Tuesday, October 20, 2009

32 New Planets



Reuters: Scientists find trawl of 32 new planets.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European astronomers announced they had found 32 new planets orbiting stars outside our solar system and said on Monday they believe their find means that 40 percent or more of Sun-like stars have such planets.

The planets range in size from about five times the size of Earth to about five times the size of Jupiter, they said. More have been discovered, too, they said, promising more announcements later this year.

The latest discoveries bring the total of known exoplanets to about 400, said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

"Nature doesn't like a vacuum so if there is space to put a planet it will put a planet there," Udry told reporters in an Internet briefing from a meeting of astronomers in Porto, Portugal.

"More than 40 percent of stars like the sun have low mass planets," Udry added.

The team used the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher or HARPS, a spectrograph attached to the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter (11.8-foot) telescope in La Silla, Chile.

The spectrograph does not image the planets directly but scientists can calculate their size and mass by detecting tiny changes in a star's wobbling caused by a planet's small gravitational pull.

Astronomers are keen to find Earthlike planets as these are the most likely to harbor life. HARPS has spotted 75 planets circling 30 different stars. The ESO team did not give details of which stars the 32 new planets were circling.

12 comments:

KV said...

OIM,
From the article:

The spectrograph does not image the planets directly but scientists can calculate their size and mass by detecting tiny changes in a star's wobbling caused by a planet's small gravitational pull.

See the irony in your thinking on gravitation?

OilIsMastery said...

What you call gravitation I call magnetism.

KV said...

OIM,

We went through this before, a magnet can not materialize without a charge. Or, it is an effect!

Add this: a charge needs substance for its duality to be supported at a point and in space. The substance - called mass, does that through gravity. QED

OilIsMastery said...

If magnetism is too difficult for you to understand then I'll use the term electromagnetism if you prefer.

Points and space are imaginary and are not physical material objects.

Mass is an illusion and gravity is electromagnetic.

KV said...

OIM,

Magnetics is fine as I use it all the time, but never get delusional about its source, somewhere in some charge moving or spinning.

It is you who has difficulty with gravity and you go on making platitudes:Mass is an illusion and gravity is electromagnetic.

Who is the creator of this illusion of mass: electromagnetism, of course. And who is the creator of electromagnetism? Plasma! Who created plasma? There were there before anything began! So what happened to the creator of the book? Plasma ate it! (Like - the dingo ate your baby! - Seinfeld!).

Jeffery Keown said...

Oils gets by on imagining that space can't curve. He imagines that gravitational lensing, black holes and every other observation and theory are just nonsense made up so the lab coats can keep their jobs.

He's a fucking joke. Move on. Nothing to see here. Just denial of the facts.

I have not been commenting much lately, I've been planning (or avoiding planning) my wedding, and playing the fuck out of some DnD. Both activities are far better than slamming my brain against Oil's Denial Machine.

OilIsMastery said...

KV,

If electrons exist they are in motion so there is your moving electric charge. The reality is magnetic monopoles are always in motion.

"The earth itself is a great big magnet." -- Edward Leedskalnin, stone mason, 1945

"Now about the sphere magnet. If you have a strong magnet you can change the poles in the sphere in any side you want or take the poles out so the sphere will not be a magnet any more. From this you can see that the metal is not the real magnet. The real magnet is the substance that is circulating in the metal. Each particle in the substance is an individual magnet by itself, and both North and South Pole individual magnets. They are so small that they can pass through anything. In fact, they can pass through metal easier than through the air. They are in constant motion, they are running one kind of magnet against the other kind, and if guided in the right channels they possess perpetual power. The North and South Pole magnets are cosmic force. They hold together this earth and everything in it." -- Edward Leedskalnin, stone mason, 1945

"Who is the creator of this illusion of mass"

Newton and his followers.

"electromagnetism, of course." And who is the creator of electromagnetism? Plasma! Who created plasma?"

God.

OilIsMastery said...

Jeffery,

"Oils gets by on imagining that space can't curve."

Why don't you believe in geometry and mathematics?

See Lobachevsky Theorem 20.

"Theorem 20: If in any triangle the sum of the three angles is equal to two right angles, so is this the case for every other triangle." -- Nikolai I. Lobachevsky, mathematician, 1840

If space has a shape then what color is it?

"He imagines that gravitational lensing, black holes and every other observation and theory are just nonsense made up so the lab coats can keep their jobs."

Gravitational lenses and black holes have never been observed. Ever.

No galaxy in the universe causes gravitational lensing.

Black holes cannot possibly be observed since observation requires photons and electromagnetic radiation. Black holes are impossible.

"...the 'Schwarzschild singularities' do not exist in physical reality." -- Albert Einstein, mathematician, 1939

KV said...

JK,

Congrats and be happy. I am taking your advice. I have also concluded that OIM is the alien, unfortunately left behind.

Enjoy.

Anaconda said...

Jeffery Keown: "[OilIsMastery] gets by on imagining that space can't curve."

No, apparently Jeffy gets by on imagining space can curve."

It's a mathematical fantasy.

Quantum_Flux said...

Yeah, "new" planets, hurray! Sure, but could be like one of those "Columbus discovered America", right, sure he did, lol.

OilIsMastery said...

QF,

Exactly! lol.