Alpha Centauri has a planet

[Hammer of Los]

...

Fascinating.

...

[Lottie McLotsaluck]

I am sorry if I linked to the 'wrong' thread for this. I thought I had seen a 'new planet' thread the last time I was online here (nov 6th) but am not finding it now. Hopefully this thread will be good for this even though it doesn't involve Alpha Centauri.
New planet discovered in possible habitable zone: (link not working-will be back with another)
try again: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre870 ... discovery/

and http://www.centauri-dreams.org/

[Weather Balloons]

'Habitable' planet discovered circling Tau Ceti star

A planet with conditions that could support life orbits a twin neighbour of the sun visible to the naked eye, scientists have revealed.

The world is one of five thought to be circling Tau Ceti, a star just 12 light years away that is almost identical to the sun.

Astronomers estimate the Tau Ceti planets to be two to six times bigger than Earth. One of them, with five times the Earth's mass, lies in the star's "habitable zone".

Also known as the "Goldilocks zone", this is the orbital region that is neither too hot nor too cold to allow liquid surface water and, potentially, life. Details of the discovery are to appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Because of the difficulties involved in detecting extra-solar planets, most found so far have had high masses. The Tau Ceti planetary family is thought to be the lowest-mass solar system yet detected.

Scientists found the planets using a highly sensitive technique that combined data from more than 6,000 observations from three different telescopes. They used the radial velocity method, which looks for "wobble" in a star's movement caused by the gravitational tug of planets.

Dr James Jenkins, a member of the international team from the University of Hertfordshire, said: "Tau Ceti is one of our nearest cosmic neighbours and so bright that we may be able to study the atmospheres of these planets in the not-too-distant future.

"Planetary systems found around nearby stars close to our sun indicate that these systems are common in our Milky Way galaxy."

More than 800 planets have been discovered orbiting stars beyond the sun since the 1990s. Those found around the nearest sun-like stars are the most interesting to astronomers.

Professor Steve Vogt, another team member, from the University of California at Santa Cruz, said: "This discovery is in keeping with our emerging view that virtually every star has planets, and that the galaxy must have many such potentially habitable Earth-sized planets. They are everywhere, even right next door."

Professor Chris Tinney, an Australian member from the University of New South Wales, said: "As we stare at the night sky, it is worth contemplating that there may well be more planets out there than there are stars, some fraction of which may well be habitable."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/ ... d-tau-ceti

[beeline]

I was going to post this, but when I started reading the various articles, it seems there are a lot of 'ifs' involved:

"Habitable zone" is a fairly wide area: both Mars and Venus fall into our sun's habitable zone, and they're both fairly hostile to life.

Also, the astronomy is somewhat suspect: apparantly, they are looking at variations in the star's 'wobble' to detect the planets, which is fine, but one must also factor in 'background noise':

"The situation is even worse for the possible habitable zone candidate, because the very existence of that signal is uncertain, yet according to our detection criteria the signal is there and we cannot rule out the possibility that it indeed is of planetary origin," he added. "But we don't know what else it could be, either."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/tau-ceti-habitable-planet-star_n_2327915.html

[Luther Blissett]

For what it's worth, my favorite song released this year was "Goldilocks Zone," by Grass Widow.

[beeline]

http://m.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/01/astronomers-discover-planet-almost-identical-earth/60804/

Astronomers Discover a Planet Almost Identical to Earth
By Adam Clark Estes | Jan 9, 2013

Just over a week after astronomers boldly announced that they would discover an Earth twin elsewhere in the universe within the year, NASA's Kepler telescope spotted a pretty good candidate. Unglamorously named KOI 172.02 -- KOI stands for Kepler Object of Interest -- this planet is the most Earth-like planet astronomers have discovered yet.

The differences are slight. It's roughly 50 percent larger than Earth and orbits a star that closely resembles our own sun at a distance that would make the surface of the planet habitable. (The size makes it a "super Earth" rather than an "Earth twin.") With an 242-day long year, it's slightly closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun but otherwise enjoys all of the same ideal conditions as we do, as far as astronomers can tell. "This was very exciting because it's our fist habitable-zone super Earth around a sun-type star," said Natalia Batalha, a Kepler co-investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. "It's orbiting a star that's very much like our sun. Previously the ones we saw were orbiting other types of stars."

