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Coffee House => Coffee House Boards => CH / Science and Technology => Topic started by: Dandy on April 20, 2007, 06:19:48 AM
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Water on extra solar planet found (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6544257.stm)
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Not the nicest place to find it though ;-)
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I thought the thread title said wafer!!
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Hum,
a tiny wafer-thin (http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/ml/wafer.wav) mint...
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But it's gaseous, which means it could never support human life. So no hope of moving there when we have made Earth uninhabitable (or to escape the relentless onslaught of chavs...)
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moto
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motorollin wrote:
But it's gaseous, which means it could never support human life. So no hope of moving there when we have made Earth uninhabitable (or to escape the relentless onslaught of chavs...)
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moto
Actually, thats not entirely true... that world seems to be in the temperature range of 0-40 Celsius, so that would probably be water vapour, which we have here on earth ;-) water and vapour can co-exist at certain temperature/pressure configurations and ranges - indeed just above 0C, at about 1 bar pressure, there is the triple point where ice water and steam coexist in equilibrium.
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@AGAFaster
I think you are looking at a different extrasolar planet. The one in the article is a gas giant in a very tight orbit around its parent star and is candidate for a chthonian planet. Its atmosphere is presently being stripped away by a combination of the solar wind and the extremely high atmospheric temperature (as you may know, the RMS speed of gas molecules increases with temperature). The estimated temperatures on this planet are in excess of 1000 celsius. Hydrogen is literally being "boiled off" and carrying many other gases (including the detected water vapour) with it.
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Might need to take a sun-hat, then.
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Aha! I was thinking of the one that was on the telly the other day (20.5 ly away - I forget its official designation)
yes, I have heard of these - that would make it extremely easy to detect water presence then !!
similarly, the one I was thinking of is believed the 2nd world in a system of at least 3 - there is a gas giant much closer in to the parent star, which is a red dwarf IIRC. The Earth-like world goes round in tens of days, but is in the star's "goldilocks zone" due to the low luminosity of the star. the 3rd world is reckoned to be neptune type world.
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here... (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6589157.stm)
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No wafers. (http://www.geocities.com/montypythonline/sounds/wafers.wav)
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@Agafaster
Ah yes, Gleise 581c. Given it could be around 50% larger (and hence maybe up to 5x more massive) than earth, the surface gravity could be up to 2x or more than we experience here. Anything evolving there would probably be pretty robust :-)
Given the proximity to the star it's possible it could be tidally locked. Even if it isn't, the tidal forces exerted on any oceans it may have would still surely be far stronger than anything we see here. High tide really would be high!
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Actually, I worked it out last Friday !
I got surface g as about 21N/kg (earth is 9.81 N/kg) which is pretty close to your estimate. it all depends on the radius of the world really, as well as its mass. yes it would be robust - particularly if it evolved 'sun'side!!
if it had a large moon, that would help, especially with warming the night-side, and maybe even affecting any tidal locking with the star.
I doubt the conditions would be right for life to evolve there though, as the higher end of the light spectrum from the star would be a lot less than ours - although the proximity may more than make up for output. the higher frequency radiation I think helps spur on evolution by helping certain organic reactions on - like genetic mutations. just a few musings !