Three New Planets Discovered in Pegasus; 130 Million Lightyears Away

[Stealth Hunter]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/0...ets/index.html

Three medium-sized planets of roughly the same mass as Neptune have been discovered around a nearby sun-like star, scientists announced today.

The planets were discovered around HD 69830, a star slightly less massive than the sun located 41 light-years away in the constellation Puppis (the Stern), using the ultra-precise HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter La Silla telescope in Chile.

The finding, detailed in the May 18 issue of the journal Nature, marks a first for astronomers because previously discovered multi-planet solar systems besides our own contain at least one giant, Jupiter-sized planet.

"For the first time, we have discovered a planetary system composed of several Neptune-mass planets," said study team member Christophe Lovis of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

The setup is similar to our own solar system in many ways: The outermost planet is located just within the star's habitable zone, where temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water to form, and the system also contains an asteroid belt.

The newly discovered planets have masses of about 10, 12 and 18 times that of Earth and they zip around the star in rapid orbits of about 9, 32 and 197 days, respectively.

Based on their distances from the star, two inner worlds nearest the star are rocky planets similar to Mercury, the scientists suspect. The outermost planet is thought to have a solid core of rock and ice and is shrouded by a thick gas envelope.
Recent observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope last year revealed that HD 69830 also hosts an asteroid belt, making it the only other sun-like star known to have one.

When the asteroid belt was found, it was suspected that there might be an unseen planet that was shepherding the asteroids; it now seems that there is more than one shepherd. The researchers think the asteroid belt could lie between the two outermost planets or beyond the third planet.

The planets have not been photographed. They were found using the Doppler, or "wobble," technique, in which astronomers infer the presence of a planet by measuring the gravitational influence it exerts on its parent star. This technique was used to find most of the more than 180 planets so far discovered.

In the early years of planet hunting, the wobble technique was sensitive enough to spot only large, massive planets because they produce more significant stellar wobbles. However, the technique has since been refined to the point where lower-mass planets can now be detected.

Shame we'll never be able to explore them. Interesting news, however.

Note that "Pegasus" refers to their corner of space (the corner that the constellation sits in).

[Blacklight]

Wow ! First the DNA thing and now this. This is really a great day for science !

All we need now is for Ronald L. Mallett to get his time travel theory verified and we'll be all set !

[XabbaRus]

The BBC was saying 25 lightyears away...

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

The BBC was saying 25 lightyears away...

Either way it is an impossible distance.

Without being able to fold space it would take longer to get there than the earth is old.

[mengle]

does anybody know how many years it takes for the space shuttle to travler a lightyear :hmm:

[August]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Either way it is an impossible distance.

Without being able to fold space it would take longer to get there than the earth is old.

Present day top speed is about 7 miles per second (Apollo 10).

25 light years = 187k x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 x 25?

[Task Force]

130 million lightyears would be imposiable, And to even travel at the speed of light you would have to be particals. And what are the chances that that planet is no longer there, It took 130 million lightyears for the light from that planet to reach earth.

[Blacklight]

130 million lightyears would be imposiable, And to even travel at the speed of light you would have to be particals. And what are the chances that that planet is no longer there, It took 130 million lightyears for the light from that planet to reach earth.

The light from that planet took about 25 years to reach us. There's a possibility that if that solar sail experiment that they're doing in 2009 works, we should be able to accellerate a space probe to near the speed of light once it's perfected and scaled up. Then we should be able to at least do a fly-by. It would be cool to see decent pictures of extra-solar planets in my lifetime.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Blacklight

The light from that planet took about 25 years to reach us. There's a possibility that if that solar sail experiment that they're doing in 2009 works, we should be able to accellerate a space probe to near the speed of light once it's perfected and scaled up. Then we should be able to at least do a fly-by. It would be cool to see decent pictures of extra-solar planets in my lifetime.

Depends on what you consider decent :p

http://www.news.com.au/technology/st...014239,00.html

[Hylander_1314]

Some of the youngsters might see it, but it will really be neat when there is an ability to bend space so that travelling from one end of the galaxy or another galaxy for that matter can be done in a matter of seconds. Travelling through space in a linear manner is very inefficient, and wasteful. But to bend or warp space to make the distance not 250 million lightyears distance, but only say 100,000 miles away, or even the equivelant of travelling the distance to the moon, will make space exploration viable, and very interesting to see. Studying other planets that orbit other stars, to see what they are made of, and how close they are to our own solar systems, and similar or different they may be, and if there is life on them, what phase of life would they be at, would be something to behold. It would be interesting to see what technology will allow man to do in the next 500 years.

[Blacklight]

but it will really be neat when there is an ability to bend space so that travelling from one end of the galaxy or another galaxy for that matter can be done in a matter of seconds.

Hopefully negative energy does exist. That's the only way a spaceship could compress space in front of it while at the same time expanding space behind it enableing the effect you speak of. The only issue is that we've never seen negative energy in nature nor seen any effect that it would produce.... so far. but who knows ? We didn't notice the effects of dark matter until VERY recently so someday, maybe we will stumble upon negative energy.

[Stealth Hunter]

Black,

Although negative energy has never been observed, it is still, in theory, quite plausible. Mathematics is our best evidence for it. We know it exists; we just can't find it. I'd say that, in time, we will eventually discover it and unlock new vistas of science previously unknown.

Traversing the universe would be quite a difficult thing, indeed. One of the newest ideas on getting from Point A to Point B in a short amount of time is opening a wormhole.

Think of it like this: a piece of paper has two points drawn on it at equal distances from one another. Instead of trying to directly travel to Point B across the paper, why not simply fold the paper to shorten the distance there? It's a good idea that's still in theory, but it could very well become a reality someday.

[Task Force]

Yea, that would be a great accomplishment if science could figure how to do this.

By the way Stealth Hunter, your sig.

[Stealth Hunter]

I should have a better picture of Trotsky for the "Kremlin Fried Chicken" part.

[Task Force]

I never realised how much he looked like the KFC man untill I looked at your sig.