In a way, the discovery is a bit underwhelming thanks the recent flurry of exciting exoplanet news. We learned back in October that the closest star system to our own was home to several planets, including an Earth-sized planet. Then at the start of the new year, the team analyzing data from NASA's Kepler planer-finding space telescope announced the discovery of 461 new unconfirmed planets as well as the fact that that the Milky Way galaxy alone was home to more than 17 billion Earth-sized planets. They said they'd find an Earth twin among them by the end of the year. Compared to the days when we didn't know there were any other planets in the universe at all, and suddenly the chances that alien life exists start to look pretty strong. At least that's what the experts say. "It's a big deal -- It's definitely a good candidate for life," said astrophysicist Mario Livio about KOI 172.02. "Maybe there's no land life, but perhaps very clever dolphins."

[Cosmic Cowbell]

I've always wondered when some interested astronomer will get around to examining the star systems listed in the M. Fish interpretation of Betty Hills star map. (http://www.gravitywarpdrive.com/Zeta_Reticuli_Incident.htm#View%20From%20Zeta%20Reticuli

If it is found that yes, each of these systems have planets and that yes, the planets found may be in the Goldilocks zone, I'm not sure what it will say about Betty Hills experience but it would be very interesting as all of these systems should contain at least one planet in a Goldilocks zone if they are either "Trade Routes" (the solid lines) or "places we go sometimes/expeditions" (the dotted lines and assuming more than just mining activities).

We already know at least one does.

[MinM]

Lonely Alien Planet Discovered Without a Parent Star
Megan Gannon, News Editor | SPACE.com – 1 hr 46 mins ago


Astronomers have discovered a lonely planet that's floating by itself in deep space without orbiting a star.

The powerful Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) telescope at the summit of Maui's Haleakala volcano in Hawaii first detected the solitary alien world through a faint heat signature 80 light-years from Earth while it was searching for brown dwarfs.

Dubbed PSO J318.5-22, the exoplanet is relatively young at 12 million years old, researchers say. With a mass about six times that of Jupiter, the planet resembles gas giants that orbit young stars, follow-up observations with other telescopes showed. But the one thing it appears to be missing is a parent star. [See Images of the Strangest Alien Planets]

"We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone," study researcher Michael Liu, of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said in a statement. "I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do."

The absence of a bright star could be a boon for scientists trying to understand the nature of planets outside our solar system, only a handful of which have been observed through direct imaging. Researchers typically study these alien worlds through indirect means, such as watching for the dips in starlight that occur when an exoplanet crosses in front of its star.

"Planets found by direct imaging are incredibly hard to study, since they are right next to their much brighter host stars," Niall Deacon, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, explained in a statement. "PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study. It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth."

The number of known exoplanets has exploded over the past 10 years. Astronomers have confirmed more than 800, but some estimates suggest there are likely be tens of billions of exoplanets in the universe.

PSO J318.5-22 was inadvertently discovered during a survey of brown dwarfs, starlike cosmic objects sometimes called "failed stars" because they are bigger than planets but too cold to flare up into a veritable star.

In their search for the dim red signals of brown dwarfs, astronomers chose to use PanSTARRS 1 (PS1), short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, which takes the equivalent of 60,000 iPhone photos each night.

"We often describe looking for rare celestial objects as akin to searching for a needle in a haystack," Eugene Magnier of the Institute for Astronomy said in a statement. "So we decided to search the biggest haystack that exists in astronomy, the dataset from PS1."

In their survey, they spotted PSO J318.5-22, an object redder than even the reddest known brown dwarfs. The researchers watched the planet for two years and concluded that it lies in a collection of 12-million-year-old stars called the Beta Pictoris moving group.

Observations with other telescopes found signatures in the cosmic body's infrared light that are best explained by it being young and low-mass. In fact, PSO J318.5-22 is one of the lowest-mass free-floating objects known, the researchers say.

http://news.yahoo.com/lonely-alien-plan ... 15695.html

[JackRiddler]

And why wouldn't it?

[peartreed]

As a large-mass, free-floating gas giant myself, I’m also missing star power while gravitating towards the denser bodies surrounding me. There are a few here.

[justdrew]

given the nearness of this thing, this should have an effect on cosmological assumptions about the makeup of the universe.

In effect, this is a find of a large amount of dark matter, although a sample of one is still a bit short to estimate from, I bet there must be millions of these in this galaxy alone.

[JackRiddler]

There's nothing special about the sun, let's assume. Hence the process of solar formation produces planets at stable orbits along an elliptical, some gas giants, some rock-spheres. (These formed with the system as a whole, or they wouldn't be on an elliptical. Also, our local gas giants appear to have rock-spheres at the center. Big ones.) So keeping to the initial premise this is what happens with sufficient space around. It gets more complicated with binaries and clusters, or other interference in a single star system from large-mass or high-speed objects. Still planets should, for a start, be expected around every star of the same class. The total mass of planets is going to be small compared to that of the stars, so this isn't viable as the missing dark matter.

