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Researchers have confirmed the existence of six new planets beyond our solar system, with hundreds of other new worlds potentially waiting in the wings.
The latest planetary prospects come from two different planet-hunting probes: the European CoRoT satellite and NASA's Kepler spacecraft. CoRoT's science team has confirmed the detection of 15 planets so far, including CoRoT-7b, a "lava planet" that's only five times as massive as Earth but traces a hellishly close orbit around its parent star.
The six new planets are all bigger than CoRoT-7b, but reflect the wide diversity that planetary scientists are finding as they sift through an avalanche of data. There's even a brown dwarf in the bunch - a celestial object that's considered too big to be a planet, but too small to be a fully functioning star.
"Each of these planets is interesting in its own right, but what is really fascinating is how diverse they are," Oxford University's Suzanne Aigrain, a co-investigator on the research team, said in a university news release about the discoveries. "Planets are intrinsically complex objects, and we have much to learn about them yet."
The head of the CoRoT exoplanet program, Magali Deleuil of France's Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, said "every discovery of an extrasolar planetary system is a new piece in the puzzle of how these systems do form and evolve."
Here's the full rundown from the Oxford website:
CoRoT-8b: the smallest in this batch: At about 70 percent of the size and mass of Saturn, CoRoT-8b is moderately small among the previously known transiting exoplanets. Its internal structure should be similar to that of ice giants, like Uranus and Neptune, in the solar system. It is the smallest planet discovered by the CoRoT team so far after CoRoT-7b, the first transiting Super-Earth.
CoRoT-10b: the eccentric giant: The orbit of CoRoT-10b is so elongated that the planet passes both very close to and very far away from its star. The amount of radiation it receives from the star varies tenfold in intensity, and scientists estimate that its surface temperature may increase from 250 to 600 degrees Celsius, all in the space of 13 Earth-days (the length of the year on CoRoT-10b).
CoRoT-11b: the planet whose star does the twist: CoRoT-11, the host star of CoRoT-11b, rotates around its axis in 40 hours. For comparison, the sun’s rotation period is 26 days. It is particularly difficult to confirm planets around rapidly rotating stars, so this detection is a significant achievement for the CoRoT team.
CoRoT-12b, 13b and 14b: a trio of giants: These three planets all orbit close to their host star but have very different properties. Although CoRoT-13b is smaller than Jupiter, it is twice as dense. This suggests the presence of a massive rocky core inside the planet. With a radius 50 percent larger than Jupiter’s (or 16 times larger than Earth’s), CoRoT-12b belongs to the family of "bloated hot Jupiters," whose anomalously large sizes are due to the intense stellar radiation they receive. On the other hand, CoRoT-14b, which is even closer to its parent star, has a size similar to Jupiter’s. It is also massive, 7.5 times the mass of Jupiter, which may explain why it is less puffed up. Such very massive and very hot planets are rare, CoRoT-14b is only the second one discovered so far.
CoRoT-15b: the brown dwarf: CoRoT-15b’s mass is about 60 times that of Jupiter. This makes it incredibly dense, about 40 times more so than Jupiter. For that reason, it is classified as a brown dwarf, intermediate in nature between planets and stars. Brown dwarfs are much rarer than planets, which makes this discovery all the more exciting.
CoRoT and Kepler use essentially the same technique to detect planets: They look for patterns in the subtle periodic dips of light when a relatively dark planet passes in front of the disk of its parent star. This method requires a spacecraft to stare for months or years at the same patch of sky, in order to build up a record of the light variations. To confirm that the variations are really caused by the transit of a planet, astronomers need to see the pattern repeat itself at least three times.
Thus, in order to confirm the detection of an Earthlike planet in an Earthlike orbit around a sunlike star, you'd need to conduct at three years' worth of observations. It's easier to find bigger planets than smaller ones, and it's easier to find planets that whirl in tight orbits around their stars.
Hundreds of new worlds
Before CoRoT and Kepler were launched, astronomers said they expected to find hundreds of new worlds, including the first exoplanets as small as Earth. And based on this week's first big data dump from the Kepler mission, those astronomers won't be disappointed. Today the team said it has found 706 promising prospects for exoplanet discoveries so far. That's a far longer list than the current lineup of 460 extrasolar planets reported to date.
