Exo Planets and Solar Systems

Historic planetary instability and catastrophe. Evidence for electrical scarring on planets and moons. Electrical events in today's solar system. Electric Earth.

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kiwi
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Earth-like planet 20 light years away 'may not exist'

Unread post by kiwi » Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:40 am


New team can find no trace of Gliese 581g in same data
Original researcher backs his findings: 'We have yet to make a false claim'
New claim casts doubt on whether Earth-like planet is orbiting distant star

Its discovery last month captured the imaginations of millions around the globe.
And the news that an Earth-like planet had been found which could support life and which lay only 20 light years away sparked feverish speculation that we may not be alone in the universe.
But now a group of scientists have claimed that Gliese 581g, a rocky world just three times the size of Earth, may not even exist.
The devastating claim has been made by a group of Swiss astronomers who have cast doubt on the original research and say that they can find no trace of the planet in their own analysis of the same data.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... exist.html

Xuxalina Rihhia
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Re: Habitable planet found orbiting nearby red dwarf star

Unread post by Xuxalina Rihhia » Sat Oct 23, 2010 12:37 am

A long time the EUVE satellite found that Proxima Centauri radiated extreme ultraviolet light. The scientists were very puzzled and wondered how that could be. However in an electric universe, such a thing would not only be possible but could easily happen like on Proxima centauri. Yes, life could exist on a planet of a "red" dwarf. The actual color of a red dwarf in space would not be red but a yellow white--much like that of an incandescent bulb. A brown dwarf would be an orangy-yellow mixed with blue so the color would be sort of a magenta due to it's electrical corona...the same electrical corona that can give Blue, UV, extreme UV and X-rays.

Also, the band of livable temperatures would be a little wider than the scientists say on a tidally locked world due to the atmosphere. The poles might be habitable as well--depending on the geometry of the axis of the planet in question.

Xuxalina Rihhia
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Re: Habitable planet found orbiting nearby red dwarf star

Unread post by Xuxalina Rihhia » Sat Oct 23, 2010 12:50 am

These are fantasy pics of life on a planet around a red dwarf; this could be some of the life we might find if the world is habitable.

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/5411 ... gerfan.jpg
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/6649 ... torflo.jpg
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/4097/g ... auna12.jpg

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nick c
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Re: Stars with Planets

Unread post by nick c » Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:57 am

This thread is a merger of the following threads:

Star-hugging planet is hottest and fastest found

Stars with Planets

New Planets Defy Gravity

Planet collision in deep space

Planet Devoured by its Star

NASA Finds Super-Hot Planet with Unique Comet-Like Tail

Earth-like planet 20 light years away 'may not exist'

100+ Earth-like planets

Mystery object orbiting distant star baffles astronomers

highly inclined orbits of planets

Warm Saturns and their Moons

Planets Spotted in Changing Orbits: Kepler Mission

Habitable planet found orbiting nearby red dwarf star

'Super Earth' discovered orbitting nearby small star

Newfound Planet Orbits Backward - Let's give EU a try at it!

Possible First Photo of Planet Around Sun-Like Star

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ETSubmariner
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Life near red dwarf stars? A burning question!

Unread post by ETSubmariner » Tue May 03, 2011 10:50 pm

I found an article (in Russian) that I link below that asks and seems to indicate at least one smart astronomer who thinks planets orbiting dwarf stars might be better choices for life:
http://www.pravda.ru/science/planet/spa ... d_stars-0/

I tried finding an English version, but instead installed a translator in my Google Chrome browser that did it for me automatically. Here's a brief blurb:
Planetary scientist Christopher McKay of the Research Center to them. Ames and his colleagues at NASA have found that the surface of planets that revolve around stars called red dwarfs may be covered with oceans, which are floating organic compounds. Thus, the list of potentially habitable locations in the universe has expanded.

Red dwarfs are the most common type of stellar objects in the universe. They are small and relatively cool star, which, according to the astronomical classification are spectral type M or K. The diameter and mass of red dwarfs do not exceed one third solar, the temperature of the surface reaches 3500 Kelvin. The stars of this type emit little light, sometimes 10,000 times smaller than the Sun.

fosborn
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Re: Life near red dwarf stars? A burning question!

Unread post by fosborn » Wed May 04, 2011 2:53 pm

I got a virus warning when I tried the Pravda sit. but did find this article which seems vary encouraging ;

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... [quote]But enough exoplanet research has been done so far that a cautious prediction can be made that the odds are that the planet will orbit an M (red) dwarf star found in surveys taken within 100 light-years of Earth. Red dwarfs are much more numerous than sun-like stars, which exponentially increases the chances of being life favorable.

M dwarfs make up at least 70% of the Milky Way's stars. Their masses range from roughly half to one-twentieth the mass of our sun, but what M dwarfs lack in size, they more than make up for in longevity. Astronomers estimate that these stars can burn for 40 billion to 100 billion years, giving any habitable planets plenty of time to evolve life. (The life span of our own sun, a G-class star, is about 10 billion years.) But during at least the first few billion years of their lives, M dwarfs also sport huge magnetic fields that routinely interact with their atmospheres to create coronal mass ejections—enormous outbursts of matter from the star's highly ionized corona—and proton-rich flares.

