Topic: Space exploration thread - Unexpected Rapid Disassembly in the launch area.

[Red Beret]

How does that work then? Does it orbit one of the smaller suns which orbits the larger one? Or can suns not orbit other suns?

I think it's a double binary.  Two stars orbit each other, and further out another pair of stars orbit them (or rotate around a common center of gravity).  This planet seems to be in a gravitational sweet spot between these two pairs of binaries.  I wonder if, due to tidal forces, the planet is essentially stationary, relative to the four stars?

[Tomaldinho]

I think it's a double binary.  Two stars orbit each other, and further out another pair of stars orbit them (or rotate around a common center of gravity).  This planet seems to be in a gravitational sweet spot between these two pairs of binaries.  I wonder if, due to tidal forces, the planet is essentially stationary, relative to the four stars?

How can two stars orbit each other?

[farawayred]

How can two stars orbit each other?

That's not unusual at all, binary systems are dime a dozen. The highly unusual part is that two binary systems are orbiting each other. The planet orbit is no longer a Kepler ellipse as we know it, but a lot more complex. When I rty to imagine it, my head comes close to looking like the picture you posted. Except I don't wear glasses (though I should)...

[MichaelA]

How can two stars orbit each other?

Exactly - Shakespeare does not like this:

"Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere;
Nor can one England brook a double reign,
Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales."

He wrote that in 1597

[Red Beret]

Just did some checking.  The BBC report suggests the planet orbits close in to one of the binary pairs while the planethunter website says the second binary pair orbits about 90 billion miles away - that's 1000 Astronomical Units.  To put that into perspective, the furthest Pluto gets from the Sun is a shade under 49 AU.  Sedna's maximum distance from the Sun is 942 AU, but that world is on a highly elliptical orbit; I'm assuming these binaries are in a much more stable circular orbit.

I'm no expert but I imagine the gravitational influence of the second binary on this planet roughly equates to Jupiter's affect on Earth.

http://blog.planethunters.org/2012/10/15/ph1-a-planet-in-a-four-star-system/

It makes me wonder if these two binaries formed together as-is or whether they drifted into orbit around one another.  In cosmic terms even 1000 AU is negligible so I imagine it's the former.

[scatman]

Exoplanet was discovered in Alpha Centauri

[farawayred]

Hip hip hooray! A couple of minutes ago we received a confirmation that the first Mars soil sample has been delivered to the CheMin instrument. This was a scoop sample, which follows one path along the arm, and in several days we will test the drill sample, which follows a different path.

This may sound like a routine sample drop, but just as the Phoenix folks what that means... This is our first taste of Mars and we got it on the first try!

[Uhoh AureliOs]

Thanks for the updates farawayred, we've got our own rawk insider passing us the juicy mars gossip

[Red Beret]

Suggestion of a meteor over the UK again...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20000877

[Red Beret]

Not going to post the whole article but this is a good read about the background to the Voyager probes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20033940

Voyager: To The Final Frontier will be broadcast on BBC Four on Wednesday 24 October, 2012.

[Trada]

A supermassive black hole has been spotted ejecting a jet of material into space at nearly the speed of light.



http://www.3news.co.nz/Black-hole-emits-supermassive-cosmic-jet/tabid/1160/articleID/273845/Default.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+co%2FHCaY+%283News-+Latest+News%29

[farawayred]

Whatever happened to the Great Annihilator near the center of our galaxy?
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:B-M1CiLWxOQJ:www.eso.org/sci/publications/messenger/archive/no.70-dec92/messenger-no70-51-54.pdf+%22great+annihilator%22+galaxy&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgQ_h8s7n-SiMWfs-pNMj9MRU4200WDr4JxVsOUfAhT9YeS-l3UnMUSg5uX_-oBVoiO9yIp8PQvxmHgSTV4SCKaXB6maJQXwn2ictBxwRaiH-Mlm5pqfoPJIyrE78ti-uVwlf93&sig=AHIEtbTajIkAWt41Kq_s--IK5_GaLcRBNg

I used to work in the positron annihilation spectroscopy field for many years and that was a very interesting object for me...

