(photo credit: NASA, Wikimedia Commons)
Posted on 05/20/2012 8:23:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Two Earth-sized planets circle a red giant star. By what is generally known about star evolution, they should not exist in such close proximity to their parent star. But a new theory suggests that they may have once been part of a massive gas giant that not only was ripped apart by the parent star but also helped the parent shed excess gas, allowing them to survive.
Some of the work astronomers do gravitates toward the theoretical, as when they attempt to explain certain anomalous conditions or the presence of phenomena. Such was the case when two Earth-sized planets were discovered circling a dying star. Although those who had first detected the two worlds -- using NASA's Kepler Telescope -- orbiting the red giant star KIC 05807616 had posited a theory as to how the planets had managed to survive so close to the massive stellar object, they had invited others to speculate as well. The first team to meet the challenge saw their work published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, presenting the idea that the planets' positions weren't a simple migration or stellar gravitational grab but more likely the result of a planet-destroying process where a giant world had been torn asunder.
According to the two scientists, when KIC 05807616 ballooned out into a red giant, it most likely destroyed any planets anywhere near it. However, one massive gas giant spiraled in but was saved by passing close enough to strip off excess gas as it was being ripped apart. Further studies have revealed what might be a third small body orbiting the star, a presence that could also be an indicator that the two near Earth-sized worlds were indeed once part of a much larger planet. Astronomers are searching for more orbiting objects.
(Excerpt) Read more at huliq.com ...
(photo credit: NASA, Wikimedia Commons)
An “extra, extra” ping to the APoD list members.
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I guess learning is a strange process. Right now they seem to just make it up as they go.
A scientist sees something and asks, “Why?”
A theorist sees something and asks, “ Why not?”...........
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." -- Sherlock Holmes (i.e., Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr)
Ernest Lawrence, a pure experimentalist... said, "Don't you worry about it -- the theorists will find a way to make them all the same." -- Alvarez by Luis Alvarez (page 184)
I must reiterate my feeling that experimentalists always welcome the suggestions of the theorists. But the present situation is ridiculous... In my considered opinion the peer review system, in which proposals rather than proposers are reviewed, is the greatest disaster to be visited upon the scientific community in this century. No group of peers would have approved my building the 72-inch bubble chamber. Even Ernest Lawrence told me that he thought I was making a big mistake. He supported me because my track record was good. I believe U.S. science could recover from the stultifying effects of decades of misguided peer reviewing if we returned to the tried-and-true method of evaluating experimenters rather than experimental proposals. Many people will say that my ideas are elitist, and I certainly agree. The alternative is the egalitarianism that we now practice and that I've seen nearly kill basic science in the USSR and in the People's Republic of China. -- ibid (pp 200-201)
Must be nice to have a job that pays you to never actually prove anything, but just toss around theories that can never be proven.
THAT is an understatement.....
All learning is accidental based. If you have a creative thought it can not be based on known facts otherwise it would not be "Creative".
Combining two seeming unrelated facts to create a new "creative" idea is always - an accident - (Because - Why did or how did you get the idea to select these two (or more) ideas if it had never been done before?
It has to be an accident because all accepted "knowledge" comes from proven facts which in itself takes time (sometimes -eons) to prove or disprove before it is accepted as a proven fact.
Being Creative involves putting a little of this with a little of that and seeing what happens. If you get a result, you try to recreate the first test, then you have to justify your logic for selecting those two ideas, or materials with a hypothysis which requires theorizing what would happen if you changed one or another of the ideas (materials) and be able to predict the outcome. IF you can do that you may have the truth and "You have learned something new".
The problem is that someone else may come along and produce a result which is different because they varied some other variable you did not allow for or even think of. You are back at square one and have to justify both your result and the variable that created another result under what you thought was the same conditions.
-- -- -- and sometimes BS is just BS.
What’s the Deal With ‘Super-Earth’ Exoplanets?
http://news.discovery.com/space/whats-the-deal-with-super-earths-120511.html
Why? Whatever do you mean??
I’m not sure, let’s ask the 99%.
TRANSLATION: See if you can pull something interesting out of your backside.
Norman Byrd wrote the article, not the scientists.
Krypton
/bingo
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