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Space NASA

Kepler Discovers Solar System's Ancient 'Twin' 67

Posted by Soulskill from the not-quite-sol-o dept.
astroengine writes: Astronomers have found a star system that bears a striking resemblance to our inner solar system. It's a sun-like star that plays host to a system of five small exoplanets — from the size of Mercury to the size of Venus. But there's something very alien about this compact 'solar system'; it formed when the universe was only 20 percent the age it is now, making it the most ancient star system playing host to terrestrial sized worlds discovered to date.
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Kepler Discovers Solar System's Ancient 'Twin' More

Kepler Discovers Solar System's Ancient 'Twin'

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  • Um... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @04:28PM (#48918145) Homepage Journal

    The only problem with naming satellites after early astronomers is that when I read the headline, there is a moment where I think "wait -- isn't he dead?"

  • How are they rocky? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @04:29PM (#48918153)

    I thought that it took multiple generations of supernovas to produce enough heavy elements to accumulate into a rocky planet.

    • Apparently not.

    • I suspect it would depend on the star in question. A monster (e.g. Betelgeuse) likely has a gravity well strong enough to make 'em in larger quantities than our star does.

      Also, neutron stars and other near-black-hole masses could likely crank out heavy elements in shorter order.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DM9290 ( 797337 )

        I suspect it would depend on the star in question. A monster (e.g. Betelgeuse) likely has a gravity well strong enough to make 'em in larger quantities than our star does.

        Also, neutron stars and other near-black-hole masses could likely crank out heavy elements in shorter order.

        matter inside a neutron star is effectively stuck forever. neutron stars are not a source of matter because they are essentially an end state of matter.

        • Not entirely true. I wondered what happens if you had 2 small neutron stars that collide [wikipedia.org] and I guess they create all sorts of useful things if their combined mass is low enough to not become a black hole. Agreed that if there was just one sitting there it basically does nothing but get some collisions of neutron stars and you get gold. Also when talking about big monsters producing heavy elements you would need something bigger and hotter than Betelgeuse, like a Population III star [wikipedia.org] which are thought to have

    • Re:How are they rocky? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by doug ( 926 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @04:44PM (#48918315)
      In the early universe, things were closer together (less time for expansion), and there were more large, hot stars. A stellar generation would have been faster than it is now. That said, it does sound a bit zippy.

      • What's interesting about this star though, is that according to the paper [arxiv.org], Kepler-444 is not some primordial supergiant, but a K dwarf (orange, of the same type as Alpha Centauri) with a smaller companion red dwarf (or possibly two companion red dwarf stars which are closely bound to each other).

        • That should actually be that Kepler-444 is of the same type as Alpha Centauri B, the smaller secondary star in that system. The primary star in Alpha Centauri is a G dwarf (yellow) like our sun.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Kepler-444 is not some primordial supergiant,

          This shouldn't be too surprising, since primordial supergiants should long since be dead.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by doug ( 926 )
          If the concern is not having enough time to build up heavy elements, the type of the current start (Kepler-444) is not important. The question is what came before it.

    • Re:How are they rocky? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @04:57PM (#48918385)
      Depends on the composition of your "rocky" planet. Fusion reagents are energy-positive up to iron [askamathematician.com]. So basically, elements heavier than iron requires multiple supernovae to generate a substantial quantity. Elements lighter than iron [opencourse.info] can be released in just 1-2 supernovae.

      The elements which make up most of the "rock" on our rocky planet are oxygen, silicon, calcium, iron, potassium, aluminum, and sodium. Of these, oxygen, silicon, and iron are a regular product of stellar fusion, and can be distributed from a single supernova.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

      when you can run down the entire periodic table in a relatively miniscule thermonuclear explosion here on Earth, what makes you think a 5Ms exploding ball of plasma can't do exactly the same on a proportionately massive scale?

    • The bigger the star, the lower its lifetime. It only takes a few million years for a star to form, shine and then go supernova.

  • Then it should be named Vincent, and our own system should be renamed Julius. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com]

  • Last Season of Star Trek (Score:4, Funny)

    by painandgreed ( 692585 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @04:35PM (#48918231)
    Cue the Star Trek music as the Enterprise begins to circle yet another duplicate of the planet Earth. Spock turns to the Captain and says "It seems an exact duplicate of the Sol system, but formed billions of years earlier. Before even the creation of your solar system Captain. Most interesting."

    • Someone better call the copyright attorneys!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cnettel ( 836611 )
      So, did the inhabitants evolve into somewhat benevolent beings of pure energy, or just underground-dwelling mega-brains that like to keep pets?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slew ( 2918 )

        So, did the inhabitants evolve into somewhat benevolent beings of pure energy, or just underground-dwelling mega-brains that like to keep pets?

        Or maybe the 700yo inhabitants just go around saying "Nyah na nyah, bonk bonk on the head, you mean old grups"...

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by umghhh ( 965931 )
        maybe their economy optimized living beings out of existence and now only the stock exchange boots are still there increasing the value and making progress as we speak.

