Posted on 06/13/2002 4:17:37 PM PDT by Exit 109
Friday June 14, 3:19 AM
US astronomers announced the discovery of a solar system similar to our own, at a press conference at NASA's headquarters here.
Astronomers said they had identified an extra-solar planet orbiting this star at about the same distance Jupiter orbits the sun. They discovered a total of 15 extra-solar planets.
University of California at Berkley astronomy professor Geoffrey Marcy discovered the star, named 55 Cancri, 15 years ago, jointly with his colleague at Washington's Carnegie Institution Paul Butler.
In 1996, Marcy and Butler announced the discovery of a first planet orbiting 55 Cancri "in 14.6 days at a distance only one-tenth that from Earth to the sun."
55 Cancri is located 41 million light-years from the Earth, in the constellation of Cancer. The star, believed to be around five billion years old, is visible to the naked eye, astronomers said.
Especially if they have to neutron bomb the place first, as a form of "fumigation".
And what would you rather see that money going to? The returns we get from pure scientific research far exceed the initial monetary input. Without pure research and the resultant engineering, we would still be swinging from trees.
It's the same distance as at any other speed.
ROFL! I din't catch that. :-)
I think it has been done, although the 'planet' would have to be a supermassive one, and probably on the borderline between gas giant and brown dwarf. Wasn't there an image published a few months ago? Just a dot of light, certainly no surface detail. It will be another 10 years before NASA has the instrument in space able to optically resolve extrasolar planetary detail.
Jupiter-like planet orbits sun-like star 240 trillion miles away
06/14/2002
After more than a decade of searching, astronomers say they have identified a planetary system with a family resemblance to our own.
New evidence reveals a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a star like the sun in a path similar to Jupiter's, the researchers announced Thursday at a NASA news conference in Washington, D.C. The presence of that planet opens the possibility that an Earth-like planet could exist within the distant system.
| Also Online | ||
|
"For the first time, we've found a family of planets that has some similarity to our own solar system," said Geoffrey Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Marcy conducted the planet search with Paul Butler, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., and a team of other researchers.
Most planets outside our solar system, known as "extrasolar" planets, orbit close to their parent stars in eccentric ovals. And most of them have turned out to be hot balls of gas like Jupiter.
An outer planet in an orbit like Jupiter's is the one sign that a planetary system could support rocky, terrestrial planets like Earth, Dr. Butler said. The new planet satisfies that condition. It completes one orbit every 13 years, while Jupiter circles the sun in just less than 12. And its orbit is nearly circular, like Jupiter's.
Calculations by Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, show that if there were an Earth-like planet in this system, it could survive in a stable orbit at the right distance from the star for moderate temperatures. Planets too close to the star would be too hot to support life.
While this system does not share all the qualities of the Earth's solar system, Dr. Butler says, "it could be classified as a first cousin."
The new planet is one of 15 introduced by Drs. Marcy and Butler on Thursday, bringing the total number of known extrasolar planets to more than 90. Its parent star, known as 55 Cancri, is relatively close to Earth in galactic terms, at 41 light-years (240 trillion miles) away. It is visible to the naked eye in the constellation Cancer. It is also orbited by at least two other planets. The first was discovered by Drs. Marcy and Butler in 1996, and the other was also announced Thursday.
Both of these planets orbit close to 55 Cancri and are more typical of most known extrasolar planets. The innermost planet is slightly smaller than Jupiter and darts around 55 Cancri in just 14.6 days. The middle planet is smaller but has a slightly wider orbit.
It would be far too hot for a terrestrial planet to form within the orbits of planets like these. But the existence of an outer planet with a Jupiter-length orbit creates a gap that leaves room for smaller planets to form from the rocks and dust that float around in such spaces.
Drs. Marcy and Butler expect that many other solar systems with Jupiter-like outer planets, like the one they described Thursday, will be found in coming years.
William Cochran, of the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas at Austin, said he is "very confident that this is the first of a whole class of planets that will be coming out." The detection methods used to find the new planet would not be able to find an Earth-size planet, Dr. Cochran added, but "having outer Jupiters means there is room for inner Earth-like planets."
With current technology, signals of a planet's presence must be observed throughout its orbital course for it to be characterized, and so it has taken 13 years of observation for Drs. Marcy and Butler and their research team to be able to describe the planet.
They found the new planet by measuring the change in a star's motion as viewed from Earth. A planet will exhibit a gravitational tug on its star, causing a wobble in the star's orbit, shifting the color of light emitted by the star.
Future projects, such as NASA's Kepler mission, will use sophisticated optical telescopes to examine a large number of stars for signs of terrestrial planets.
E-mail sgoforth@dallasnews.com
NASA --> An artist's conception compares our solar system with the planetary system around 55 Cancri. The system has two planets orbiting close to a sun-like star, and a Jupiter-like planet that's about the same distance that Jupiter is from our sun. -->
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Would that we could go and view these places with the Mk.1 Mod.0 eyeball!
Huh? Television is AM, so I agree that the information content is in the sidebands. First off what is interstellar scintillation, and second how can it demodulate a signal?
I did not say that well. Here is a better response: :-)
Electromagnetic waves as they propagate though the interstellar media suffer frequency-selective fading. The resulting corrupted signal is said to undergo scintillation effects. The higher the modulation bandwidth the worse the effect.
Thus all that remains detectable is the carrier itself. Using the term "strips" was a bad analogy.
Here also is a great series of slides on the subject.
Oh I wish! :-)
Don't know if SETI is a joke, but it is of no interest to the taxpayers and hasn't been for several years. It's a private enterprise now.
Hmmm... We may learn something new about our universe. Who can tell what may be the result. I wonder how many people thought that the exploration of the new world a few years back (which finally resulted in the founding of the United States) was also absurd.
Taxpayers? Last time I looked, I was not using a dime of taxpayer money. You can slam SETI all you want. This is ok I really don't care. But you may want to look again at what is being funded and what is not before making those kinds of assumptions.
What an ignorant statement.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
