Posted on 08/02/2018 1:53:13 PM PDT by ETL
Designated HD 26965b, the newly-detected alien world has a mass of 8.47 Earth masses and is located a mere 16 light-years away.
This planet revolves around the bright K-class dwarf star HD 26965 once every 42.4 days.
The host star is approximately 6.9 billion years old, has a mass about 78% of the Sun’s and a radius 87% as large.
“HD 26965 is the primary of a very widely separated triple system. The other two companions are an M4 dwarf and a white dwarf,” said University of Florida astronomer Bo Ma and co-authors.
“This star is a very bright metal poor star with an absolute magnitude of V=4.4. This makes it the second brightest star in the night sky with a super-Earth detection so far, just behind HD 20794 (V=4.3).”
“One interesting fact is that HD 20794 has a similar metallicity as HD 26965, which is consistent with the finding that smaller planets are detected around stars with wide-ranging metallicities.”
“With a minimum mass of 8.4 Earth masses, HD 26965b likely possesses a gaseous atmosphere based on other planets with known masses and radii,” they added.
“However, we note that Kepler-10c has a similar mass and orbit, is hosted by a similar, low-metallicity star, and does not possess an envelope, so HD 26965b may be a similar type of world.”
HD 26965b was found using the ‘wobble’ method, called radial velocity, by the Dharma Planet Survey (DPS).
This method watches for the telltale jitters of stars as they are pulled back and forth by the gravitational tugs of an orbiting planet; the size of the wobble reveals the mass of the planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at sci-news.com ...
The should come out with 3D globes that show the locations of the 10 nearest star systems.
Let’s give this new planet to the Democrats.
By the time they’re done with it, it won’t be a super-Earth any more.
If space is nothing, then what medium is transmitting a gravity wave?
Lol! Guess you were on the “Who Discovered Mars” thread?
Sarah Palin can see it from her house!
8.47 earth masses is HUGE for a terrestrial planet.
Meh... the method is pretty solid. If it isn’t a planet, it’s some very new, strange phenomenon that coindicentally “looks” exactly how one would expect a planet to look. And 16 light years is practically next door.
The silly part is in calling it a “super-earth” when its unclear if it’s a terrestrial and certainly is not similar in size to Earth.
Why would we want to visit a hot planet with thousands of g’s of gravity that is so close to its sun it gets sterilized regularly by solar flares? And 16 light years away? We’ll never go there, I predict.
8x mass probably means THOUSANDS of g’s higher gravitational acceleration, if it keeps the same relative density as earth, or thereabouts.
I wonder if someday, when aliens pick up the emissions from earth as they scan the skies, if all they will hear is the constant whining of the liberals that reside here, and decide to put us out of our misery.
Are there any gas stations along the way? I don’t think I can make it on one tank of gas.
Are we there yet?
Not nothing. The invisible scaffolding - space-time - is there.
You can’t bend nothing.
An object with mass modifies the space-time interval in the region around it. This is why a beam of light that travels through that region appears - by an outside observer - to bend.
It is also why the planets orbit the sun - the planet's momentum carries it in what should be a straight line (in space-time, called a "geodesic"), but the mass of the sun affects the space-time interval so much that this "straight line" appears to become an elliptical path.
Time gets affected by this, too. It is strange, but I'm sure it all makes perfect sense to God.
But Mark Twain had a comment about that...
"Such large returns of conjecture, from so small investment in fact."
But no matter. We have hundreds if not thousands of laws enslaving us in different ways, invented by functional but elected morons, and nobody notices.
If the planet has about the same density as the Earth, it would have less than three times Earth’s gravity.
Well all you need is a rocket ship that travels 99% the speed of light, takes about 2 years according to my rather non scientific calc.
“For example, let’s say we set off for a star 100 light years from Earth and our speed is 99% of the speed of light. Common sense tells us that we will reach the star in just over 100 years, but this doesn’t take dilation into account. Instead, because the distance has been dilated we will reach the star in only 14.1 years. As we go ever faster the dilation becomes ever more dramatic, so that at 99.9% of the speed of light we would reach it in just 4.5 years and at 99.99% around 1.4 years.
http://www.emc2-explained.info/Time-Dilation/#.WzhGfNJKhPZ
You’re the only other person besides myself I’ve encountered that believes there is no such thing as time!
Gee only 16 light years away. Let’s see 1 light year is approximately 5,878,606,438,399.745 * 16 = 94,057,703,014,395.42 miles away. I hope we don’t collide anytime soon. 8>)
Beat me to it!
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