    • "Captain's log, star date 3545 point 7.

      "We are in orbit around the third M class planet of the K-444 system. Preliminary scans show that this system is incredibly similar to Earth's, but... BILLIONS ofyearsolder.

      "Myself, Dr McCoy, Mr Spock and a security detail are beaming down to explore... ancientruins discovered on the surface..."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

      didn't they do that in TNG with a seed species that spawned every other humanoid race in the Galaxy?

      (checking, and yes. episode #146, S6E20 "The Chase", written by J. Monosky and RDM, directed by J. Frakes. Very enjoyable episode that yet again shows Frakes' skill as a director far outshines his lack of skill as an actor).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      So what's the over/under of this planet being inhabited entirely by Nazis or Prohibition gangsters?

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @04:38PM (#48918265)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • And upon one of those rocky worlds is an ancient and advanced civilization. They will be able to give us the secrets of the universe; from interstellar travel and zero-point energy to a smoother, creamier peanut butter.

    I for one welcome our ancient alien overlords.

  • Brightness (Score:3)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @05:00PM (#48918397) Journal

    They calculated that there are 5 planets orbiting the star by the way the intensity of the star dips very, very slightly in a pattern. Are we sure there are no other mechanisms that can cause the star's intensity to vary in a pattern? We only know about our own star's sunspots, and the longer term cycle (11 years) in which the sunspots change the intensity at which it emits. How do we know that a smaller, much older star doesn't have a sunspot type cycle that is shorter or more complex, and that is what is causing this star's intensity to change?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by slew ( 2918 )

      They calculated that there are 5 planets orbiting the star by the way the intensity of the star dips very, very slightly in a pattern. Are we sure there are no other mechanisms that can cause the star's intensity to vary in a pattern? We only know about our own star's sunspots, and the longer term cycle (11 years) in which the sunspots change the intensity at which it emits. How do we know that a smaller, much older star doesn't have a sunspot type cycle that is shorter or more complex, and that is what is causing this star's intensity to change?

      Please refer to the Kepler FAQ [nasa.gov]

      Planetary transits have durations of a few hours to less than a day. The measured solar variability on this time scale is 1 part 100,000 (10 ppm) as compared to an Earth-size transit of 1 part in 12,000 (80 ppm). Even then, most of the variability is in the UV, which is excluded from the measurements by the Kepler Mission.

      Also concerning stellar variablity [nasa.gov]...

      Even for the Sun - a star of low rotation rate and relatively evenly distributed active regions (in longitude) - variability is concentrated at time scales comparable to the rotational period. Fortunately, the time scales of interest to planet detection are considerably shorter.

      One would hope that we can have enough faith in our friends at Nasa that they would do their homework (rather than just surf a few sites on the internet before launching a 1/2 billion dollar mission)...

  • > Plays host to a system of five small exoplanets

    No, it plays host to a system of five planets. Unless you think surgeons, after cutting open a patient, should talk about operating on that there exoliver.

    • Are you claiming those planets are actually orbiting the Sun?

      If not then exoplanet is more specific than planet and certainly not wrong. Do you also complain when people say they have a pet dog, with something like "No, you have a pet mammal"? (cue the next guy calling you wrong and getting even less specific).

  • Some people get annoyed thinking that electrical positive/negative charges should be reversed, or that pi would be more useful if we used a multiple of it. My pet peeve is star population labeling. Our current generation of stars (and all future ones) are Population I. The immediately previous one is Population II, and the very first stars are Population III.

    I know there's history there... Pop I and II were labeled without regard to which ones actually came first, and Pop III wasn't visible by telescope

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Shouldn't future populations be -I, -II, etc., or are you suffering form infitialisphobia?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sowelu ( 713889 )

        The stars that come after ours won't have meaningfully different metallicity, so no. Population is not (strictly) generation.

  • While this is really neat, it is yet more of the accumulating evidence that there are no substantial barriers to intelligent life arising or even arising in the early universe. This suggests that something is wiping out civilizations, possibly something the civilizations themselves all do. This problem is known as the Great Filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter [wikipedia.org] (Strictly speaking the Filter is whatever makes massive, interstellar, civilizations apparently rare, but it looks like most of the Filter really is at or beyond our rough tech level.) The Great Filter could be nuclear war, or epidemics, or biological warfare, or bad nanotech, or possibly something we haven't even thought of that comes completely out of left field. But the evidence for it is growing. This is scary.

    • Or civilizations become so afraid of the Great Filter that they decide to commit mass suicide.
       

      • Possible, but seems unlikely. Every species has that level of hysteria? And what about the species born early enough in the universe's history that they didn't have much reason to worry about the Filter?

      • Yep, they call it 'nucular' war. Maybe our species deserves to go out with a bang if we can't evolve past the greed established by religion, the first world government.

    • This does not suggest something special is wiping out civilization.
      It's not a conspiracy, the odds for creating life are very slim, let alone sustaining life over extended periods of time.
      Any species in our imagination will consume its surroundings in one way or the other, so it seems logical that the species itself is destined to extinction.

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