[farawayred]

Here is a self portrait of the Mars rover made from a mosaic of images. Unfortunately, the images were taken with the camera on the arm, so there is no arm in the mosaic (just a stump).

[Redman0151]

Can someone explain how a black hole can eject something? As far as I was aware black holes sucked up everything aroun them including light hence the 'black hole' name. Although I suppose it makes sense they need to emit the incredible amount of energy they absorb somehow

[TepidT2O]

Can someone explain how a black hole can eject something? As far as I was aware black holes sucked up everything aroun them including light hence the 'black hole' name. Although I suppose it makes sense they need to emit the incredible amount of energy they absorb somehow

I think you've answered your own question there!

Does Hawking radiation still exist?  Or has this been debunked now?

[kev_goss]

My head hurts, some seriously clever people in here. I've tried reading some of the stuff in here and I'm more confused than when I started.
Saying that though I love all this space stuff.

[John C]

http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosity-rover-martian-solar-day-2

This is amazing, have a look. (it doesn't have any black blocks )

Superb that, is there likely to be a documentary soon summarising what its found so far? There must be loads of interesting stuff to report back.

[Flaccid Bobby Fowler]

Space and its existence and its contents will forever baffle the the shite out of me.

I mean, just how in the name of all thats mighty does a sun just happen to be a sun, burning away all sorts and doing what it does.
Then you have all the billions upon trillions of other suns, some bigger, some smaller, all doing the same thing, raging away and burning shit up.

I still cant evein to begin to fathom that the greatest minds on earth can only come up with the fact that before space there was nothing and then just bang. If theres nothing then theres nothing to go bang.
not that i dont believe there was some large explosion cause that is proven, but i cant get my head around the whole, at first there was this micro dot of nothingness then bang. there had to be something to go bang and something to make it go bang.

when you think about the fact that we are all made from the same elements found in space its crazy!

[vagabond]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-345

An article on how the formation of an asteroid belt may be important in the formation of life-sustaining planets

[Macphisto80]

Space and its existence and its contents will forever baffle the the shite out of me.

I mean, just how in the name of all thats mighty does a sun just happen to be a sun, burning away all sorts and doing what it does.
Then you have all the billions upon trillions of other suns, some bigger, some smaller, all doing the same thing, raging away and burning shit up.

I still cant evein to begin to fathom that the greatest minds on earth can only come up with the fact that before space there was nothing and then just bang. If theres nothing then theres nothing to go bang.
not that i dont believe there was some large explosion cause that is proven, but i cant get my head around the whole, at first there was this micro dot of nothingness then bang. there had to be something to go bang and something to make it go bang.

when you think about the fact that we are all made from the same elements found in space its crazy!

It's not even proven. It's just a theory. One of many. And the thing about that theory is that it's becoming less popular now. I don't even want to go into detail about these other theories, because honestly, they'd make your head melt, plus they just sound like a bunch of people who just haven't a clue how it all started are just making shit up...which they are.

[Red Beret]

Everybody with an ounce of common sense knows our universe is merely a ripple on the cosmic pond surface of space time. 

[Roopy]

Everybody with an ounce of common sense knows our universe is merely a ripple on the cosmic pond surface of space time. 

So you're saying our Universe is just a tiny part of everything that exists? That there is existence of something beyond our known universe?

[Red_Irishman]

So you're saying our Universe is just a tiny part of everything that exists? That there is existence of something beyond our known universe?

I don't claim to have any educated knowledge on this subject but I always thought that there could be something outside out known universe. Like, you hardly go to the very edge of it and hit a brick wall with nothing on the other side?.. It's an odd thought I know.

[Red Beret]

So you're saying our Universe is just a tiny part of everything that exists? That there is existence of something beyond our known universe?

I'm suggesting that it's perfectly possible that our universe is only one of an uncounted number of these 'ripples' and that we cannot see beyond our own ripple.  In that sense you are correct.  What interests me most in this hypothesis is whatever is at the center of creation causing the ripples.  A cosmic toe tapping an infinitesimal surface. 