The planet will be in the habitable, "goldilocks" zone around a red dwarf –-- the zone where liquid water can remain stable on a planet’s surface. The zone will be closer to the cool red dwarf than the Earth's habitable zone to our Sun.

The profile of a planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf includes an orbit completed in a mere two weeks, which will provide astronomers with multiple transits to enhance odds of being observed as well as , being more likely to be in an orbit aligned along our Earth-bound line of sight.

Because they are much cooler than our sun, any potentially habitable planet would need to orbit them much closer than Earth does, putting it smack in the danger zone. But a new study indicates that these planets may be unexpectedly shielded from solar activity, keeping life safe.[/quote]

Sparky
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Re: Life near red dwarf stars? A burning question!

Unread post by Sparky » Fri May 06, 2011 11:10 am

TPODS are a good source of EU information.
It is important to note that flaring red dwarf stars are extremely common and are an unexplained phenomenon. Red dwarf flares are like a stellar lightning flash but they may produce 10,000 times as many x-rays as a comparable flare on the Sun.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/ ... itan-2.htm

I think i would rather be near a red giant...cozy warm all year long, that is if a year could be determined. ;)
"It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong."
"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire

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ETSubmariner
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Re: Life near red dwarf stars? A burning question!

Unread post by ETSubmariner » Fri May 06, 2011 1:51 pm

And people wonder why humans don't have a lot of fur to keep warm. Or why I can't look at my own star without going blind. Maybe 'cause we grew up in the dim light and warmth of a nice dwarf star. Well, assuming an electrical environment designs the life forms to be capable of helping equalize the whole circuit, and does so aggressively and neatly . Maybe!

tholden
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Diamond Planet

Unread post by tholden » Fri Aug 26, 2011 5:41 pm


tholden
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Super Earth found orbiting red dwarf

Unread post by tholden » Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:40 pm

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2842277/posts

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... e-science/
Rachel Kaufman
for National Geographic News
Published February 2, 2012

A new planet—probably a rocky super-Earth—has been found squarely within its star's habitable zone, making it one of the best candidates yet to support life, its discoverers say.

The planet, dubbed GJ 667Cc, orbits a red dwarf star 22 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpio. A binary pair of orange dwarf stars are part of the same system.

(Related: "'Tatooine' Planet With Two Suns Could Host Habitable Moon?")

The new planet has a mass 4.5 times that of Earth and orbits its host star every 28 days.

The red dwarf is relatively dim, so the planet receives slightly less light from its star than Earth does from the sun. But most of the star's light is infrared, so the planet should absorb more of its incoming energy than Earth does from sunlight.

That means if the planet has a rocky surface—which is predicted for planets less than ten times Earth's mass—and an atmosphere, it could support liquid water and maybe life, said co-discoverer Guillem Anglada-Escudé, who conducted the work while at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.

"If it has an atmosphere, it's probably reddish all the time, because the star is really red," Anglada-Escudé said. "It would be like being evening all the time."

For any hypothetical observers on the surface, the binary stars in the distance would be "very prominent in the sky, and it would be an exotic thing."

(Relaed: "New Planet May Be Among Most Earthlike—Weather Permitting.")

Rocky Planet Around Unexpected Star

Anglada-Escudé and colleagues found the new planet using public data from the European Southern Observatory, which hosts telescopes that can measure wobbles in a star's orbit caused by a planet's gravitational tug.

The new super-Earth was somewhat unexpected, because some planetary-formation models say that metal-poor stars such as GJ 667C shouldn't have terrestrial planets around them.

(Related: "Three Theories of Planet Formation Busted, Expert Says.")

In stellar terms, metals are elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Such heavy atoms—including carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen—are the "building blocks" for rocky planets. If a young star has fewer metals, the theory goes, so does its disk of planet-forming debris.

Still, the results might not be that surprising, said Aki Roberge of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who wasn't part of the study team.

"We know it's more likely to have a gas giant planet around a metal-rich star, but we don't really know if that holds to [lower mass, rocky planets], because we haven't found enough of them yet," Roberge said.

But smaller objects, such as asteroids and comets, have been found around low-metal stars, so "there doesn't appear to be any favorability for being a low- or high-metallicity star," she said.

For metal-poor stars, "maybe it's easier to form smaller things, [like] small rocky bodies, [than] to form a massive giant planet."

New Super-Earth May Be First of Many

Study co-author Anglada-Escudé, who is now a postdoc at the University of Gottingen in Germany, would like to eventually confirm that GJ 667Cc is in fact a potentially habitable super-Earth.

That would require a transit observation, when astronomers measure the dimming of the host star's light as the planet passes in front of the star, as seen from Earth.

Transit data can help astronomers determine a planet's density—and thus its composition—and possibly observe its atmospheric characteristics.

(Also see "Nearby 'Super Earth' May Have Oceans, Thick Atmosphere.")

With our current view of the red dwarf, a transit of GJ 667Cc has about a one-percent chance of happening, he said.

But so far, planets outside our solar system have been discovered in so many different configurations that it's possible GJ 667Cc is the first of many super-Earths orbiting metal-poor stars, Anglada-Escudé said.

