Further proof that science is worthless: Planet discovered that shouldn't exist.
hot jupiter Unregistered
Posted 8/26/2009 10:35 pm
Scientists have discovered a planet that shouldn't exist. The finding, they say, could alter our understanding of orbital dynamics, a field considered pretty well settled since the time of astronomer Johannes Kepler 400 years ago.
The planet is known as a "hot Jupiter," a gas giant orbiting the star Wasp-18, located about 330 light years away. The planet, Wasp-18b, is so close to the star that it completes a full orbit (its "year") in less than an Earth day, according to the research, which was published in the journal Nature.
Of the more than 370 exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than our sun — discovered so far, this is just the second with such a close orbit.
The problem is that a planet that close should be consumed by its parent star in less than 1 million years, say the authors at Keele University in England. The star Wasp-18 is believed to be about a billion years old, and since stars and the planets around them are thought to form at the same time, Wasp-18b should have been reduced to cinders ages ago.
"This planet should spiral inwards on such a short time scale that the likelihood of seeing it is very low," said Coel Hellier, an astrophysicist at Keele University.
"That's a paradox," added Douglas P. Hamilton, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, who wrote a commentary accompanying the report. He said there are a variety of explanations, but none is satisfactory.
Posted 8/26/2009 10:47 pm
One possibility is that Wasp-18, which is a sun-like, medium-size star, is 1,000 times less energetic than expected. That would mean it would produce much less friction on the planet than would normally occur.
This orbital drag, which scientists call the "tidal dissipation factor," slows the planet each time it circles the star. Eventually, the planet no longer has enough energy to maintain its position and falls into the star and is engulfed.
But if the star's energy is 1,000 times less than expected, that would be a big surprise, Hamilton said. It would imply that science doesn't understand the composition and characteristics of sun-like stars as well as has been thought.
A second possibility is that the planet hasn't been in its current position very long, Hellier said. Wasp-18b could have started farther away and spiraled inward to its current position over millions of years. One way for this to happen is if the planet got bumped out of its orbit by another planet.
"However, that does not solve the problem," Hellier said, because the planet's lifetime should still be very short; it would be very unlikely for his team to have found it where they did.
The final possibility is that "we're just missing something — there is some property of stars or tides that we just don't understand," Hamilton said.
In our solar system, the closest example of a similar mystery is Mars' moon, Phobos. It orbits Mars at a distance of only about 5,600 miles, 40 times closer than our moon is to the Earth. That orbit should cause it to crash into Mars in just 30 million years, a fraction of the 4.5-billion-year age of the solar system.
"Perhaps we really are missing some key bit of physics," Hamilton wrote in his commentary.
An answer could be coming in just a few years. According to Hellier, if the orbit of Wasp-18b really is decaying at the expected rate, the effects should be measurable within the next decade.
Posted 8/26/2009 10:56 pm
No, I'm not religious, and I'm not a scientist for the same reasons. There is a balance between everything in this world, and too much of one thing upsets it. On one hand, you have your creationists and fundies, on the other hand you've got scientists who have no business in science. That's how bad science like global warming and this non-existing planet fiasco happens. And by the way, it's not one anomaly. Remember when Pluto was a planet?
The only mass of people in the world who see a dichotomy between religion and science are US Christians. The Vatican has no such problem, nor do orthodox jews nor do islamic states.
It really is a sepp thing to think that believing in God excludes objectively exploring and understanding the world.
Posted 8/26/2009 11:04 pm
It does to a certain extent. For example if you were to study stars and planets, you would just explain everything with 'thats how god made it' if you were a religious scientist.
I can assure you that Saudi researchers of any field publish and read the same journals and use the same set of tools and conventions as euro and new world scientists where they did there post-docs. Religious beliefs just don't enter into their work as scientists.