[FiSh77]

[Red Beret]

'Rogue planet' spotted 100 light-years away

Astronomers have spotted a "rogue planet" - wandering the cosmos without a star to orbit - 100 light-years away.

Recent finds of such planets have suggested that they may be common, but candidates have eluded close study.

The proximity of the new rogue planet has allowed astronomers to guess its age: a comparatively young 50-120 million years old.

The planet, dubbed CFBDSIR2149-0403, is outlined in a paper posted online to appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Rogue planets are believed to form in one of two ways: in much the same way as planets bound to stars, coalescing from a disk of dust and debris but then thrown out of a host star's orbit, or in much the same way as stars but never reaching a full star's mass.

One tricky part is determining if rogue planet candidates are as massive as the "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, further along in stellar evolution but without enough mass to spark the nuclear fusion that causes starlight.

Either way, the objects end up free of a host star's gravity. Given that most planets we know of are found through the effects they have on their host star's light, pinning down rogue planets has proven difficult.

An international team went on a vast hunt for the planets using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and came up with just one candidate.

"This object was discovered during a scan that covered the equivalent of 1,000 times the [area] of the full moon," said study co-author Etienne Artigau of the University of Montreal.

"We observed hundreds of millions of stars and planets, but we only found one homeless planet in our neighbourhood."

But crucially, the new find appears to be moving along with a similarly itinerant group of celestial objects, called the "AB Doradus moving group" - a collection of about 30 stars which are of roughly the same composition and are believed to have formed at about the same time.

Because CFBDSIR2149-0403 appears to be moving with the group - to a certainty of 87% - astronomers believe it too formed with the stars, about 50 -120 million years ago.

It is this estimate of age that allows astronomers to use computer models of planet evolution to make further guesses as to the planet's mass and temperature.

The team believe it has a temperature of about 400C and a mass between four and seven times that of Jupiter - well short of the mass limit that would make it a likely brown dwarf.

What remains unclear is just how the planet came to be - the tiny beginnings of a star, or planet launched from its home? Study co-author Philippe Delorme of the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble, said that the latter implied a great many planets like it.

"If this little object is a planet that has been ejected from its native system, it conjures up the striking image of orphaned worlds, drifting in the emptiness of space," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20309762

[vagabond]

So you're saying our Universe is just a tiny part of everything that exists? That there is existence of something beyond our known universe?

Most physicists hold to some sort of multiverse view such that the base level of quantum activity will always give rise to countless bubbles of isolated reactions and one of these 'bubbles' is our universe. This is a simplified summary but its the basic gist of the idea.
It was postulated to counter the 'fine-tuning' argument about the extraordinary exactness required in certain brute parameters (speed of light, gravitational constant, magnitude of the strong and weak nuclear forces etc etc) to give rise to a universe like ours. If we assume that there are countless universes being created out of the quantum foam at all times then eventually we will have one like ours where the parameters take on values that allow macro-level phenomena to develop (and thus life).

[vagabond]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20309762

I read about this rogue planet on another site and came across a pertinent comment. If it is a planet then why is the surface temp at 700 F? Surely, being away from all other stars, it means that the 'planet' is creating internal heat, in which case, it shouldn't really be classified as a planet. But then, we wouldn't want to call it a star either because it's clearly not in a state of nuclear fusion or post-nuclear fusion. Perhaps we need a new category for this type of body.

[lfcbob]

Has anyone got that picture demonstrating how small the earth is compared to everything else cant find it anywere was a mind blwoing pic

[vagabond]

Do you mean this?
http://www.youtube.com/embed/Nroo-i8t8vg

[lfcbob]

Ayeee was like that pal but in one big picture its amazing and anyone who thinks they are no aliens r nuts

Cheers mate

[lfcbob]

Also Gif of the day maybe of the week

[The Gulleysucker]

I read about this rogue planet on another site and came across a pertinent comment. If it is a planet then why is the surface temp at 700 F? Surely, being away from all other stars, it means that the 'planet' is creating internal heat, in which case, it shouldn't really be classified as a planet. But then, we wouldn't want to call it a star either because it's clearly not in a state of nuclear fusion or post-nuclear fusion. Perhaps we need a new category for this type of body.