"What we expect with new instruments coming online is we can find 20 or 30 of these objects" in the near future, he said. "So within two or three years, one of them has to transit."

The new super-Earth will be described in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

tholden
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Steamy water world circdling red dwarf 40ly out

Unread post by tholden » Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:07 am

http://news.yahoo.com/type-alien-planet ... 02250.html

Image
Scientists have discovered a new type of alien planet — a steamy waterworld that is larger than Earth but smaller than Uranus.

The standard-bearer for this new class of exoplanet is called GJ 1214b, which astronomers first discovered in December 2009. New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope suggest that GJ 1214b is a watery world enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere.

"GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of," study lead author Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement. "A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water."
Adding to the diversity

To date, astronomers have discovered more than 700 planets beyond our solar system, with about 2,300 more "candidates" awaiting confirmation by follow-up observations.

These alien planets are a diverse bunch. Astronomers have found one planet as light and airy as Styrofoam, for example, and another as dense as iron. They've discovered several alien worlds that orbit two suns, like Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine in the "Star Wars" films. [The Strangest Alien Planets]
But GJ 1214b, which is located 40 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), is something new altogether, researchers said.

This so-called "super-Earth" is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs nearly seven times as much as our home planet. It orbits a red-dwarf star at a distance of 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometres), giving it an estimated surface temperature of 446 degrees Fahrenheit (230 degrees Celsius) — too hot to host life as we know it.
Scientists first reported in 2010 that GJ 1214b's atmosphere is likely composed primarily of water, but their findings were not definitive. Berta and his team used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to help dispel the doubts.

Hubble watched as GJ 1214b crossed in front of its host star, and the scientists were able to determine the composition of the planet's atmosphere based on how it filtered the starlight.

"We’re using Hubble to measure the infrared color of sunset on this world," Berta said. "The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favor of a steamy atmosphere."

Berta and his colleagues report their results online in the Astrophysical Journal.

A watery world

Since astronomers know GJ 1241b's mass and size, they're able to calculate its density, which turns out to be just 2 grams per cubic centimeter (g/cc). Earth's density is 5.5 g/cc, while that of water is 1 g/cc.
GJ 1214b thus appears to have much more water than Earth does, and much less rock. The alien planet's interior structure is likely quite different from that of our world.

"The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like 'hot ice' or 'superfluid water,' substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience," Berta said.

GJ 1214b probably formed farther out from its star, where water ice was plentiful, and then migrated in to its current location long ago. In the process, it would have experienced more Earth-like temperatures, but how long this benign phase lasted is unknown, researchers said.

Because GJ 1214b is so close to Earth, it's a prime candidate for study by future instruments. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in 2018, may be able to get an even better look at the planet's atmosphere, researchers said.

vardamango
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NASA "Weird Planets"

Unread post by vardamango » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:54 am

Kepler-47 erases those doubts—and poses a conundrum: "These planets are very difficult to form using the currently accepted paradigm,” says Laughlin. “I believe that theorists, myself included, will be going back to the drawing board to try to improve our understanding of how planets are assembled in the dusty gaseous disks that surround many young stars.”

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... rdplanets/
A white dwarf headed for a black hole. That's physics. It's inevitable

Sparky
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Re: Exo Planets and Solar Systems

Unread post by Sparky » Thu Sep 13, 2012 4:05 pm

says Laughlin. “I believe that theorists, myself included, will be going back to the drawing board to try to improve our understanding of how planets are assembled in the dusty gaseous disks that surround many young stars.”
Really?! :roll:

More like, "invent a new mechanism to explain what we see">! :roll:
"It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong."
"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire

keeha
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Re: Exo Planets and Solar Systems

Unread post by keeha » Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:03 pm

Sparky wrote:
says Laughlin. “I believe that theorists, myself included, will be going back to the drawing board to try to improve our understanding of how planets are assembled in the dusty gaseous disks that surround many young stars.”
Really?! :roll:

More like, "invent a new mechanism to explain what we see">! :roll:
Chaulked grimy mirrors needed cleaning.

trevbus
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Exoplanet HD 189733b is hot and blue

Unread post by trevbus » Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:03 pm

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/technol ... z2YnOokkvQ
Pont and a team measured how much light was reflected off the planet's surface, a property known as albedo, in order to calculate its colour.

The blue comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean, as in Earth's case, but a hazy, turbulent atmosphere believed to be laced with silicate particles – the stuff of which glass is made.

These particles scatter blue light, said the team.

HD 189733b is an example of a "hot Jupiter" planet, similar in size to the gas giants in our own Solar System, but closer to their parent star.
Is there an electric explanation for the blue colour? The albedo calculation could be misleading if the planet were generating some light of its own - ie if it were a dim star.

Could the blue colour be due to the planet being a small electric star with extremely high current flow per surface area? I guess it would be very bright in UV wavelengths in that case, however its UV emissions may be difficult to distinguish from those of the parent star.

http://phys.org/news/2012-06-hd-189733b ... phere.html
the upper atmosphere is battered by energetic extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray radiation

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