Smallest Star with a Planet

[Steel Tiger]

The talk of far off planets always intrigues me.

New Zealand and Japanese astronomers have discovered the smallest star on record to have an orbiting planet.
The astronomers spotted the star using a powerful new telescope at the Mount John Observatory on New Zealand's South Island.
Scientists have assigned a long technical name to the star, but are yet to give it a shorter nickname.
Astronomer Dr Ian Bond is delighted.
"It's a planet about two or three times heavier than our own Earth, orbiting what's possibly a brown dwarf star," he said.
"Brown dwarfs are known to exist, but what hadn't been known before was whether or not low mass planets could form around them."
The brown dwarf star has a mass of 6 per cent of the Sun.
With the help of its new telescope, the team is expecting to discover more stars.

And this star is tiny!

 

[Xue Sheng]

Cool

A brown dwarf is tiny as compared to our sun. A brown dwarf is, I believe, about the size of Jupiter but considerably more dense.

 

[Sukerkin]

Fascinating. My only sadness when I hear of the increasing prevelence of planetary bodies, is the fact that we (to public knowledge) have not yet had an encounter with a star-faring civilisation.

The odds that we are the first 'potential' are remote to say the least, so the lack of contact means:

1) Technological species tend not exist in contingent time frames
2a) Distances between species precludes contact
2b) Interstellar travel is not practically feasible
3) Other advanced species practise a 'Prime Directive' philosophy
4a) Contact has been 'hidden', for various reasons, either from our side or 'theirs'
4b) Contact has been limited because, as espoused in many a Sci-Fi plot, we are too aggresive for inclusion in the Interstellar Polity.

Any which way, it would be great to have a defintite 'contact' to do away with the 'religious' problem once and for all. Because until we ditch that we shall always be cowering tribes hacking at each other over perceived 'divine will'.

 

[elder999]

Fascinating. My only sadness when I hear of the increasing prevelence of planetary bodies, is the fact that we to public knowledge) have not yet had an encounter with a star-faring civilisation.

The odds that we are the first 'potential' are remote to say the least, so the lack of contact means:

1) Technological species tend not exist in contingent time frames
2a) Distances between species precludes contact
2b) Interstellar travel is not practically feasible
3) Other advanced species practise a 'Prime Directive' philosophy
4a) Contact has been 'hidden', for various reasons, either from our side or 'theirs'
4b) Contact has been limited because, as espoused in many a Sci-Fi plot, we are too aggresive for inclusion in the Interstellar Polity.

Any which way, it would be great to have a defintite 'contact' to do away with the 'religious' problem once and for all. Because until we ditch that we shall always be cowering tribes hacking at each other over perceived 'divine will'.

Ya forgot "5)":

Needle(s)/One big effing Haystack :lol:

Don't see how it will necessarily do away with the "religious problem," especially if the prospective alien civilization is suffering from the same sort of "meme."

 

[Sukerkin]

I thought that was implicit in "2a" :lol:.

It is true tho' that it would be an 'interesting' mix for two God-Bothering civs to encounter each other ...

 

[elder999]

I thought that was implicit in "2a" :lol:.

It is true tho' that it would be an 'interesting' mix for two God-Bothering civs to encounter each other ...

Nah-they could be right close, relatively speaking, especially if they're at an equal or lesser level of technological development to ours. Why is it that we always assume "alien civilizations" must be more advanced than ours? UFOs? What if we wind up finding the alien equivalent of cavemen?[Or ancient Egyptians? What of their almost inevitable gods? I guess we'd become them.....

 

[jks9199]

Or...

The other life forms are just so different that we don't realize we've met...

Imagine something that perceives time literally thousands of times slower than we do; maybe it's a silicon based form of life, but it doesn't have to be. We could be sitting right next to them, and not realize that they're even "alive" because we see no motion, no action...

Or... what if their senses are in completely different spectra? They're sitting out there cursing us for all the light/noise/clutter we're throwing out in their visual spectra while ignoring their pleas for us to stop because it's in a frequency range that's so high we only perceive it as noise or static...

Let's be honest. On top of anything else... there's a lot of assumptions that intelligent, alien life will function in ways that we can recognize and realize are communications. We could talk at them all day... but if they don't have ears, they ain't going to hear us!

 

[MA-Caver]

Fascinating. My only sadness when I hear of the increasing prevelence of planetary bodies, is the fact that we to public knowledge) have not yet had an encounter with a star-faring civilisation.

The odds that we are the first 'potential' are remote to say the least, so the lack of contact means:

1) Technological species tend not exist in contingent time frames
2a) Distances between species precludes contact
2b) Interstellar travel is not practically feasible
3) Other advanced species practise a 'Prime Directive' philosophy
4a) Contact has been 'hidden', for various reasons, either from our side or 'theirs'
4b) Contact has been limited because, as espoused in many a Sci-Fi plot, we are too aggresive for inclusion in the Interstellar Polity.

Any which way, it would be great to have a defintite 'contact' to do away with the 'religious' problem once and for all. Because until we ditch that we shall always be cowering tribes hacking at each other over perceived 'divine will'.

