The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Space => Topic started by: kevindavis007 on August 13, 2017, 01:24:25 am
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Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star
August 08, 2017 By Tim Stephens https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/08/tau-ceti-planets.html (https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/08/tau-ceti-planets.html)
A new study by an international team of astronomers reveals that four Earth-sized planets orbit the nearest sun-like star, tau Ceti, which is about 12 light years away and visible to the naked eye. These planets have masses as low as 1.7 Earth mass, making them among the smallest planets ever detected around nearby sun-like stars. Two of them are super-Earths located in the habitable zone of the star, meaning they could support liquid surface water.
The planets were detected by observing the wobbles in the movement of tau Ceti. This required techniques sensitive enough to detect variations in the movement of the star as small as 30 centimeters per second.
"We are now finally crossing a threshold where, through very sophisticated modeling of large combined data sets from multiple independent observers, we can disentangle the noise due to stellar surface activity from the very tiny signals generated by the gravitational tugs from Earth-sized orbiting planets," said coauthor Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.
According to lead author Fabo Feng of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, the researchers are getting tantalizingly close to the 10-centimeter-per-second limit required for detecting Earth analogs. "Our detection of such weak wobbles is a milestone in the search for Earth analogs and the understanding of the Earth's habitability through comparison with these analogs," Feng said. "We have introduced new methods to remove the noise in the data in order to reveal the weak planetary signals."
The outer two planets around tau Ceti are likely to be candidate habitable worlds, although a massive debris disc around the star probably reduces their habitability due to intensive bombardment by asteroids and comets.
The same team also investigated tau Ceti four years ago in 2013, when coauthor Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire led an effort in developing data analysis techniques and using the star as a benchmark case. "We came up with an ingenious way of telling the difference between signals caused by planets and those caused by star's activity. We realized that we could see how star's activity differed at different wavelengths and use that information to separate this activity from signals of planets," Tuomi said.
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Plus it is only 12 light years.. In reality it is only a matter of when not if. I can't wait for the JWST to come up.
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Well, if it's habitable maybe we can get there someday. Earth won't be hospitable forever
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Well, if it's habitable maybe we can get there someday. Earth won't be hospitable forever
We will, not in our lifetimes, but we will. It is only a matter of when we find a planet like ours not if. I'm ready for the JWST.
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Plus it is only 12 light years.. In reality it is only a matter of when not if. I can't wait for the JWST to come up.
More that half a million times farther than Mars and we can't even get there, despite having a big ol' star next to us. "Only 12 light years" is still way out of reach.
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More that half a million times farther than Mars and we can't even get there, despite having a big ol' star next to us. "Only 12 light years" is still way out of reach.
(http://www.space.com/images/i/000/061/007/original/passengers-1-spaceship.jpg?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=660:*)
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More that half a million times farther than Mars and we can't even get there, despite having a big ol' star next to us. "Only 12 light years" is still way out of reach.
Get off our rears and tell the anti-nuclear propulsion crowd to shut the hell up, and it might be viable as 2-3 generational ship if manned.
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Get off our rears and tell the anti-nuclear propulsion crowd to shut the hell up, and it might be viable as 2-3 generational ship if manned.
:amen: :amen: :amen: :amen: :amen: :amen: :amen: :amen: :amen:
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Just watch out for Klingons and Romulans, and don't get caught in any Kobayashi Mauru situations.
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Just watch out for Klingons and Romulans, and don't get caught in any Kobayashi Mauru situations.
The Kobayashi Maru conditions can be 'changed' ;)
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(http://www.space.com/images/i/000/061/007/original/passengers-1-spaceship.jpg?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=660:*)
A ship that was 40,000 times as fast as the space shuttle.
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The two planets that are in the Tau Ceti habitable zone are each at an extreme edge of that zone. One is at the starward side of the HZ and likely too hot for liquid water on the surface, while the other is at the opposite edge and likely too cold. In addition, they have masses "as low as" 1.7 earth masses. However, there are reasonable possibilities that they're actually about double those minimum masses, which would put them in the mini-Neptune category. Also, Tau Ceti has a massive debris disk around it, which could make cometary and asteroidal collisions much more frequent than here around Sol.
Tuning Up RV: A Test Case at Tau Ceti (https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38293)
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In the Red Dwarf novels they talk about terrraforming planets and moons.
I wonder if that's possible. Say to do on Titan, for example.
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In the Red Dwarf novels they talk about terrraforming planets and moons.
I wonder if that's possible. Say to do on Titan, for example.
Anything is possible.
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In the Red Dwarf novels they talk about terrraforming planets and moons.
I wonder if that's possible. Say to do on Titan, for example.
I'm pretty sure the EPA has already banned that...
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In the Red Dwarf novels they talk about terrraforming planets and moons.
I wonder if that's possible. Say to do on Titan, for example.
An extremely large source of energy will be needed to terraform Titan. It's pretty durn cold out there.