The 10th planet!
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Infiltrator
Member # 4637
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 00:35
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I'm impressed. It looks like we didn't really knew that well our own solar system. Definitely we aren't in space age yet. :) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4730061.stm :cool: [ Saturday, July 30, 2005 00:36: Message edited by: Overwhelming ] -------------------- Visit the Blades of Avernum Center and the Beta Testing Center -------------- "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ." Colossians 2:6-9 Posts: 483 | Registered: Tuesday, June 29 2004 07:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 5986
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 00:45
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In a few hundred years or maybe a few hundred hundred years, we'll establish military outposts on all of the Pluto-ish planets in the Solar system to protect ourselves from malicious Alien Invaders. And then life will become similar to a Galactic Core scenario. Somewhere, somehow, Richard White will then breach the laws of temporal physics and grin at the state of affairs, feeling vindicated at last. -------------------- Wu wei... it's the only way Posts: 154 | Registered: Monday, June 20 2005 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 5785
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 02:51
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I always wonder how we will enter the space age, since scientists have allready confirmed that no solid matter can travel at the speed of light. [ Saturday, July 30, 2005 02:51: Message edited by: Contra ] -------------------- "..The seventh wave of Thrall stumbled and climbed over the slippery, piled dead and Mazzarin saw The Watcher with them and at last knew the number of his days." Posts: 522 | Registered: Wednesday, May 4 2005 07:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 5986
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 03:52
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Actually, theoretical physicists often think FTL is possible via galactic wormholes. Most people think theoretical physics is a load of dreck, though. ;) I don't think so though, entirely. I have a feeling that once we begin to understand black hole physics much more than what current science covers, everything will fall into place. Oh, and then there's the problem of finding a fuel source that's capable of releasing controlled bursts of energy at levels high enough to promote light speed jumps. hey would most likely be jumps, I assume, because anything more than a hop would be hard for anyone to handle, even with basic knowledge of hyperspace travel. Maybe Schro will come up with some superspeed chemical by mistake and turn the scientific community upside-down. *These theories are backed by a firm foundation of sleep deprivation.* -------------------- Wu wei... it's the only way Posts: 154 | Registered: Monday, June 20 2005 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 06:26
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Cool! I wonder what they'll call it. Though it's a bit of a dodge, in a way: Pluto shouldn't really be classed as a planet. There are probably lots of big icy planet/comet things out there; ones almost as big as Pluto have been known for some time. The only claim to fame for this one is that it's actually bigger than Pluto, so if Pluto's a planet it should be too. But it's pretty darn small for a planet, and the most rational plan would probably be to demote Pluto, and call all these distant iceballs something else. Otherwise we'll probably eventually end up with hundreds of 'planets' in the solar system, most of them very small and very far out and very unlike the eight honest, hard-working planets that really deserve the title. Light speed isn't a big deal for interplanetary travel; it's only when you want to go between star systems that it gets to be a pain. Astronomical scales are a bit hard to grasp, but here's an analogy I've used in class a few times. Put the smallest dot you can make with a pen, in the corner of a normal A4/8.5x11 piece of paper. That's the sun. The earth is an invisible pinprick (less than 1/100 the diameter of the sun-dot), about 3/4 inch (2 cm) away from the sun. Most of the rest of the solar system fits on the page; Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto straggle over the rest of your desktop. This new planet would still be in the room. On this scale, the nearest other star is 2-1/2 miles (4 km) away. That's the interstellar scale: stars are very much further apart than planets. It's miles between dots. Keep scattering dot-stars with their desktop systems every few miles, throughout a pancake volume 60,000 miles across, and you have a galaxy. That's the galactic scale. Galaxies are really, really big. 60,000 is too big a number for me to picture, so I can't really visualize a galaxy as composed of 100 billion stars. Galaxies aren't spaced so far apart, proportionally; the typical spacing between galaxies is only around 20 galaxy-widths. So galaxies are spread through space like clouds in a mostly-clear sky. So if one ever achieves galactic travel or civilization, inter-galactic would not be such a big leap from there. There's a complicated 'geography' of galaxies, like continents and oceans: there are concentrated regions, and big voids. And there are really lots of galaxies. The Hubble space telescope has taken a weeks-long exposure picture of a random tiny patch of dark sky that could be covered by a grain of salt held up at arm's length. That picture is more densely packed with galaxies than the night sky seems to the naked eye to be packed with stars. Pascal wrote 'the eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me', and he didn't know the half of it. [ Saturday, July 30, 2005 06:31: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 4614