"We have the potential of readily doubling the number of known planets, once we have gone through the process of winnowing these signals down," Charlie Sobeck, deputy project manager for the Kepler mission at NASA's Ames Research Center, told me. "The key word in that is 'potential.'"
The Kepler team said the prospects include "viable exoplanet candidates with sizes as small as that of Earth to larger than that of Jupiter." Most of them are the size of Neptune or smaller, and five of the target star systems appear to have multiple planets orbiting around them, the team said.
Sobeck stressed that these prospects still had to go through an arduous confirmation process to rule out the possibility that they were false positives. The signals from Kepler have to be double-checked by other telescopes that use different methods of planet detection. (This interactive explains how the different methods work.)
The rising and falling signals may have been caused by other phenomena that Kepler picked up by mistake while it was staring at a particular star. For example, astronomers already know that Kepler is spotting some mutually eclipsing binary stars in the background. An entire study has been written up about 1,832 eclipsing binaries observed by the probe during the first 44 days of operation. "They're more common than anticipated," Sobeck said.
The data debate
To date, the Kepler team has officially announced the detection of only five exoplanets. Many more will likely come next February, when the team's next big reveal is scheduled. In preparation for that event, the astronomers on the Kepler team have held back the data about 400 of the best prospects from public release. Information about the other 306 potential planetary systems was posted to the publicly available Kepler data archive today.
The fact that some of the signals are being held back, even though it's generally NASA policy to release data in a year, has sparked a debate in astronomical circles. That debate bubbled up into public view on Nature.com and in The New York Times. "Kepler was constructed and launched with a comparatively large sum of money for a project that is run by a single team," Ben Oppenheimer, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, told the Times. "At this point, I have to say I do think they are being far too restrictive."
Kepler's team members said they were facing a special case, due to delays in launching the $600 million mission and the relatively short April-to-September observing season. They struck a deal with NASA to get some additional time to do the double-checking they felt was needed for their own research. "We'd like to finish that process," Sobeck said.
The data debate raises interesting questions about how widely and how quickly scientists in charge of high-profile experiments should distribute their raw scientific readings. Once they're confirmed, the revelations from Kepler (and CoRoT as well) could revolutionize the search for alien Earths.
"The Kepler observations will tell us whether there are many stars with planets that could harbor life, or whether we might be alone in our galaxy," the mission's principal investigator, William Borucki of NASA Ames, said today in a news release from the space agency.
How would you feel if you spent a decade preparing for a space mission and gathering the data - only to see the crowning discovery made by a number-cruncher piggybacking on your database?
Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."
Leave a Comment:
Which one do you think the elders call home?;-)
Seiously, this is real science. Thanks for sharing the info.
What do you think about NASA violating its data disclosure policies and hoarding data from Kepler on over 400 new extrasolar planets so that their own scientists can hoard the glory?
Yes, that's definitely an argument for going ahead with the full release, excuses be damned. In this case, the scientists on the team pleaded a special case and worked out the deal with NASA for more time. Not sure if it's "hoarding" the glory or getting the first chance at data from instruments that they've worked on for years. It's a balancing act, and you can debate whether the proper balance was struck in this case.
I've waited many years for the detection of extra-solar planets. Now that this is in process - how many more years will I have to wait for confirmation of 'earth like' planets with atmospheres and distances to their stars (this presumes that life can only exist that meet our limited knowledge)? I can predict with confidence that their are many more surprises yet to be found.
Isnt that what the James webb telescope was built for? Its scheduled to be launched in 2014,
Kepler finds 750 exoplanet candidates: http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/15/new-worlds-to-explore-kepler-spacecraft-finds-750-exoplanet-candidates/
Thing is, these star-planet systems seldom bear much resemblance to the Solar System. So we can't really estimate the possibilties of earth-like worlds there.
just to point out our solar system is a star-planet system, the "Goldielocks zone" is determined by the type of star, which means the size, how hot, and other factors are what would determine if a planet is in the right zone for liquid water, then there is the size, composition, atmosphere and other factors of the planet that fell within this zone.
The main reason we havent yet found a large number of potential earth like planets is that earth like planets are harder to find using the current technology.
This is the main reason why most of the planets we have found are jupiter like planets.
