
Realty is more often than you wished an illusion while there is only one truth.
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You understand what he's saying because he's not engaged in linguistic solipsism.
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Come on Sockatume.
Enough or else I"ll send some men in black to make you shut up.
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You got the meanings of truth and realty mixed up according to my standard but then again, I understand what you're saying...
It's not much of a "standard", if you're the only one following it.
Realty is more often than you wished an illusion while there is only one truth.
By commonly held definition, if it is illusion, it is not reality. But having said that, people do confuse their perceptions and beliefs with reality.
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Just because you do not know many entities following my "standard" doesn't mean there isn't many following it. So yes, like it or not, it is a standard.
Your argument sounds like my father is stronger than yours. Please go meditating a bit.
What you perceive as realty is more than often an illusion. Get along with it.
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Communication is an odds game. If you talk to an audience in such a way that 99% of them will take the incorrect meaning from what you say, and 1% will take the correct one, you're not being pragmatic.
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Just because you do not know many entities following my "standard" doesn't mean there isn't many following it. So yes, like it or not, it is a standard.
Whatever. Go back to reading your David Hume.
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The purpose of communication is to convey ideas to others. If you use words with an intended meaning that is different from that of the overwhelming majority of possible recipients of that message, you are communicating poorly.
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Not necessarily, I could an emissary sent to make you better overall.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4366765&cid=45210271 [slashdot.org]
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You're broadcasting in code and you haven't given anyone the key.
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Very good point, I will work on that and get back to you if you volunteer. Be aware that you would be getting into a lot so you have to be mentally prepared.
Cheers,
"Peaks"? (Score:5, Funny)
Are we expecting it to go down, and are the Vorlons or the Shadows responsible?
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Whoever signed the Hyperspace Highway Development Plan 67-A-8437 is responsible. The Vogon construction fleet is just following that plan and can under no circumstance be held responsible.
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I'm sure they meant "tops 1000". Or should it be "1000, tops"?
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Crosses, breaks, passes, beats, bests, surpasses...
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To use 1000 we need an English word for "reaches or exceeds".
Clearly unpossible.
Headline is misleading (Score:1)
"Peaks" implies that we are at a time between an increasing exoplanet count and a decreasing exoplanet count. I highly doubt that is the case.
It would be better to use "stagnates at" if one wants to imply that we are approaching a maximum. If we are just talking about an arbitrary milestone for an ever increasing value it should have been "Exoplanet Count Reaches 1,000".
In other news half empty and half full are not equal and which one is most optimistic depends on the desired final state.
Very few "synonyms
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Peaks are a matter of point of view.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4366765&cid=45210017 [slashdot.org]
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Do you have any other reference for that?
Nope you have to look to look into yourself and decide if you take my words for it. Interesting challenge, isn't it?
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I suspect he's dealing with the thorny philosophical issue of whether a property, increasing from one value to another, inherently transitions through all the intermediate values.
1000 is arbitrary (Score:1)
Ohhh what a nice round number it is, with all the zeros. It has to Mean something!
Hnnnngh (Score:2)
Kepler has 3000 "candidates" (Score:2)
Some reasons for verification:
(1) 3rd periodic transit not yet observed (longer orbit candidates).
(2) The Kepler CCD pixel contained multiple stars. Better telescopes are needed to distignusih which star has the plantet.
(3) Some other pehnomena like a sunspot cause the dimming.
"These Thousand Worlds" (Score:2)
Puts me in the mood to read a little classic space travel. Some Asimov, or Heinlein, maybe. "These Thousand Worlds," a story of a galactic civilization hitting its stride as it colonizes it's thousandth planet, and the struggles it faces managing such a widespread and diverse collection of worlds.
Yes, I know most of the first thousand here aren't habitable, but I can imagine we've found and colonized a thousand that are, one of these days.
1000 isn't the real goal anyway (Score:1)
There are no exoplanets. IAU says so. (Score:2)
The IAU has decided that a planet - at least around our Sun - has to "clear the neighbourhood" around its orbit. There will always be objects we can detect, without being able to detect if the neighbourhood is cleared (currently is all so-called exoplanets).
One solution is that "planet" has a different definition between our Solar System and everywhere else. But that is inconsistent. What we should do is have the same definition everywhere; I suggest "orbiting star" and "so massive it's round". If th
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