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 07:01
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That is pretty cool how much there actually is to the universe. And here we are stuck on an invisible speck. :/ Anyway, this new "planet" in now called 2003-UB313. And it's estimated at 50% larger than Pluto. So if Pluto's a planet, then it should be. However, my reasoning seems to assert that since Neptune is the last of the gas giants and everything past there is rocky bodies, it would make sense to leave these Pluto/Quaoar/Sedna/2003-UB313 object off as homely members of the Kuiper Belt. Maybe larger members, but still members, and not planets in their own right. Whaddaya say? -------------------- -ben4808 For those who love to spam: CSM Forums RIFQ Posts: 3360 | Registered: Friday, June 25 2004 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 07:07
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All small 'planets' past neptune are called with their own name... but I can't remember what it is! Ah! Now I remember! They are simply called Post Neptunian objects (PNOs)! [ Saturday, July 30, 2005 07:21: Message edited by: Frozen Feet ] -------------------- Somebody PLEASE turn the heat on. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 1993
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 08:39
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:P Now the astrologers will have to re-write their horoscope-system, oh well. -------------------- ^ö^ I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. George Bernard Shaw Posts: 1420 | Registered: Wednesday, October 2 2002 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 4614
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 08:58
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No, the horoscope system is forever the same. Astrologers won't even recognize that the true first sign of the zodiac has slowly moved from Aries to Pisces. -------------------- -ben4808 For those who love to spam: CSM Forums RIFQ Posts: 3360 | Registered: Friday, June 25 2004 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 09:10
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Hey, do astrologers even keep track of anything past Saturn (the furthest planet visible to the naked eye, and thus the last one known to the ancients)? And do they actually keep track of any planets accurately, or just apply ancient cycles? I once heard someone give a defence of astrology, to the effect that it is not that the planets affect us, but that the planets simply record the great cyclical shifts of cosmic rhythm, which affect everything. Apparently this is actually a very old rationale for astrology. It's still pretty silly, but not quite as ridiculous as it first sounds. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Mongolian Barbeque
Member # 1528
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 11:05
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Yikes! I'm very distressed to learn of this new discovery... Everybody knows the Tenth Planet (called Mondas) is inhabited by the Cybermen. Soon this world will change course and hurtle towards Earth and resume its place as our twin planet as it sucks all the energy out of our homeworld leaving us to die horrible deaths. Assuming, of course, that the Cybermen don't first send a scouting expedition to Cyber-convert a few million of us to bolster their waning population. :eek:  -------------------- The A.E. van Vogt Information Site My Tribute to the Greatest Writer of the Science Fiction Golden Age Posts: 907 | Registered: Monday, July 15 2002 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 11:31
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quote:Especially since that's more than twice the circumference of the Earth. I knew these distances were big, but I didn't realize they were quite that bad. However, if we could ever get up to relativistic speeds (non-trivial but also non-impossible), I'd expect that length contraction and time dilation would make interstellar travel practical, maybe not not for a quick vacation out on Alpha Centauri, but at least for a multi-generational voyage of discovery. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 4614
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 12:40
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However, it would be only for a personal benefit since there'd be no one to report your findings to after all that time. Well, there might be, but technology would have probably figured it all out already. -------------------- -ben4808 For those who love to spam: CSM Forums RIFQ Posts: 3360 | Registered: Friday, June 25 2004 07:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 5966
