21–30 of 107 posts
I had no idea that: "Or maybe it got ejected — astronomers are finding emigrant planets, lonely orbs that wander the universe with no star, just drifting. Maybe one of those used to live here." There are planets not orbiting stars? I searched Google for "emigrant planets" and the npr article is the number 1 result for that. I think he invented the term. What are these called if I wanted to find more information about…
Not entirely—we have to understand statistics and the anthropic principle, which states "observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it." (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle). In other words, our situation appears "perfect" because it was one of the many random combinations available which produced an observer able to look at it. In other words, the fact that our solar system is so stable might just be a random anomaly, but the fact that it was so stable resulted in our existence, and therefore our contemplation of the fact.
As an analogy, winning the lottery is extremely rare—if you go and interview the person who won the lottery, they must think themselves very lucky. But on the grand scale, the probability of someone winning the lottery in the entire pool is exactly one. We know that a winner necessarily exists—just as we know that we, as winners of the cosmic lottery, necessarily exist. But that just tells us that someone won the lottery—something we already knew.
It may be that the lottery is rigged, and that there are some characteristics of our particular solar system which are amenable to life, and those things are definitely valuable to study and find out, so that we might be able to recognize other solar systems capable of supporting life in some way.
But by no means is our solar system special in any light: it's only special in that its particular conditions produced lifeforms able to observe it.
"We are a way for the cosmos to understand itself." - Carl Sagan
Another random question: are the planetary systems we've discovered similar to each other? If ours is significantly deviant from a significant clustering that would be pretty interesting. And of course, that's surely what the original findings were probably about.
I had no idea that: "Or maybe it got ejected — astronomers are finding emigrant planets, lonely orbs that wander the universe with no star, just drifting. Maybe one of those used to live here." There are planets not orbiting stars? I searched Google for "emigrant planets" and the npr article is the number 1 result for that. I think he invented the term. What are these called if I wanted to find more information about…
I had no idea that: "Or maybe it got ejected — astronomers are finding emigrant planets, lonely orbs that wander the universe with no star, just drifting. Maybe one of those used to live here." There are planets not orbiting stars? I searched Google for "emigrant planets" and the npr article is the number 1 result for that. I think he invented the term. What are these called if I wanted to find more information about…
I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
I had no idea that: "Or maybe it got ejected — astronomers are finding emigrant planets, lonely orbs that wander the universe with no star, just drifting. Maybe one of those used to live here." There are planets not orbiting stars? I searched Google for "emigrant planets" and the npr article is the number 1 result for that. I think he invented the term. What are these called if I wanted to find more information about…
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49823152/ns/technology_and_science...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet#Known_or_possible_...
One could argue that these are proto-stars, or brown dwarves, I guess - but to me, no fusion == planet.
And how many of those close-to-the-sun planets exclude the existence of earth-like planets a bit further out? Maybe if they're Jupiter-sized, then they would make some orbits further out unstable, but if they're smaller... The system can be different than ours but still just as habitable, or even more so.
Now the question that remains is, which configurations are more favorable to life, not just as we know it.
I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
Yes, but they quoted both Steve Vogt and Mike Brown, who have devoted most of their careers to planet-finding. And both of them said that our solar system seems unusual. Since they are well aware of the biased sample issue, I would bet there is more to it than this. For instance, maybe they are able to model the effect of the bias, at least for some range of planetary masses, and the bias is not enough to explain the…
Yes, scientists may have been quoted in this article, but I have seen how most journalists mangle, ignore, or sensationalize things that were said.
"We have to figure out why our solar system turned out different from all the others." Not entirely—we have to understand statistics and the anthropic principle, which states "observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it." (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle ). In other words, our situation appears "perfect" because it was one of the many r…