Here is a chart showing Kepler data for a planet that was found by the Doppler method. To me, this is just as good as seeing it.
Posted on 06/17/2010 5:32:28 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Here is a chart showing Kepler data for a planet that was found by the Doppler method. To me, this is just as good as seeing it.
If the guys at thunderbolts.info are correct and I’d bet it that way, then most habitable planets are going to be very close in to brown dwarf stars and all but undetectable in all but the rarest cases. Our own planet would be an aberation.
It’ll be hard to spot planets in other systems, always, but the tech improves all the time. At one time, it was next to impossible to find the brown dwarfs, too. :’)
What I think will be found, more and more, are systems with lots of different combos, well, kinda like now. For a while the only detectable systems were smallish stars with one big (known) planet, and at least a few of those were big planets that were scraping along as they spiral down into their stars. Now there’s more sensitivity, and planets as small as five times Earth mass have been found. but it’ll always be easier to spot wobbles in smaller stars, such as brown dwarfs.
Of course, my favorite pet project would be looking for retrograde objects in orbit around the Sun, out past Pluto and Neptune. I’m pretty sure they must be there, and probably are numerous.
Me, too. The idea of eternity sounds terrifying if not having something interesting to do.
Whoops! Thanks KoRn.
My two favorite books from him were Childhoods End and Rendezvous with Rama.
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