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 13:10
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Yes, we all know that there was more junk floating in our solar system for years. There are probably more of those tiny, ice worlds in between Pluto and #10. There might even be more futher out. Probably by 2020 all of those, if they exist, would be found. And on the subject of wormholes, The movie Stargate makes a good point: Supply a machine that generates a wormholes with coordinates and voom! Your off to Andromeda. The problem is actually building one. Wormholes can only stay open for a short amount of time, so you can only get about halfway through it before it collapses. But that is a long theory and if you would like more info you should seek out a smart guy like Stephen Hawking. Blackholes are like wormholes in a way. They suck stuff up mainly and nothing (not even light) can escape from a blackhole. Blackholes are not permanent and they shrink with the more stuff they absorb. The stuff that they suck up is eventually returned back into the universe. Physicists have thought about creating them in contained labs. But no luck yet. Yet again if you want detail, ask Stephen Hawking. Okay, I'm done with my boring statement. You can return to your girfriends/wives/cats, or what ever you hold dear. -- Diarog Lethuta -------------------- Ever since I met you so very long ago, There's been something I've badly needed to know, Do you love me and want to end my pain? Or do I pursue your love in vain? "And your not a doctor, but you play one in real life" -Jerry Seinfield "My power extends far beyond space and time, do not dare oppose me, for my wrath is something to be greatly feared" -Diarog Lethuta: The Tome of Diarog Lethuta, Egypt, 5000 B.C. Posts: 91 | Registered: Thursday, June 16 2005 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 5450
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 13:20
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This truly is old news. I heard it about 2 months ago on a TV show. But still, interesting to know about. -------------------- Mugglenet--The ULTIMATE Harry Potter Site. Polaris-- New location. Posts: 2396 | Registered: Saturday, January 29 2005 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 2210
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 13:35
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I don't think we'd have too much problem with the cybermen-- a wonderful opportunity to empty our prisons of repeat non-violent offenders for a nice sum of money. :P -------------------- Wasting your time and mine looking for a good laugh. Star Bright, Star Light, Oh I Wish I May, I Wish Might, Wish For One Star Tonight. Posts: 1084 | Registered: Thursday, November 7 2002 08:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 15:07
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Kelandon is right: Einsteinian relativity doesn't prevent us getting to the stars, it just prevents us getting back in time for tea. A star 100 lightyears from Earth can't be reached in less than 100 years of Earth time, but a traveller at nearly the speed of light could arrive within a much shorter personal time. Their voyage might take them only a few weeks; but after a round trip they would return, like Rip van Winkle, to an Earth on which more than two centuries had passed. Perhaps someday becoming a starfarer will be like becoming a seafarer was a few centuries ago -- a decision to cut all ties with a home you will never see again, in favor of a life discovering distant ports of call. A few general relativity corrections: It is not known that wormholes last a short time. In fact, it is not known how they can exist at all; any statements you hear about them are based on saying 'suppose somehow there was a wormhole ...'. Traversable wormholes would not really be anything like black holes. Black holes grow as they absorb matter, and only shrink if they emit it. Stephen Hawking is famous, among other things, for framing an argument (though not a watertight proof) to the effect that black holes do emit thermal radiation. This would imply that an isolated black hole, which was not absorbing anything, would indeed shrink. The only thinking physicists have done about creating black holes in labs is to laugh at how impossible it would be with any foreseeable human technology. A few physicists, of whom I happen to be one, have thought about making experiments with the propagation of sound or light in moving fluids, which would in some ways be a sort of analogy for a black hole. We have naturally played up the words 'black hole' in our publications, but in fact we have not imagined making any real black holes. [ Saturday, July 30, 2005 15:22: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 5576
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 18:50
