First Evidence of Extrasolar Planets Discovered In 1917 58
KentuckyFC writes: Earth's closest white dwarf is called van Maanen 2 and sits 14 light-years from here. It was discovered by the Dutch astronomer Adriaan van Maanen in 1917, but it was initially hard to classify. That's because its spectra contains lots of heavy elements alongside hydrogen and helium, the usual components of a white dwarf photosphere. In recent years, astronomers have discovered many white dwarfs with similar spectra and shown that the heavy elements come from asteroids raining down onto the surface of the stars. It turns out that all these white dwarfs are orbited by a large planet and an asteroid belt. As the planet orbits, it perturbs the rocky belt, causing asteroids to collide and spiral in toward their parent star. This process is so common that astronomers now use the heavy element spectra as a marker for the presence of extrasolar planets. A re-analysis of van Maanen's work shows that, in hindsight, he was the first to discover the tell-tale signature of extrasolar planets almost a century ago.
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Europeans are the Daleks? This explains so much.
Roundabout (Score:2)
That's rather indirect evidence. The title is a bit misleading if you ask me. It's an interesting fact, I agree, but the title needs work.
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But you named it the tanglon particle....
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Typical /. (Score:1)
Almost a century late to report the news.
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+1 Funny
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And in another 100 years, we'll see a dupe.
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
So now the first discoverer is the one who sees it for the first time even if that person doesn't know what it was that he saw? Great! I might be the discoverer of a distant supernova if I'm the first human being whose eye is hit by a photon created during it's explosion!
Now to play the waiting game until someone discovers it. Oh, no, I mean until someone correctly identifies it as a supernova and someone else points out that I am the discoverer, because the photon hit me first.
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Indeed, so some criteria are needed to established who is the discoverer. As far as I know, one of those criteria is knowing what's being discovered.
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Indeed, so some criteria are needed to established who is the discoverer. As far as I know, one of those criteria is knowing what's being discovered.
At what point would you say that one "knew" what America was. We know that Columbus didn't know it. Was it when the west coast was discovered, or would one have to find both Alaska and the southern tip of Chile as well?
Perhaps we can conclude that America has yet to be discovered?
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At what point would you say that one "knew" what America was. We know that Columbus didn't know it.
I don't know, but if it takes credit away from that genocidal pedophile slaver, I'll take it.
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The notion that Columbus, "discovered" America is odd at best. The fact that it was already inhabited and he was not even the first European sort of renders the "discovered" point moot. He not even was able to notice that he was not really in India. Sure the travel was sort of epic for the time, but the "Columbus discovered America" meme is sort of nonsense.
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He was the one who kicked off European colonization and exploitation of the place. Other Europeans who came made only a tenuous foothold. Columbus was the one who said, "There's a place over there, and it's worth living in and taking stuff." He's the reason Europeans in general came to know about it.
It's not entirely out of keeping with other uses of "discover". The OED's first definition is "To disclose, reveal, etc., to others". The fact that it's first is historical, rather than a matter of present usage
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I did no say that Columbus did not have an important part in world history. But in the US the meme "Columbus discovered America" is somewhat misguided. But then again world history is glossed over in US schools.
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He discovered the evidence, he didn't draw any conclusion.
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"As far as I know we still accept Columbus as the discoverer of America"
No we don't.
I was taught in school that Lief Ericson did.
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Didn't those red skinned guys who had been living in America discover the continent many years before Columbus or Lief were even existed?
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I would think living in a place for 10,000+ years and leaving plentiful archaeological evidence behind would qualify as evidence that you had in fact discovered it.
No, they didn't spread word back to Asia or Europe (or maybe they did - 10,000 years is a long time for legends to survive in a largely pre-literate society), but since when has publication become synonymous with discovery? Even in science publication was rare until quite recently - it used to be that scientists would "publish" their findings pr
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If you are going to count Leif Ericson as a "discoverer" then you must count the Mongols who populated America across the Bering Straight as earlier discoverers.
If on the other hand we use "discoverer" in the standard sense or person who first widely disseminated a fact then there is no doubt Columbus deserves the moniker.
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Exactly. "Where's Waldo?" just got way easier.
Sirius B! (Score:5, Informative)
"Earth's closest white dwarf is called van Maanen 2 and sits 14 light-years from here." Balderdash! Sirius B is a white dwarf that 7 years from here.
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Sirius B is a white dwarf that 7 years from here
Just to be pedantic... 7 light-years.
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actually I do but, it requires some investment funds in order to get enough negative matter to work. I would be happy to give you the once in a lifetime opportunity however to get in on the ground floor in this world changing investment.
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How far do you get in 7 years, if you walk?
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Why did this get modded down? I know Anonymous Coward regularly posts some inane crap, but this is a very valid question.
Data, not evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram [wikipedia.org] was proposed in 1910. It wasn't until the 1930's that it was understood how fusion was the energy producing mechanism for stars. Without understanding fusion and stellar evolution [wikipedia.org], there was no context in which to fit the observation of enhanced metallic elements in the star's spectrum.
So this only became evidence decades after the initial observation. It's interesting that the observation was made so early, but only retrospect makes it significant.
Dont read slashdot before coffee (Score:2)
My pre-coffee reading is terrible.
I scanned this as:
First Evidence of extra solar panels Discovered In 1917