If Music Could Talk

Flex wrote:I've been paid cash-money to make science political, baby.

A newly discovered planet orbiting a small, nearby star appears to be a "water world," with a surface that might be covered with liquid water.

"This is certainly the first planet around another star which we think is mostly made of water," says David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who led the research team that found the new planet, named GJ 1214b.

If you could ride a spaceship to this planet — which you couldn't, because it is 40 light-years away — you would first approach the small, feeble red star that the planet orbits once every 38 hours, Charbonneau says. Then you'd see the planet, bigger and heavier than Earth, and probably enshrouded in an alien atmosphere.

Plunging down through that atmosphere, Charbonneau says, the light from the star would most likely dim and disappear until you were in darkness. Then, if you kept going down and your ship could survive the crushing pressure of the atmosphere, you might splash into a hot ocean.

At least, that's what Charbonneau and his colleagues think this planet is like. There's no way to know for sure, with current technology.

But the scientists have been able to determine that the planet is about 2.5 times the size of Earth, with a mass of about 6.5 times that of our home planet. And given that planets can be made of a limited number of common ingredients — like light gases, rock and water — the scientists figured out what possible combinations of ingredients were likely for a planet of this size and weight.

"We think this planet is mostly made of water, with a thin atmosphere surrounding it, perhaps of hydrogen and helium," Charbonneau says.

The planet is pretty hot compared with Earth — around 400 degrees Fahrenheit — but even so, pressure from the atmosphere could keep any water liquid.

A report on the new planet appears in the journal Nature. An accompanying commentary by planet-hunter Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley calls it "the most watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth, outside our solar system."

Wolter wrote: Wait.


That doesn't make any fucking sense.


DAMN YOU, SUDAFED!

Flex wrote:Woooo Waterworld!

A newly discovered planet orbiting a small, nearby star appears to be a "water world," with a surface that might be covered with liquid water.

"This is certainly the first planet around another star which we think is mostly made of water," says David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who led the research team that found the new planet, named GJ 1214b.

If you could ride a spaceship to this planet — which you couldn't, because it is 40 light-years away — you would first approach the small, feeble red star that the planet orbits once every 38 hours, Charbonneau says. Then you'd see the planet, bigger and heavier than Earth, and probably enshrouded in an alien atmosphere.

Plunging down through that atmosphere, Charbonneau says, the light from the star would most likely dim and disappear until you were in darkness. Then, if you kept going down and your ship could survive the crushing pressure of the atmosphere, you might splash into a hot ocean.

At least, that's what Charbonneau and his colleagues think this planet is like. There's no way to know for sure, with current technology.

But the scientists have been able to determine that the planet is about 2.5 times the size of Earth, with a mass of about 6.5 times that of our home planet. And given that planets can be made of a limited number of common ingredients — like light gases, rock and water — the scientists figured out what possible combinations of ingredients were likely for a planet of this size and weight.

"We think this planet is mostly made of water, with a thin atmosphere surrounding it, perhaps of hydrogen and helium," Charbonneau says.

The planet is pretty hot compared with Earth — around 400 degrees Fahrenheit — but even so, pressure from the atmosphere could keep any water liquid.

A report on the new planet appears in the journal Nature. An accompanying commentary by planet-hunter Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley calls it "the most watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth, outside our solar system."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... c=fb&cc=fp

Billy Joel wrote:Dogeball: horrible movie redeemed every once in awhile by a cast that's too good to be in it. But it has one line that I just love. It's Rip Torn saying, apropos of nothing, "And I don't have to drink my own piss, but it's sterile and I like the taste!"

Billy Joel wrote:Dogeball: horrible movie redeemed every once in awhile by a cast that's too good to be in it. But it has one line that I just love. It's Rip Torn saying, apropos of nothing, "And I don't have to drink my own piss, but it's sterile and I like the taste!"

Flex wrote:Woooo Waterworld!

A newly discovered planet orbiting a small, nearby star appears to be a "water world," with a surface that might be covered with liquid water.

"This is certainly the first planet around another star which we think is mostly made of water," says David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who led the research team that found the new planet, named GJ 1214b.

If you could ride a spaceship to this planet — which you couldn't, because it is 40 light-years away — you would first approach the small, feeble red star that the planet orbits once every 38 hours, Charbonneau says. Then you'd see the planet, bigger and heavier than Earth, and probably enshrouded in an alien atmosphere.

Plunging down through that atmosphere, Charbonneau says, the light from the star would most likely dim and disappear until you were in darkness. Then, if you kept going down and your ship could survive the crushing pressure of the atmosphere, you might splash into a hot ocean.

At least, that's what Charbonneau and his colleagues think this planet is like. There's no way to know for sure, with current technology.

But the scientists have been able to determine that the planet is about 2.5 times the size of Earth, with a mass of about 6.5 times that of our home planet. And given that planets can be made of a limited number of common ingredients — like light gases, rock and water — the scientists figured out what possible combinations of ingredients were likely for a planet of this size and weight.

"We think this planet is mostly made of water, with a thin atmosphere surrounding it, perhaps of hydrogen and helium," Charbonneau says.

The planet is pretty hot compared with Earth — around 400 degrees Fahrenheit — but even so, pressure from the atmosphere could keep any water liquid.

A report on the new planet appears in the journal Nature. An accompanying commentary by planet-hunter Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley calls it "the most watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth, outside our solar system."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... c=fb&cc=fp