Kepler Finds Bizarre Systems


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Scientists need to rethink the "habitable zone" theory as well, but they don't want to.

Among the new solar systems discovered by the Kepler spacecraft are planets that share orbits, one with resonances that keep the planets from scattering away or falling into the parent star, and one with worlds so tightly packed that the closest orbits its star in a single day.

The Kepler Space Telescope observes stars to see if they show a planetary body transiting in front of them. Thus far it has discovered more than 1,200 planets and candidates. It has found the first evidence of a rocky body, and seen the first multi-planet systems.

A recent look at the data has found one system that could have two planets in the same orbit. A second system has a group of planets in resonance, and the third has planets that all orbit their star in less than a week.

Jack Lissauer, a co-investigator for the Kepler mission at NASA's Ames Research Center, said the first system, called KOI 730, looks like it has two planets out of the four orbiting the parent star in just under 10 days, sharing the same orbit. ("KOI" stands for "Kepler Object of Interest").

The planets would be in what is called a "Trojan" configuration, orbiting 60 degrees in front of and behind another body. There are examples of it from our own solar system: Jupiter has a group of asteroids that leads and trails the planet in just that way. The point 60 degrees leading and trailing a given planet makes an equilateral triangle with the parent star, and creates a point of stability.

Since he published his findings, Lissauer says, he is more skeptical of that interpretation. But even if the Trojan hypothesis is wrong, it might be something just as interesting: planets in resonance with each other. Such configurations are rare, but they are stable, persisting for billions of years. In this case, the four bodies around KOI 730 would have orbits in the resonances 8:6:4:3. That means there are two pairs of planets, and each time the first member of the pair makes three orbits another planet completes four.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/117984/20110302/kepler-finds-strange-worlds-fastest-planet.htm

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Scientists need to rethink the "habitable zone" theory as well, but they don't want to.

...

Got a source for that? The article you linked to doesn't mention it.

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Got a source for that? The article you linked to doesn't mention it.

I was mentioning something in passing, because scientists say for a planet to have life it must be the same distance from the sun that the earth is.

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It's based on the distance and the temperature of a sun, a colder sun has a habitable zone closer to it, etc.

Our Sun is slowly heating up as it ages, meaning the habitable zone is slowly moving out, it's quite well known.

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But OTOH the habitable zone idea has to be changed to match observation. If, for example, worlds outside the Goldilocks Zone are heated from the inside, by gravitational effects like the Jovian moons or by nuclear decay like the proposed Steppenwolf starless planets, said zone means next to nothing. Even photosynthesis isn't necessary as the many examples of chemosynthesis, or even radiosynthesis, here on Earth show.

Life finds a way.

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I think that most exobiologists would be surprised if there weren't at least microbial lifeforms on those Jovian moons, and perhaps in the sub-ice ocean they think covers Ceres. We'll know more about the latter possibility after the Dawn probe visits there & Vesta.

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As far as I recall, the Habitable zone is there to describe the region in which Earth like planets can support life in orbit around a star. A moon around a planet is not the classical Earth like planet. That's not to say life is impossible outside that zone, but it also doesn't mean the zone needs rethinking, at all.

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We probably don't know the half of it. As we learned more about space, we'll probably find things we could never imagine could be possible.

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We probably don't know the half of it. As we learned more about space, we'll probably find things we could never imagine could be possible.

Like inside-out aliens.

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scientists say for a planet to have life it must be the same distance from the sun that the earth is.

No... They don't. They have said that for a planet to sustain life similar to ours, it would have to have certain conditions such as those we enjoy from the distance/heat relationship to the sun. It could be a greater distance from a larger sun for example.

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We probably don't know the half of it. As we learned more about space, we'll probably find things we could never imagine could be possible.

Oh so right ;)

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didnt they say that the Earth used to share its orbit with another planet a long time ago, and at some point in time this planet collided with earth and all the pieces which got flung into space formed the moon

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I think that most exobiologists would be surprised if there weren't at least microbial lifeforms on those Jovian moons, and perhaps in the sub-ice ocean they think covers Ceres. We'll know more about the latter possibility after the Dawn probe visits there & Vesta.

microbial life on Jovian moon ! does the presence of carbon and heat make life inevitable?

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didnt they say that the Earth used to share its orbit with another planet a long time ago, and at some point in time this planet collided with earth and all the pieces which got flung into space formed the moon

That's one idea, a mars sized body impacting the earth.

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