Posted on 01/25/2009 11:33:51 PM PST by blueplum
Astronomers have discovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptune orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth.
While Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times Earth's, the new world (named HAT-P-11b) is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses.
HAT-P-11b was discovered because it passes directly in front of its parent star, thereby blocking about 0.4 percent of the star's light. This periodic dimming, called a transit, was detected by a network of small, automated telescopes known as "HATNet," which is operated by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Arizona and Hawaii.
More than 300 extrasolar planets are now known to exist.
HAT-P-11b is the 11th extrasolar planet found by HATNet, and the smallest yet discovered by any of the several transit search projects underway around the world.
Transit detections are particularly useful because the amount of dimming tells the astronomers how big the planet must be. By combining transit data with measurements of the star's "wobble" (radial velocity) made by
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Good, now Pelosi can go home and be with her fellow aliens.
Pelosi might prefer Neptune, Barney Frank would prefer Uranus.
Great news! They’re getting better and better at finding smaller planets.
No, he’d go for Jupiter—he’s a size queen.
so many guesses in a “discovery” like this.
What kind of name is that for a decent sized planet? Yeah, it’s code or something, but why not B 1 PHAT 1 so at least it sounds it came from a STAR TREK movie.
Sounds better in press releases too! “Phat Planet Found! You Are Not Alone!”
Maybe a health club by that name? PHAT PLANET sounds right.
Anything but Hat-P. Come on folks! Better Phat than Hat!
That incredibly important find should keep the funding alive for awhile.
It’s almost as important as finally being able to see the ‘dark side’ of the sun.
December 21st,2012 all our problems will be over!
Yep. How in the world do astronomers know the precise mass of Neptune and that it is 17 times that of Earth? I seriously doubt that the precise mass of Earth is known to any degree of accuracy. It's all a WAG if you ask me....
If you hadn't tossed out your tv, you might've got some of this info from the Discovery Channel or other educational programming! ;^)
(Okay, okay, so I watch House, NFL games, and the Simpsons more than I watch the History Channel, etc.)
Posting on scientific subjects while you're wasted is not the best idea!
People think we have an obesity problem on Earth, they ain’t seen nothing till they get to super Neptune.
he was referring to and article posted a while ago on FR in which the term dark side of the sun was used by a “scientist”. It was about two spacecraft that did imaging of the suns surface blah blah blah. while he may have been wasted, it was an accurate re-statement.
BTW- what the HELL do we get out of the billions we spend on this SH_T?
If you can demonstrate that we spent billions of dollars to identify this planet I will agree with you. However, I suspect that there may have been one or two other things included in that sum.
I was speaking of the billions we spent aggregately.
in total. being somewhat naive as to the benefits derived from these scientific “explorations’ the question was not merely rhetorical but well, actually a question. what one or two other things could have been included that would justify the expenditure. just wanting to know!
thanks
Antibiotics, coming from government subsidized medical research, computers, and the internet are a few items.
He’d go the Sun and end up frying himself.
NASA’s budget is less than 1% of the fedgov’s budget and returns 7 fold to the private sector.
Name me one other fedgov agency that can say the same.
in what way is nasa and its budget a 7x multiplier of funds into the private sector? it doesn’t seem to be run like a business considering its bureaucratic nature. educate me please as i truly do not know how it returns 7 fold
thanks
“There are a lot of guesses & assumptions in something like this, but it’s presented as 100% certain data by the crappy newspeople, because they like to give the impression science is all-powerful. It’s part of the lib agenda. The truth is our knowledge is scrappy at best. “Super-neptune” - yeah that’s discovery channel type stuff alright!” -——
And as I asked above, what makes you so skeptical here? This is real-deal astronomy with solid observed evidence. The planet crosses in front of its star, the effects can be observed directly. No wild guesses necessary, it’s all established physics and mathematics. Maybe you’re tripping over the term “Super-Neptune,” thinking it’s frivolous journalistic fluff, but it is common in the field to refer to planets of other stars by terms comparing them to planets of equivalent size in this solar system. The Jupiter-sized planets found orbiting close to their parent stars are called “Hot Jupiters,” for instance. “Super-Neptune” is just convenient shorthand for describing a planet that’s larger than Neptune but smaller than Saturn.
Not my job, and if you're over 18, it's yours. Did your parents/school teachers not teach you that?
OK, just this once I'll help you. Do a google search for NASA spinoffs, think you can manage that?
Get back to me in a few weeks/months after you have read through half of the 230,000 hits.
The great thing about the internet is that people will communicate through text in a way that they know would enhance their chances of getting their ass whipped if they did the same thing verbally face to face. People like you, most likely educated at least scholarly, tend to demean others who have a legitimate and honest curiosity about something. To talk down to someone as you have shows plainly that you suffer from a mental dysfunction. Perhaps you are short, balding, with no real prospects for meaningful or enjoyable sexual encounters with members of the opposite sex. Peace be with you. What kind of sanctimonious bs moniker is that? Maybe you are a homosexual priest that fanticizes about sex with young boys. Who is to know? I will tell you that if you responded to me in person using the tone of your post, I would MANAGE to EDUCATE you in the area of manners. Oh, and by the way, you are probably not half as smart as you think you are. I have no further intention of jousting with you here so save your fetid breath, I won’t waste any more time on you.
P.S. NASA still sucks.
Nah, he sez he's smart - he'd go at night.
The mass of the Earth is known to a high degree of accuracy. The time a satellite takes to orbit a planet is dependent upon the mass of the planet and the altitude of the satellite. If you know the altitude of a satellite and the time period of its orbit, then you can calculate the mass of the planet. Since we have satellites whose attitudes and periods we can measure with great precision, we can then know the mass of the earth. Most other planets in the solar system have moons, which allow us to calculate their masses.
How is this accomplished with only one point of reference? BTW, I'm an engineer. You need not talk down to me like I'm some sort of child that needs to watch the Discovery channel in order to obtain an education. I earned my degree from Georgia Tech and I fully understand the error that exists in these sorts of "measurements". There is so much room for error here it is ridiculous.
Using Newton's Law of Gravitational force
Fgrav. = GMm/R2
where Fgrav. is gravitational force, G is the universal gravitational constant, M and m are the masses of the two objects attracting each other, and R is the distance between their centers of mass.
And Newton's 2nd Law.
F = ma
where F is force, and m is the mass of the accelerated object, and a is acceleration.
So, Fgrav./m = F/m
By measuring the diameter of the Earth and the other object we can get the radius and the distance between the centers of mass.
Once all those variables are known, solve for M(Mass of the Earth)
M = R2Fgrav./Gm
The moon and solar planets are a little harder without some more information, and extrasolar planets even more so, but it can be done with reasonable accuracy.
Reasonable accuracy is one thing, but the poster claimed a "high degree of accuracy" for objects that are in excess of 25 light years distant. This discounts many unknown variables within this space which can and do dramatically affect the results. The correct distance to the moon was not measured with a "high degree of accuracy" until the Apollo missions used lasers to measure the distance. In other words, these "precise measurements" of far distant objects are, at best, a WAG with no means to verify the accuracy of the results.
...And not a technological civilization among them.
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Lou Pasteur got a Government grant? When did that happen?
...and they say, at this moment, in France, Louis Pasteur had developed a vaccine that will obliterate anthrax once and for all!
Think of it, gentlemen, hoof-and-mouth disease a thing of the past!
Yes I am well aware that there has been no research on antibiotics in the past 150 years.
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