Newly Discovered Planet Orbits "Backward"

[kitakaze]

I just want to underscore kitakaze's sense of wonderment here. Forget the details for a moment. We now have instruments (telescopes) that can detect motion and properties of things virtually unimaginably far away. A relatively few years ago we didn't even know they existed. How cool is that?

Or, to look through the other end of the scope, we can image individual atoms. It wasn't so long ago that atomic theory was controversial. What an incredible period we live in. Imagine, say, 500 years from now. What knowledge will we possess that will make 2009 look absolutely primitive?

Since I was a young child those mind-bogglingly macro and micro realities of our universe have fascinated my imagination. Early in my life as a music producer I got involved with ambient electronic music culture in which such fascinations were big for many artists. Here is a cool video that captures that micro/macro fascination:

Gas - Microscopic (Ambient Electronic Space)


I still feel it deep all the time. I went to check the Perseids the other night and even though I saw only one meteorite, I was just stoked to stare up at the night sky and get lost in the stars. I'm visiting my hometown in Canada where unlike, Tokyo you can actually see stars at night.

I don't want to derail WP's thread but I read the subtext as being that this is a great example of real science that can dispel erroneous notions for people trapped by a sadly distorted world view like the friend I'm mentioning. Being able to look out into what is infinity by any realistic standard and being able to observe intimate secrets of the universe is a wonderful thing. Just imagine if we all lived by that terrible God-did-it mindset and could never see or know these things.

Thank you, WP, for the cool thread. The universe rocks!

 

[makaya325]

5) We keep disovering planets at a stunning rate. There's been over 200 extrasolar planets discovered so far.

Yeah, all of them Hot Jupiters or frozen terrestrials.

We discovered life on Earth that lives entirely off of geothermal energy, to whom sunlight is completely irrelevant, making life on planets that are in perpetual night much more likely.

But can life some how create itself in such nasty conditions?

We discovered that Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, is the most geologically active body in the entire solar system! That's a serious source of energy from tidal forces alone, not starlight

Geologically active? You betcha!

Life-haven? Far from it.

We discovered that tardigrades, viruses, and archea thrive in environments would be instantly lethal to most organisms, making the range of conditions that life can tolerate much wider.

The question is could they form in those conditions, not just exist in them for 40 minutes

It's entirely possible it harbors warm, dark oceans.

Or more likely to be just slushy ice

 

[makaya325]

Life on earth is nearly a miracle

 

[KingMerv00]

But can life some how create itself in such nasty conditions?

I don't know. That depends on what protolife is like.

 

[makaya325]

I don't know. That depends on what protolife is like.

Life on earth began 3.8 billion years ago. It took 800 million years into the planets history for life to create itself. On some other planet, many things that are life-threatening can happen in less time.

 

[KingMerv00]

Life on earth began 3.8 billion years ago. It took 800 million years into the planets history for life to create itself. On some other planet, many things that are life-threatening can happen in less time.

And obviously there are times when life lives in spite of repeated disasters. Earth is teeming with life so we know that some things can survive what humans would consider life threatening. Also consider just how big the universe is.

How many galaxies?
How many stars are there in each galaxy? (Technically, a nearby star is not needed for life.)
How many planets around each star?
How many different environments on each planet?
How many different forms of life could survive in each environment?
How small is your imagination?

 

[makaya325]

And obviously there are times when life lives in spite of repeated disasters. Earth is teeming with life so we know that some things can survive what humans would consider life threatening. Also consider just how big the universe is.

It was a near-miracle that life began...800 million years after the earth was formed!

How many galaxies?

100's of billions

How many stars are there in each galaxy? (Technically, a nearby star is not needed for life.)

It varies: It can be anywhere from a couple million to a couple trillion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy

Typical galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million[3] (107) stars up to giants with one trillion[4] (1012) stars,

How many planets around each star?

A generous estimate would put it at 1 planet for every 100 stars

How many different forms of life could survive in each environment?

That is not the problem. It really matters if life could EMERGE in each environment, and continue to evolve into higher organisms.

 

[KingMerv00]

It was a near-miracle that life began...800 million years after the earth was formed!

Honestly, I don't think there is enough information to accurately predict how common life is but I'm pretty sure that near-miracle is wrong. We are made of the most common elements and use a very common solvent as the reaction medium. Those elements naturally form the precursors of proteins. Cell membranes are probably the result of simple oil/water interactions.

That is not the problem. It really matters if life could EMERGE in each environment, and continue to evolve into higher organisms.

Intelligent life is a different discussion entirely.

A generous estimate would put it at 1 planet for every 100 stars

You are off by a little more than a factor of 100: http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/milky-way/how-many-planets-are-in-the-milky-way/

To the date of this writing, 342 planets have beendiscovered orbiting 289 stars.