For the sake of argument friendly of course
1) There are far too many stories about inter-stellar visitors to earth to wave it off as "not possible"... oh sure about maybe 80% are probably made up, "I want attention" type stories, but others are just too... well, you know.
2 a & b) for earthlings yes of course
3) I'm kinda doubting that they've watched the historical documents known as Star Trek to adopt the same type of non-contact/interference unless necessary :wink2:
4 a & b) That contact has been hidden would definitely be reasonable and plausible (see #1) the so called "avoiding a panic" syndrome. But I don't think it's too far fetched. That we are aggressive is agreed but I don't think it would preclude contact.

I myself have seen strange lights in the night sky on more than one occasion, and once at a distance an object exhibiting non terrestrial movements during the day. Were they other worldly visitors? I dunno but I would not exclude that possiblity.

Yeah Elder, it is one big effin haystack but it's only that way to US...
Until we stop our warring ways and refocus our ability to come up with newer ways to kill each other and turn them into newer ways to enlighten ourselves and our knowledge of the universe.. hell even of our own star system... we're going to be stuck here and just keep pondering what's out there.

 

[Sukerkin]

Most excellent break-down, Caver.

I've been a serious student of UFOligy since my teenage years.

I had a pretty extensive library before the day, at about 14 or so, my religious indoctrination had a backlash and I burned the (irreplaceable) lot .

As with psychic anomalies, there was always that percentage of reports that could not be refuted that kept the whole idea from being dismissed (especially given the 'quality' or quantity of some of the observers).

 

[Empty Hands]

2a) Distances between species precludes contact
2b) Interstellar travel is not practically feasible

This is really the only explanation you need. The Universe is a rather large place. Using the fastest man-made object created to date, it would take you 156 million YEARS just to reach our nearest stellar neighbor. It would take 3.9 BILLION, MILLION years, many more years than our Universe has existed, just to cross our own galaxy. Is it any wonder we haven't been contacted by some space faring species tucked away in galaxies separated by millions of light-years of empty space?

 

[Sukerkin]

That's a good condensation of the practical problems, EH :tup:

There is some evidence that 'cheat' physics exists when iit comes to travel between the stars but we'll have a while yet before we understant the concept -> engineering 'wriggle' that will get us there.

 

[Steel Tiger]

That's a good condensation of the practical problems, EH :tup:

There is some evidence that 'cheat' physics exists when iit comes to travel between the stars but we'll have a while yet before we understant the concept -> engineering 'wriggle' that will get us there.

Hey, guys at my alma mater, the Australian National University, actually teleported a laser beam. We're getting there...slowly.

http://info.anu.edu.au/mac/Newsletters_and_Journals/ANU_Reporter/Winter_2004/Teleportation.asp

 

[arnisador]

Neat! Now we need one with intelligent life...just one would do!

 

[Empty Hands]

Hey, guys at my alma mater, the Australian National University, actually teleported a laser beam. We're getting there...slowly.

Very cool, but still problematic for interstellar travel. The entangled particle pairs have to be separated before information can be transmitted using them...which means you have to get your entangled particles to wherever you are going before you can instantaneously get there!

Also, there is no indication that this can be used for anything other than transmitting information, rather than particles (i.e. you). Physics won't be cheated, and matter still cannot travel faster than c.

 

[Steel Tiger]

Very cool, but still problematic for interstellar travel. The entangled particle pairs have to be separated before information can be transmitted using them...which means you have to get your entangled particles to wherever you are going before you can instantaneously get there!

Also, there is no indication that this can be used for anything other than transmitting information, rather than particles (i.e. you). Physics won't be cheated, and matter still cannot travel faster than c.

All too true I'm afraid. But it's still way cool.

 

[MA-Caver]

Yeah true the universe as we know it is a big place. And yes, using present technology our family trees would be petrified by the time any one of us gets to where we want to go.
But if we were to stop killing ourselves and stop wasting time figuring out better ways to do it and work on the problem of how to get from point A to point B in space... hey who knows.
Remember that Einstein already gave us the basic formula for the engines, then before he died he was working on the road map... remember a thing he came up with "curved space"??
How long ago did we find out about black holes, worm holes and other universe related phenomena? Wow that was some pretty neat stuff... now on making this nuclear bomb's guidance system a lot more accurate...

We've got the brains to eventually figure out how to do it. But it takes time, it takes money and it takes work and it takes cooperation. America has brilliant people, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and South America all have brilliant people. WHY aren't these people getting together, putting their heads together to figure this stuff out?

Too busy killing one another that's why.

 

[MA-Caver]

.

 

[CoryKS]

Any which way, it would be great to have a defintite 'contact' to do away with the 'religious' problem once and for all. Because until we ditch that we shall always be cowering tribes hacking at each other over perceived 'divine will'.

Unless it turns out that this star-faring race happen to be warriors on a crusade to convert the universe to some goofy, violent Alpha Centaurian religion. Then we're screwed.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Unless it turns out that this star-faring race happen to be warriors on a crusade to convert the universe to some goofy, violent Alpha Centaurian religion. Then we're screwed.

Could be worse... could show up with a book titled "To Serve Man"

 

[CoryKS]

Could be worse... could show up with a book titled "To Serve Man"

lol. IT'S A COOKBOOK!