FSTDT Forums
Community => Science and Technology => Topic started by: nickiknack on October 17, 2012, 03:01:42 pm
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Alpha Centauri—the star system closest to our sun and the inspiration for legions of science fiction writers—harbors at least one planet and probably more, astronomers announced Tuesday.
The planet orbits very close to Alpha Centauri B—the smaller of two paired stars—and likely has a lavalike consistency to show for it, scientists said. As such, the new world would be way too hot to support life as we know it.
Life or no life, the discovery is a "landmark," said Geneva Observatory astronomer Stéphane Udry, co-author of the study detailing the as yet unnamed planet in the journal Nature
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121017-alpha-centauri-new-planet-science-space-udry/ (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121017-alpha-centauri-new-planet-science-space-udry/)
They've found Mustafar (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mustafar) 8)
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Don't remind me of the prequels. Still this is a victory for science as good old evil Cave Johnson would say
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That's metal.
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That's metal.
No, it's lava you big silly.
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It boggles my mind that space is full of crazy shit like this, and we've only discovered an extremely tiny fraction of a percentage of it.
For instance, there exists a planet made of diamond. (http://www.cracked.com/article_19479_the-6-most-mind-blowing-things-ever-discovered-in-space.html)
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It boggles my mind that space is full of crazy shit like this, and we've only discovered an extremely tiny fraction of a percentage of it.
For instance, there exists a planet made of diamond. (http://www.cracked.com/article_19479_the-6-most-mind-blowing-things-ever-discovered-in-space.html)
You know girls really dig that planet, because diamonds are a girl's best friend... :D
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That was the one that caught my eye. The planet Midnight...
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What's alluded to in the article but not expounded on is that other earth-mass planets of that size may very well exist in orbit around this star, possibly in the habitable zone of the star. Here's an article (http://news.discovery.com/space/earth-sized-planet-121017.html#mkcpgn=emnws1) that explores and explains that a little better.
If that is found to be correct, the possibilities of detecting extraterrestrial life are quite exciting,
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And every time an exoplanet is found, what kind of picture is at the top of the article?
An 'artistic rendering' ::)
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Well, to be fair, the artistic renderings are more interesting than a photo of the night sky with an arrow pointing to the star the planet orbits. *shrug*
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I like artistic renderings of almost-unknown things. It shows me that some folks out there haven't killed their speculative imaginations.
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Actually that's something that annoys me when I'm looking for pictures of awesome things from space, go to, say, NASA's website and a lot of the pictures there are artistic renderings, meanwhile some of the actual photos of actual things in space are so damn awesome, really, that's what I want to see (and/or set as my desktop background)
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Now we just have to find a plausible way to colonize it.
/challenge accepted
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Actually that's something that annoys me when I'm looking for pictures of awesome things from space, go to, say, NASA's website and a lot of the pictures there are artistic renderings, meanwhile some of the actual photos of actual things in space are so damn awesome, really, that's what I want to see (and/or set as my desktop background)
I've got both in my wallpaper folder. Maybe you could try a Google image search for (your resolution here)hubble photo space wallpaper.
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Now we just have to find a plausible way to colonize it.
/challenge accepted
I don't know if we could colonize it, but we could always mine the fuck out of it somehow.
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Actually that's something that annoys me when I'm looking for pictures of awesome things from space, go to, say, NASA's website and a lot of the pictures there are artistic renderings, meanwhile some of the actual photos of actual things in space are so damn awesome, really, that's what I want to see (and/or set as my desktop background)
Most of the objects that are "artist renderings" usually can not be photographed due to them not being visible due to their size and or transparency. IIRC, out of the more than 800 exo-planets that have been discovered, there have only been one or two that have actually been observed visually. And that is due to them being relatively close and enormous in size (large enough to make Jupiter look small.) Some nebulae are so thinly widespread that it is difficult to image them with the best of telescopes and cameras. Most images of deep space objects have to be photographed using multiple time lapsed photos (usually from 30 to 120 seconds each) which are then "stacked" using computer software in order to bring them into a visible medium. And when I say multiple, I'm talking sometimes as many as 250 or 300 photos. Actually, the only objects you can photograph with just one short duration click of a camera are objects within our own solar system. The reason for the multiple shots is due to the earths rotation. Even with a telescope set up in polar mode, it is difficult to photograph deep space without getting "star tails" (the elongation of stars instead of pin points.) Only telescopes in orbit can take extremely long exposure photos since they can be pointed at something without having to worry about rotation. Some of the images taken from the Hubble have had a constant exposure of 100 hours or more.
If you have Windows 7, you can download a couple of nice desktop themes. Just go to the Windows theme website and go to the nature section. They have some really nice images taken from both the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Hubble.
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Now we just have to find a plausible way to colonize it.
/challenge accepted
I don't know if we could colonize it, but we could always mine the fuck out of it somehow.
Use it as an alternative energy sources, u guise!
/sarcasm
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I have a feeling that if we mined the diamond planet, diamonds would quickly become worthless.
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I have a feeling that if we mined the diamond planet, diamonds would quickly become worthless.
Can't we already make diamonds anyway? But wait, people seem to prefer diamonds that were mined through what is essentially slave labor for some reason. I have no idea why. So maybe space diamonds would become a special market just because they're diamonds... from SPAAAAAAAACE!
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I have a feeling that if we mined the diamond planet, diamonds would quickly become worthless.
Of course. That would be an interesting situation. Though we won't be there for a goooood looooong while I think.
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I have a feeling that if we mined the diamond planet, diamonds would quickly become worthless.
Of course. That would be an interesting situation. Though we won't be there for a goooood looooong while I think.
Don't diamonds eventually disintegrate into dust anyway?
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Doesn't everything?
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Well, if diamonds became worthless, we'd eventually start seeing more color in engagement rings, so that's not exactly a bad thing.
Also...geothermal energy, anyone?
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Diamonds are fairly common on Earth. We just have a monopoly controlling the supply to up the prices and controlling advertising to make them seem more important than they should be. I'm not big on them beyond their utility.
I think a lava planet is interesting, plus from Alpha Centauri it's only 5 or so years old, so hey. If it's earth sized though, one might infer its still forming to some degree. When we get better scopes (Or find a way to beat the no FTL rule without costing buckets of energy), might be a worthwhile study object. Unless it's under the gravitational tidal forces of the suns, then it's lava like Io is.