 

[makaya325]

You are off by a little more than a factor of 100

We have studied only a tiny fraction of stars. Who is to say that we should expect planets to be found around stars at a frequent rate? A good percentage of stars in our galaxy are not suitable for planets, yet life.

 

[ben m]

We have studied only a tiny fraction of stars.

I have eaten only a tiny fraction of tacos, but I am able to form reasonable hypotheses and predictions about the contents of tacos I have not yet eaten.

Who is to say that we should expect planets to be found around stars at a frequent rate?

I would say that planetary astrophysics experts would be the best people to tell us what to expect. This is not 100% reliable---experiments will give the final answer---but surely it's better than a wild guess based on intuition about the rarity of life. What do the experts say, Makaya?

 

[KingMerv00]

We have studied only a tiny fraction of stars.

So the scientists just got lucky?

Who is to say that we should expect planets to be found around stars at a frequent rate?

The people who have been finding them everywhere?

A good percentage of stars in our galaxy are not suitable for planets...

And you reached this conclusion how exactly? By what right do you contradict the hard data? Also, what in your opinion would make a star unsuitable for a planet?

 

[makaya325]

What do the experts say, Makaya?

Why dont you ask experts on LIFE, not planets, and see what they say.

Frank Drake, Radio astronomer vs. Peter Ward, amateur astronomer, Paleontologist

Hmmm

 

[makaya325]

And you reached this conclusion how exactly and by what right do you contradict the hard data? Also, what in your opinion would make a star unsuitable for a planet?

From Rare Earth hypothetis on Wiki

Small red dwarf stars, on the other hand, have habitable zones with a small radius. This proximity causes one face of the planet to constantly face the star, and the other to always remain dark, a situation known as tidal lock. Tidal locking of a planetary hemisphere to its primary will cause one side of a planet to be extremely hot, while the other will be extremely cold. Planets within a habitable zone with a small radius are also at increased risk of solar flares (see Aurelia), which would tend to ionize the atmosphere and are otherwise inimical to complex life. Rare Earth proponents argue that this rules out the possibility of life in such systems, though some exobiologists have suggested that habitability may exist under the right circumstances. This is a central point of contention for the theory, since these late-K and M category stars make up about 82% of all hydrogen-burning stars.

 

[KingMerv00]

From Rare Earth hypothetis on Wiki

I said "planet" not "Earth-like planet".

 

[ben m]

I said "planet" not "Earth-like planet".

Likewise; I didn't comment "how many rocky planets are in habitable zones and have complex life" which would make the Ward reference appropriate. Nor did I say "... have complex life that spends huge amounts of energy on narrowband radio broadcasting into space", which might have made the Drake reference relevant.

No, I said that planetary scientists would be experts on the formation and abundance of planets.

Nobody is an expert on what, if anything, might live on such planets.

 

[makaya325]

No, I said that planetary scientists would be experts on the formation and abundance of planets.

Well, I can not argue with that, but we only have studied about 300 stars and found planets around them at a frequent rate. This does not mean that we should expect planets to be common-place around stars because what if we are observing the very few amount of stars with planets?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Well, I can not argue with that, but we only have studied about 300 stars and found planets around them at a frequent rate. This does not mean that we should expect planets to be common-place around stars because what if we are observing the very few amount of stars with planets?

Excuse me?

"Let's randomly sample stars without a twin or triplet (this is a non-trivial category. A lot of stars are in multi-star systems and for reasons involving chaos we don't expect them to have planets) for a long time and look for doppler shifts in their light spectra that would incdicate planets."

"Oh, we've found 300!"

That's pretty damned good.

 

[ben m]

Well, I can not argue with that, but we only have studied about 300 stars and found planets around them at a frequent rate. This does not mean that we should expect planets to be common-place around stars because what if we are observing the very few amount of stars with planets?

That is like saying, "I reached into a bag of 100,000 marbles and pulled out 50 of them. 25 of the ones I pulled out were black and 25 were white. What if the bag now contains 999,950 white marbles, and I happened to pull out the only 25 black ones?" It's not impossible for it to work that way, but statistics tells us it is highly unlikely. The stars we've observed are a lot like the ones we haven't---it's incredibly unlikely that we happened to pick, randomly, the 300 stars that happened to have these rare planets. It's very likely that the stars we picked are roughly representative of the whole ensemble.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Life on earth began 3.8 billion years ago. It took 800 million years into the planets history for life to create itself. On some other planet, many things that are life-threatening can happen in less time.

You need to subract that fact that for about 600 million of those years the Earth was a glowing mass bombarded by hundreds of thousands of tons of space metors on a daily basis ( We still accumulate plenty of small metors on a continuous basis today, but they tend not to be as spectacular as often. Thank Jupiter.) It's much more fair to only count the remaining 200 million years where the planet was cool enough for complex chemistry.

 

[KingMerv00]

This does not mean that we should expect planets to be common-place around stars because what if we are observing the very few amount of stars with planets?

Well, yes. That's statistics.