Just wait till the James Web telescope goes online, I forget the name of it but I believe there is another telescope that is supposed to be multiple space based scopes that will be tied together to find smaller planets.
Its pretty exciting.
What a joke. The figure caption says that it shows the size and distance of the planets, but then the caveat says size and distance are not to scale. WTF? Why have a figure at all. This is a science oriented page, not an artistic commentary!!!
In this case it's convenient to wrap up the size comparison and the distance comparison in one chart. If you want to have the sizes proportional to the distances, just imagine all those balls as tiny little dots you couldn't possibly see.
Why is the viewing season only from April to September? Since it's a satellite in orbit, if the sun was blocking out a particular part of the sky, couldn't the satellite focus on a different portion of the cosmos? I'm pretty sure there's stars all over the place it could probably look at.
all nasa data/discoveries as well as those from other govts space/astronomical efforts should be open to the public, completely transparent and easy to access. All nasa data belongs to the public...we paid for it. One huge problem is the incredible mass of information that is available not only from nasa but from noaa and other govt orgs such as usgs. Sifting through this mass is a fulltime job 24/7 and no one has that much energy or focus. The mass of data from a decade of Mars explorations, just the number of orbital photos alone, is voluminous. Data re ExTer planets around other stars is just now beginning to accumulate and is already so dense and deep that maybe no one, not even the astronomers closely involved, can assimilate it. It is now, however, accepted, evidential scientific fact that there are planets around other stars. This was only speculation just a few decades ago. \The progess and processes of discovery are slow, but steady. Our exploration of this solar system, our own galaxy and the Universe beyond is just in kindergarden. The discoveries of the future, maybe even tomorrow or next week, may move us up to first grade. All relevant information and data must remain in the public domain and not sequestered by covetous scientists or government agencies.
So cool! Hope we find aliens or that they find our satellites. Not the lizard variety but maybe the Asgard or something like that.
NASA should take a cue from the Open Source community and release raw data. More people looking at data will result in more discoveries more often. It is tax-payer funded, and, yes, "glory" be damned.
A couple of ideas here. The brouhaha over climate change data cherry picking shows the dangers of allowing a small in-group to control the access to and publication of raw data. In the current situation, this is OUR money they are spending. I want the raw observations published, not just data massaged to conform to 'best practices' or a particular set of principles or theories. The scientists attempting to withhold raw data are basically stealing from the entire scientific community, not ot mention misusing public funds. People who try to do this should have their public funding reduced drastically or even eliminated in the future. They are also slowing the process of discovery for the entire field, all to please their own precious egos (and improve their funding chances for the future.). It would be tolerable, although dastardly, for them to do this if they were spending their own or private endowment funds. They are hijacking the public funding process for personal gain.
Second, the huge number of extrasolar planets in close orbits around their stars means our notions of stable planetary systems are all wrong, or we are misinterpreting our observations. These stars are going to 'ea't these close in planets, and that means either they all formed recently (basically, impossible) or planets are continually replaced from some external source and are captured into the gravity well of the star, spiral in and are consumed. If that is truly the case in so many systems, our solar system is unusual for its relative stability of planetary orbits (which I would suspect is mediated by the relative size and positions of Jupiter and Saturn).
Third, if it is true that most planetary systems have planets with relatively short lifetimes, then life may indeed be rare in our galaxy.
If these info gatherers were using their own monies and equipment to explore, they might have an understandable argument for hoarding this datum. Might, but somehow keeping our understanding of the universe under wraps because some egghead is worried about "someone" getting credit or profiting from "their" work strikes me as yet another example of capitalist greed and selfishness. Use public monies to explore - while drawing sizable pay checks-, then hoarding the datum to prevent further discoveries and advancements is somehow just all wrong. This info belongs to humanity not to sages for perusal and distribution on their own selfish time tables. They are paid to discover and explore for our species. This is our information to be exploited and used by all of us. Stopping before I explode with righteous indignation and disgust at these info hoarders.
This stuff is so interesting I love it. Wish I would have went to school for this. that would be nice
There has to be more life on other planets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is NO excuse for not releasing this data immediately. These missions are paid for with public funds, meaning our tax dollars--meaning these are as much our missions as those of the scientists on the team. Amateur astronomers could very likely do a great job sifting through the data and thereby speed up its processing. Is it possible some of the professional astronomers feel threatened by this? I urge President Obama and Congress to demand immediate release of all new data from these missions. Yes, we can!
