Exoplanet count rises by 28

[MeteorWayne]

From here at SFN <br /><br /><br />28 new exoplanets found<br />UC-BERKELEY NEWS RELEASE<br />Posted: May 29, 2007<br /><br />BERKELEY - The world's largest and most prolific team of planet hunters announced Monday, May 28, the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, increasing to 236 the total number of known exoplanets. <br /><br />University of California, Berkeley, post-doctoral fellow Jason T. Wright and newly minted Ph.D. John Asher Johnson reported the new exoplanets at a media briefing at the semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Honolulu. The findings, also reported in poster sessions at the meeting, are a result of the combined work of the California and Carnegie Planet Search team and the Anglo-Australian Planet Search team. <br /><br />The planets are among 37 new objects - each orbiting a star, but smaller than a star -discovered by the teams within the past year. Seven of the 37 are confirmed brown dwarfs, which are failed stars that nevertheless are much more massive than the largest, Jupiter-sized planets. Two others are borderline and could be either large, gas giant planets or small brown dwarfs. <br /><br />The California and Carnegie Planet Search team is headed by Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley; Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University; and Steve Vogt, professor of astronomy at UC Santa Cruz. The Anglo-Australian Planet Search team is headed by Chris Tinney of the University of New South Wales and Hugh Jones of the University of Hertfordshire. They and colleagues Shannon Patel of UC Santa Cruz and Simon O'Toole of the Anglo-Australian Observatory have published their exoplanet results in papers over the past year, but the AAS meeting is the first time the teams have presented the past year's findings in their entirety. <br /><br />In addition to reporti <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[weeman]

So, the newly discovered 28 planets boosts our total known planets to 236. In my opinion, this almost has to be proof that somewhere out there in the universe is another planet that is teeming with life.<br /><br />If we've discovered 236 planets just in this small region of our own galaxy, and there is still the entire other side of this galaxy that we can't exlpore, wouldn't that mean that each galaxy might have hundreds if not thousands of planets? Now extrapolate that over the entire universe, where there exists some 200 billion galaxies! <br /><br />Even if many of the planets that we discover are gas giants, it still proves that solar systems form all over the galaxy, and more than likely, all over the universe. <br /><br />Anyways, thanks for the article <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000">Techies: We do it in the dark. </font></strong></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>"Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.</strong><strong>" -Albert Einstein </strong></font></p> </div>

 

[qso1]

I wouldn't say proof of planets out there teeming with life...but very strong evidence. I can understand why anyone would say its hard to imagine that no other planet would have life. And I basically agree that it is hard to imagine earth as the only planet with life in the entire Universe. But it is possible however unproveable. <br /><br />The odds seem to indicate life bearing earthlike worlds may be rare numerically...but in a galaxy containing billions of stars...there could be hundreds, maybe thousands of planets bearing life making them not so rare.<br /><br />weeman:<br />Even if many of the planets that we discover are gas giants, it still proves that solar systems form all over the galaxy, and more than likely, all over the universe.<br /><br />Me:<br />You pretty much hit the nail on the head. With todays tech, the best we can see are the gas giants and thats what has predominated the exoplanets deiscovered so far. As our tech progresses. We will eventually be tallying up large numbers of rocky and earthlike rocky worlds. Its to the point now where its just a question of whether such worlds and life are rare...or common. Maybe somewhere in between. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[3488]

I agree with weeman.<br /><br />He/she is correct in saying that we have found so many planets orbiting stars in only<br />a tiny portion of the Milky Way.<br /><br />It will be good to see an upto date listing of all extras solar planets to date.<br /><br />I think that the ESA COROT is going to add to this list enormously shortly.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[robnissen]

In fact, virtually every metal rich single star, and many binary and even trinary star systems probably have planets. Currently we are limited to finding stars through one of two methods. 1) Stars with planets transiting in the same plane as earth -- which even if every star had planets, we could only detect about 1% with this method, merely because from a statistical standpoint, only 1% of the time would the plane be alligned with earth. 2) The radial method, where a large planet orbiting close to a star pulls on the star to make it wiggle. (There is a third method, gravitational lensing, but that is just starting to be used.) Thus, neither of these methods could be used to detect a solar system like ours (with the possible exception of the transiting method with a very close star which coincidentally was in lthe same plane as earth). The fact that we have detected so many planets with these two simple methods, makes it highly likely that orders of magnitudes more planets are in our part of the Milky Way just waiting for us to detect.

 

[3488]

I agree totally.<br /><br />Will not be long before the 1,000th extrasolar planet has been found.<br /><br />The vast majority to date have been found around stars that are either very faint & / or far<br /> away (except Pollux / Beta Geminorum).<br /><br />It would be cool if planets were found around other familiar stars like Procyon, Sirius, Arcturus.<br /><br />It has been suggested that Vega may have a jovian type world already formed,<br />but have seen or heard nothing new since.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

OK, why don't we start an SDC friendly contest to predict exoplanet 1000?<br /><br />If we think it's a good idea, I'll (or anyone else) will start a thread here.<br /><br />It's not as easy as it sounds, such as when is a confirmation considered offical, etc,etc,etc.<br /><br />But, pick your dates now, and I'll transfer the..<br /><br />Never mind, I'm starting a new thread now.<br /><br />MW <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[dragon04]

Are there any readily available statistics on stars observed vs. planetary systems discovered?<br /><br />There must be hundreds of millions of planets out there. How many stars need to be surveyed before the sample group is large enough to to make larger predictions by? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>

 

[jaxtraw]

I'm not sure what meaningful statistics one could glean from current observations, since we can only see big ones in small orbits normally, and it depends on the distance and mass of the parent star, and stuff like that.<br /><br />Currently for instance we're finding lots of hot gas giants, which nobody would have predicted. Maybe our models are entirely wrong and most solar systems consist of a gas giant near the sun and lots of little terrestrials farther out, or maybe most solar systems are more like belt systems with lots of dwarf worlds and no "major" planets. Which is one reason I think the IAU were precipitate in declaring a definition of "planet"* at all.<br /><br />One thing ISTM though is that our own system has a (perhaps, remarkably) catastrophic history, what with tipped over gas giants, giant moons ripped out of terrestrials, whatever put that mass of debris around Saturn, an inner rocky planet with its outer layers missing entirely, that weird crustal dichotomy on Mars... We may be very atypical.<br /><br />But I think it's too early to start drawing any real conclusions from what's been found so far. It's like trying to draw a conclusion about the fauna of Africa, when you can only see things as tall as or taller than elephants within 10km of Harare.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*especially the ludicrous idea that planets only exist around our own star, so such bodies around other stars have to be called "exoplanets" or whatever, thus wiping out at least a century of vernacular usage, rant rant.

 

[jaxtraw]

...not to mention the Late Heavy Bombardment...

 

[weeman]

<font color="yellow"> He/she is correct in saying that we have found so many planets orbiting stars in only <br />a tiny portion of the Milky Way. </font><br /><br />I'm a he, 3488 <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><strong><font color="#ff0000">Techies: We do it in the dark. </font></strong></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>"Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.</strong><strong>" -Albert Einstein </strong></font></p> </div>