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I wouldn't say that black holes are laughed at as impossible, there was an article in the May issue of Scientific American discussing the possiblitly of creating quantum sized black holes. (I'm annoyed to discover that I can't find my family's copy of the article) As I recall, it suggested that they are not too far beyond energies we can handle. (Though perhaps well beyond the energies that politicians will pay for.) Even if they turn out to be possible, they would indeed have no applications to travel. Personally, I have found that with the number of theories competing to decribe the possible behavior of wormholes and travel through spinning black holes etc., and with the lack of experimental support for any, that it's not worth getting too excited over any of them yet. I'm suspicious of any idea FTL travel, done by wormhole or whatever other method, given that special relativity forbids FTL travel in order to preserve causality, and so whatever method you could think of would still end up putting mass/energy/information outside of the light cones they belong in, and ruining causality just the same. -------------------- Überraschung des Dosenöffners! Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 30 2005 19:06
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Perhaps I stand corrected, then, because Sci Am is usually pretty reasonable in what it prints. But I really wonder. Creating a black hole so small it was noticeably subject to quantum mechanics would constitute a laboratory experiment on quantum gravity, and by the standard reckoning, that kind of thing is 16 orders of magnitude away from our current capability. And our current capability is only about 12 orders of magnitude better than banging rocks together with your hands. Interestingly, there is a known way to have FTL without violating causality -- Alcubierre's 'warp drive' metric describes a curved spacetime bubble that carries a little enclosed volume of undistorted space through the universe at an arbitrarily high speed. It is a sort of 'wormhole-as-you-go'. The trouble is that, like wormholes, it would require negative energy density in some places. There is no known way to achieve that within classical physics, and no-one knows how to mix quantum physics with gravity. [ Saturday, July 30, 2005 19:18: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 878
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written Sunday, July 31 2005 07:21
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I read in another article that the reason this wasn't found earlier was that its orbit is at a 40 something degree to the other planets, so no one would think of looking for planets in that part of the sky. -------------------- Warning: Posts may contain misspellinks and typo.s Posts: 409 | Registered: Sunday, March 31 2002 08:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 5699
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written Sunday, July 31 2005 10:06
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It has been verified that the new planety is in fact made of cheese. Posts: 54 | Registered: Monday, April 11 2005 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, July 31 2005 13:54
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By Wallace and Gromit. It is pure Wensleydale. Or maybe Camembert? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 5785
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written Sunday, July 31 2005 15:28
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I never said that it would not be possibly to use a worm-hole to move mass through a large space in a short time, but actuall lightspeed would not. Picture yourself running at 300.000 km per second. Your clothes, your shoes, your skin - all gone. It would be blown away by the intense heat/speed caused by that movement. Edit: And on the comment on Black Holes..Several Universities around the globe are activily trying to create a "Black Hole" or "Dark Matter". Problem is that even if they got their super-conductors and high-tech equipment they still can't provide the immense gravity that is needed to create such a thing. [ Sunday, July 31, 2005 15:34: Message edited by: Contra ] -------------------- "..The seventh wave of Thrall stumbled and climbed over the slippery, piled dead and Mazzarin saw The Watcher with them and at last knew the number of his days." Posts: 522 | Registered: Wednesday, May 4 2005 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 4614
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written Sunday, July 31 2005 15:53
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quote:Right. Which is a pretty good indicator of two things: (1) This is just a large piece of space rock, and not so much a planet. (2) There's most likely more where it came from. -------------------- -ben4808 For those who love to spam: CSM Forums RIFQ Posts: 3360 | Registered: Friday, June 25 2004 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 878
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written Sunday, July 31 2005 16:41
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Indeed, now that they know there are large objects from this solar system outside of the disk where most things are found, many more such objects will likely be found in the next few years. By the way in another article it said this "planet" was first spotted in 2003, but because it is so far away its movement wasn't noticed and it wasn't realized it was in this solar system and not some dim or distant star. -------------------- Warning: Posts may contain misspellinks and typo.s Posts: 409 | Registered: Sunday, March 31 2002 08:00 |