This is great and all. No doubt finding another earth-like world would be awesome. But until we figure out how to travel 10+ light years in human life time, it isn't going to mean much for the here and now.
But still, very exciting and I still hope they find the holy grail.
I didnt know knowledge is worthless, you are right we wont be able to go there but we dont have to be able to go visit an earthlike planet to learn about it. Plus the discovery of an earthlike planet would spur more money inot furthur research and other astronomical studies.
Just because we cant go there doesnt mean there are no benefits. Learning about another solar system and how its earth like planet would be a here and now benefit. Isnt that the point of looking up at the stars?
aaahhh greed will over come. just let the powers that be see hundreds of earth like planets to be exploited and watch how fast the figure out how to get there and back! its all about ''propper motivations".
I believe...hmm...that our alien ancestors are holed up on the "lava planet" and need our help!
Let's all hold our lava key chains very still, then wave on the count of three!
one, two, three! WAVE!!
I believe that they should release the data to speed up the process the problem with today's world is that everyone wants to get rich. There are plenty of people that are fascinated by making new discoveries of new worlds that would spend time to do it. The more we know about all this today provides for more and more discoveries. I knew that one day we would find planets in other galaxies. Now my only question is how was all of this made was it God if not what was it someone please enlighten me.
Mr. Maggard,
First of all, these planets are not being found in other galaxies. They are all orbitting nearby stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Two, to answer your only question, the process of star formation is fairly well studied. We have examples of stars in all stages of development, from Bok Globules, to protostars, to main sequence, to stars on the verge of death. Planet formation is less well understood, but the current hypothesis is that planets form from accretion disks of dust and gas in orbit around new stars. These accretion disks have been sighted in Hubble Space Telescope views. These photos and simulations give some support to the accretion disk hypothesis but obviously, more research is needed. I encourage you to do an Internet search for more information on answering your question. In either case, there is no evidence that a god formed planets and stars, especially since we see them forming all the time (at least stars anyway) by natural processes as predicted by physical laws.
If your only question is not to be taken literally as it was written, and instead you meant, "What made the Universe?" the most accurate answer at this time is "No one knows, but we'll keep looking for the answer instead of jumping to conclusions."
Tyler, I forget where I read this but planets have been discovered orbiting pulsars, which means that these planets formed after the stars death, This type of Solar system wouldnt support life (as we know it) but its pretty interesting that the death of a star would have destroyed the existing planetary system and then formed another.
The only constant about the universe is it is always changing and will always surprise us.
keep feeding me with more of this
i reserve comment for now
I think NASA wants to hold the data back to double check and make sure that there are no second earths or super earths in the data before releasing the data. Same policy for ET's. And that is why we will never find another living world, as long as these scientific projects remain under the control of government agencies. The knowledge if it ever became public that there does in fact exist other living worlds possibly occupied by intelligent beings and in a state of civilized development...our government would in effect be admitting that aliens do in fact exist wether or not they have visited earth. And any public or private efforts to contact an alien world would have to be curtailed.
ENOUGH!!!! My name is Paul. I am a wannabe movie- extra from terrestrial. satisfied? Have a nice time unit. nanu nanu.
anyone ever heard of the "Disclosure Project" headed by Dr. Steven Greer?
The last few words of this article illustrate the problem completely.
"your database". Go read those words and find the fallacy.
This data belongs to the people who funded the study, as much as those that enabled and built the hardware. The glory still belongs to those geniuses who started this study. But the data does not belong to them.
There should be a standing rule that all academic papers that come out of this data need to give an author credit to those scientists who built this magnificent spacecraft. That should be some glory. Then, all news who quote from the data need to credit those same scientists.
This will respect those who did this science, as well as the needs of those who funded it. The rest of us.
Many planets have been found orbiting numerous stars in our galaxy. I now find it hard to believe that there are stars without numbers of planets in their systems. With our current technology, we only see planets in systems that are positioned correctly to allow their orbit to intersect our line of site to the star. We only see planets that are close in to the stars and repeat their year rapidly. It is highly likely that it will be some time before we are able to tell whether or not the planets we can see harbor or have the potential to harbor life. I, for one, will just enjoy the ride.