[Joao]

Hence the process of solar formation produces planets at stable orbits along an elliptical, some gas giants, some rock-spheres. (These formed with the system as a whole, or they wouldn't be on an elliptical.

I don't mean to be a buttplug but for the record, I believe you mean common plane as opposed to elliptical. (Properly the "invariable plane" although you may have been thinking of the ecliptic, which is nearly the same.) Elliptical orbits are the norm in space, to my understanding, regardless of origin (eg extra-solar comets still orbit the sun elliptically). [End pedantry.]

Edit: Also, I can't really agree that planets should be expected around every star of the sun's class (which classification system?). I don't claim expertise so correct me if I'm mistaken. It would seem, though, that many new stars would simply have insufficient surrounding debris/matter to accrete into a planetary system. I can also imagine that a new star's ignition could potentially destroy nearby proto-planets, as well. So while our home system is surely a cosmological commodity item, it still seems a bit much to assume that it must therefore be the standard.

[JackRiddler]

Very embarrassing for me. I meant the ecliptic.

The ecliptic is the common plane of the planetary orbits in the solar system. Or more precisely:

The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere, and is the basis for the ecliptic coordinate system...

Most of the bodies of the Solar System orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane. This is likely due to the way in which the Solar System formed from a protoplanetary disk. Probably the closest current representation of the disk is known as the invariable plane of the Solar System. The Earth's orbit, and hence, the ecliptic, is inclined a little more than 1° to the invariable plane, and the other major planets are also within about 6° of it. Because of this, most Solar System bodies appear very close to the ecliptic in the sky. The ecliptic is well defined by the motion of the Sun. The invariable plane is defined by the angular momentum of the entire Solar System, essentially the summation of all of the revolutions and rotations of all the bodies of the system, a somewhat uncertain value which requires precise knowledge of every object in the system. For these reasons, the ecliptic is used as the reference plane of the Solar System out of convenience.

The sun's class is G, on the main sequence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_cl ... on#Class_G

[Schmazo]

Lonely Alien Planet Discovered Without a Parent Star
Megan Gannon, News Editor | SPACE.com – 1 hr 46 mins ago


Astronomers have discovered a lonely planet that's floating by itself in deep space without orbiting a star.

The powerful Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) telescope at the summit of Maui's Haleakala volcano in Hawaii first detected the solitary alien world through a faint heat signature 80 light-years from Earth while it was searching for brown dwarfs.

Dubbed PSO J318.5-22, the exoplanet is relatively young at 12 million years old, researchers say. With a mass about six times that of Jupiter, the planet resembles gas giants that orbit young stars, follow-up observations with other telescopes showed. But the one thing it appears to be missing is a parent star. [See Images of the Strangest Alien Planets]

"We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone," study researcher Michael Liu, of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said in a statement. "I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do."

The absence of a bright star could be a boon for scientists trying to understand the nature of planets outside our solar system, only a handful of which have been observed through direct imaging. Researchers typically study these alien worlds through indirect means, such as watching for the dips in starlight that occur when an exoplanet crosses in front of its star.

"Planets found by direct imaging are incredibly hard to study, since they are right next to their much brighter host stars," Niall Deacon, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, explained in a statement. "PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study. It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth."

The number of known exoplanets has exploded over the past 10 years. Astronomers have confirmed more than 800, but some estimates suggest there are likely be tens of billions of exoplanets in the universe.

PSO J318.5-22 was inadvertently discovered during a survey of brown dwarfs, starlike cosmic objects sometimes called "failed stars" because they are bigger than planets but too cold to flare up into a veritable star.

In their search for the dim red signals of brown dwarfs, astronomers chose to use PanSTARRS 1 (PS1), short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, which takes the equivalent of 60,000 iPhone photos each night.

"We often describe looking for rare celestial objects as akin to searching for a needle in a haystack," Eugene Magnier of the Institute for Astronomy said in a statement. "So we decided to search the biggest haystack that exists in astronomy, the dataset from PS1."

In their survey, they spotted PSO J318.5-22, an object redder than even the reddest known brown dwarfs. The researchers watched the planet for two years and concluded that it lies in a collection of 12-million-year-old stars called the Beta Pictoris moving group.

Observations with other telescopes found signatures in the cosmic body's infrared light that are best explained by it being young and low-mass. In fact, PSO J318.5-22 is one of the lowest-mass free-floating objects known, the researchers say.

http://news.yahoo.com/lonely-alien-plan ... 15695.html

I was born under a wandering star
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnbiRDNaDeo