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Underground > Laboratory >

A solar system resembles ours...

15:42 / 15.06.02

... and for some reason this isn't causing the societal tremors that somehow I think it should. The BBC News site has talked about it quite heavily as has Wired News. But for some reason, even though this is incredible evidence for a universe teeming with planets, no one seems that excited. Are we so inured to the idea of extra-terrestrial life now that any new discovery is just going to be a disappointment compared to our expectations?!

The story is that for the first time scientists have identified a solar system that even vaguely resembles our own - one in which huge planets do not have an absurdly elongated (and hence life-unfriendly) orbit.

15:44 / 15.06.02

More on searching for other solar systems: BBC / SCIENCE / SPACE.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

12:08 / 16.06.02

great, now that we have seen them, how long till the laser beams start cutting down out houses?

12:20 / 16.06.02

This isn't really surprising since astronomers have been finding planets for some time now - its just the eccentricity of the orbit which is different. Most of them are very large, as those are easier to detect, and are probably gas giants incapable of supporting life. Though I don't think it will be long before we detect planets comparable to our own in size.

The thing is, as I understand it, the detection methods rely on observing gravitational effects and so provide no insight into whether other planets support life. Mind you, I'd be very surprised if there was no life elsewhere in the universe.

Matthew Fluxington

12:29 / 16.06.02

I think that maybe the reason this isn't causing quite the stir that it logically should has a lot to do with how unlikely it is that we will ever come close to getting a better look at these planets any time in our lifetimes. It's an amazing discovery, but it's too far away to feel *real*. I think yr right about what we expect from extraterrestrial life - I do get the sense that unless it's something out of popular science fiction, specifically something analogous to mankind with societal structure, technology et al, it just doesn't meet anyone's expectations. I mean, think back to when we learned of microscopic organisms on Mars - it was met with a general shrug of "well, we've got bacteria here. so what?" I think that once our technology allows us to get closer to these planets and study them, there will probably be a lot more excitement among us earth-folk.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:30 / 16.06.02

Given the woeful state of science education and the dismissive attitude of the media in general, I think it might be hard for a lot of people to immediately grasp the significance of this. I can see Polly Filla's column now: "Well, there's no life on Jupiter, is there? So why should we care about a planet that's a bit like Jupiter, only further away? I don't know, these so-called experts...."

13:15 / 16.06.02

I'm interested in what people think the next stage of telescopes will be. I mean - how clearly do we expect to be able to see these planets over the next few decades. I mean - assuming that it's just a question of time before we can start detecting planets of a comparable size to ours, at what point will we have any sense of what those planets are like? What kind of timescale are we talking here?

16:36 / 16.06.02

IIRC, the method of detection involves looking closely at a star to detect some kind of periodic wobble that indicates the presence of a object that is dark, but of significant mass - a planet.

From the wobble, you can work out the mass of the planet and the shape of the ellipse of its orbit of the star (ok, its not quite an ellipse, all you relativity fans). You can imagine improving this technique to get more precise readings on the wobble and detect smaller planets closer to the size of earth than jupiter.

Which means that if you want to know if the planet is covered in vegetation, say, you are going to have to do something different. I believe that you can sometimes work out the composition of the atmosphere, which is a start but still unsatisfactory. Probes are out of the question unless we find a nice spot nearby - a few light years, say - or develop FTL.

As far as I'm aware then, we need a new technique to get more information. I've not heard talk of anything. Anyone else?

22:21 / 16.06.02

Well theres the next generation telescope that will replace Hubble, I think they're sticking out it at one of the Lagrange points so the Earth's gravity and the like has less effect on the mirrors.

If the chinese get their arses in gear we might even be a few decades away from telescope farms on the dark side of the moon, a bit of a blue sky idea but not too crazy.

Then theres the really mad stuff like a Very Long Baseline array (stick a bunch of telescopes in a x shape, you have telescope with an apature the size of the x, very roughly) but in space, fancy an telescope a few AU across? Wouldn't need any radical new techniques just refinements of what we've got at the moment. I'm sure theres a mission planned in the near future (5 years?) to fly a bunch of probes in formation to test this idea. (Anyone know the missions name?)

And yeah exciting stuff, planets everywhere in the universe, solar systems a bit like ours, getting ever closer to the fun stuff

. Sometime you forget how much has happened in 30 years, I mean when was Voyager and Voyager 2 encounters with Jupiter, the 1970's? First real widescreen look at another planetary system with its moons and that. Now we're looking for extrasolor planets,

space still has the capacity to make me excited.

23:22 / 16.06.02

What we need is another space race to really get all of humanity excited about space again, which would bring with it a desire to know more about space as a whole. Of course, there is the smallish problem of where we'd actually be racing to...maybe if China started building its own space station or something it would be enough to kick-start things?

At the same time, I think it's understandable that people have little or no interest in what's happening "up there", simply because they've got enough issues dealing with problems down here.

The Natural Way

11:35 / 17.06.02

I suspect another space race might mean another cold war, which I could live without, really.

12:59 / 17.06.02

To follow on from invisible al's post, I thought that there was a problem in looking at planets that isn't to do with the strength of telescope. Isn't it like trying to look at a fly buzzing round a 100 watt light bulb from a mile away? You can probably get sufficiently strong binoculars to do the job, but the problem is that you get "blinded" by the glare of the bulb. But perhaps I've exaggerated the problem.

A telescope a few AU's across would be cool, though.

But going on to space exploration, it probably is in our interest to invest in it. Despite the silliness of hollywood films I think Arthur C clarke made a good point that
"The dinosaurs died off becuase they didn't have a space program"
or somesuch.