[HN Gopher] Six-exoplanet system challenges theories of how plan...
___________________________________________________________________
Six-exoplanet system challenges theories of how planets form
Author : dnetesn
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-01-26 11:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| rbanffy wrote:
| "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." - Carl
| Sagan
| gmuslera wrote:
| Could it be a message? Why to send from place to place a radio
| signal when we could set up a bunch of planets in an
| improbable/impossible regular configuration to be noticed from
| everywhere during a very long time frame?
|
| Probably it is the argument of several existing science fiction
| books.
| rbanffy wrote:
| "We were"
| Razengan wrote:
| That is exactly what happens in Star Control II. One of the
| most satisfying Easter Eggs I found on my own.
| philsnow wrote:
| are you talking about the rainbow worlds pointing corewards,
| or something else?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Star Trek: Picard did that with _stars_ recently.
| svachalek wrote:
| Yeah the Pierson's Puppeteers in Ringworld (1970) did something
| like that, and I'm sure there are others.
|
| But in this case I just don't think this is weird enough, it's
| probably more a matter of tweaking planetary formation models.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Could it be a message? Why to send from place to place a
| radio signal when we could set up a bunch of planets in an
| improbable/impossible regular configuration to be noticed from
| everywhere during a very long time frame?
|
| Intuitively, for signalling purposes, setting up six planets in
| a weird orbital configuration to attract attention seems like
| it would take WAY more energy to do. Also, it tells you nothing
| about how to reply to the hail.
|
| Though I could see it as some kind of solar system-sized
| monument.
| macintux wrote:
| I was born in 1970. Had you told me in my teenage years that we'd
| have supercomputers in our pockets, I'd have probably been
| skeptical, but had you told me that we would be not only
| discovering planets in other systems but measuring their density
| and composition I'd have assumed you were drunk.
| varjag wrote:
| It took me a while to realize my younger peers have no
| recollection of times when we didn't know if the planets
| existed outside our solar system at all. Now it's like the
| obvious part in the Drake equation, mind-boggling.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I was born late 1980s and I think by that point we still
| didn't have any evidence of extrasolar planets...
|
| ...but damn if it wasn't bloody obvious there must be some.
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| The first time we discovered an exoplanet was in the late
| 90s orbiting I believe a binary pulsar system.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'd assume people had some some indirect evidence before.
| I remember some noise about exoplanets during my teenage
| years - there was a Polish astronomer[0] involved in the
| first discovery. But I thought to myself, surely everyone
| expected this to happen? I was later surprised to
| discover that even in the 90s, people seriously believed
| there were no extrasolar planets.
|
| (Perhaps theirs was the more scientific position, and I
| was just a nerd biased by science fiction stories. But
| then, I was taught the Sun was just another star, and if
| God wanted our solar system to be special, surely He
| wouldn't need to create more planets than just the Earth?
| I guess I had some intuition for Occam's razor before I
| knew it by name...)
|
| I only got a more complete picture of the timeline of
| discoveries much later in life, from this video[1].
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksander_Wolszczan
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gai8dMA19Sw
| varjag wrote:
| Believe it or not people used to argue that planetary
| formation can be super rare or even a set of conditions
| unique to our system. Not quite unlike the current
| narratives about extraterrestrial life.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I remember my teachers mocking me when I was saying that if
| the Sun is a star it's rather logical there are planets
| around other stars and that the view that they don't exist
| is the extreme one, but I was scoffed at that this is "pure
| speculation" and "science fiction".
|
| On the other hand, when seeing a model of atom and solar
| system for the first time I was convinced reality is a set
| of layers with the micro- and macrocosm being just the two
| closest ones we're able to perceive, but I'm far less sure
| of it now.
| [deleted]
| reedwolf wrote:
| I wish Musk/Bezos/Branson et al would spend their billions on
| colossal space telescopes rather than Mars vanity projects.
| Imagine being able to image the surface of an exoplanet...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's like saying, "I wish the government was spending money
| on constructing stuff up the mountain, instead of vanity
| 'roads' that lead to it".
| anchpop wrote:
| Any progress on "Mars vanity projects" directly helps the
| project of colossal space telescopes. The reason the James Webb
| Telescope is so expensive is because old spaceships didn't have
| enough cargo volume to hold the telescope unfolded, so they had
| to create an incredibly expensive and error-prone unfolding
| mechanism. SpaceX's Starship is big enough to hold the JWT
| unfolded - something that would dramatically lower costs on any
| future telescope of the same size or bigger.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Video simulation of the system I found on YouTube:
|
| https://youtu.be/-WevvRG9ysY
|
| It's incredible to me that within my lifetime we've gone from
| "planets around other stars might not even exist" to "here's a
| list, you want rocky or gas, big or small, habitable zone or
| not?"
|
| Also, as always, xkcd:
|
| https://xkcd.com/1298/large/
| sradman wrote:
| > The new research has revealed that the system ["TOI-178, a star
| some 200 light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor"]
| boasts six exoplanets and that all but the one closest to the
| star are locked in a rhythmic dance as they move in their orbits.
| In other words, they are in resonance... A similar resonance is
| observed in the orbits of three of Jupiter's moons: Io, Europa
| and Ganymede.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-27 23:01 UTC)