Farawayred is probably better qualified to answer but I imagine the Kelvin Helmholtz mechanism could possibly explain a part in it in conjunction with this proposal.

[Red Beret]

I read about this rogue planet on another site and came across a pertinent comment. If it is a planet then why is the surface temp at 700 F? Surely, being away from all other stars, it means that the 'planet' is creating internal heat, in which case, it shouldn't really be classified as a planet. But then, we wouldn't want to call it a star either because it's clearly not in a state of nuclear fusion or post-nuclear fusion. Perhaps we need a new category for this type of body.

The report says the world is too small to be considered a brown dwarf - which is an intermediate stage between a gas giant and a red dwarf star.  It radiates out into space more energy than it receives, like our own gas giants.  (Of course I doubt that rule would apply to  'hot' Jupiters that spin around their parent star in a matter of days.)

This wiki article explains the difficulties telling high mass planets from low mass brown dwarfs and high mass brown dwarfs from low mass stars.  Brown dwarfs aren't much bigger than Jupiter but they are more massive.  But if it's under ten Jupiter masses it's still classed as a planet.  This world is between four and seven Jupiter masses so the upper limit is clearly under the brown dwarf threshold.

[vagabond]

Cheers fellas.

[Red Beret]

Question for Farawayred:

If I remember rightly, the Opportunity Rover was stationary for a fair bit over the Martian winter, and NASA took the opportunity to measure signals as a means to try and determine whether Mars' core was molten.  Is there any news on the number crunching?

[generic_name]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/mars-rover-curiosity-discovery_n_2167207.html

Mars Rover 'Curiosity' Team Reportedly Will Reveal Major Discovery In December

 NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery "for the history books," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest.

The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it's capable of identifying organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.

SAM apparently spotted something interesting in a soil sample Curiosity's huge robotic arm delivered to the instrument recently.

"This data is gonna be one for the history books," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told NPR. "It's looking really good."

The rover team won't be ready to announce just what SAM found for several weeks, NPR reported, as scientists want to check and double-check the results. Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that the news will come out at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, kicking off a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

The car-size robot carries 10 different instruments to aid in its quest, but SAM is the rover's heart, taking up more than half of its science payload by weight.

In addition to analyzing soil samples, SAM also takes the measure of Red Planet air. Many scientists are keen to see if Curiosity detects any methane, which is produced by many lifeforms here on Earth. A SAM analysis of Curiosity's first few sniffs found no definitive trace of the gas in the Martian atmosphere, but the rover will keep looking.

Curiosity began driving again Friday (Nov. 16) after spending six weeks testing its soil-scooping gear at a site called "Rocknest." The rover will soon try out its rock-boring drill for the first time on the Red Planet, scientists have said.




Something organic maybe?

[hitman89762000]

Does anyone think we'll be able to live on planets like mars in our lifetime?

[vagabond]

I'm hoping for organic material too, could be the most important discovery this century.

[Red Beret]

I wonder if your question:

Hasn't been answered because of this:

The plot thickens!

I hope it's organic material, but my brain is telling me that it is absolute confirmation of water.

I doubt it mate.  Determining if Mars has a molten core is nowhere near as significant as the discovery of organic compounds on the surface.

Incidentally I was looking it up the other day and the radiation environment on Mars is about 2˝ times that in the International Space Station.  A suited Astronaut could probably handle it for a day or two but long term habitation would need to be underground or perhaps via a cave system.

Also, we already know there's water on Mars - the Phoenix lander pretty much confirmed that, as have orbital observations.  I'll be keeping my feet on the ground with this discovery - it wont be life.  But even if it's just organic compounds that would be immense news.  At its most positive, that could be considered as a signpost pointing towards life.