Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on February 21, 2012, 02:01:55 pm
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17117030
This is exciting news, the sooner we get out there and take a peek the better in my opinion :)
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The planet was discovered in 2009 by ground-based telescopes. It is about 2.7 times the Earth's diameter, but weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits its red-dwarf star at a distance of just two million km, meaning temperatures on GJ 1214b probably reach above 200C.
Don't forget to pack an air conditioning unit.
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Heh, well, we don't have to send people, in fact, we couldn't, we don't have the technology.
If we can build a probe that can survive for a short period on Venus, then we could certainly get something underway that could survive those conditions long enough to send back some interesting data, and the sooner we start, the sooner we find out, cause it's going to take ages to get there.
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Heh, well, we don't have to send people, in fact, we couldn't, we don't have the technology.
I guess my facetious key was broken :P
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LOL Nah, I got the point, just me being in 'factual mode' for some unknown reason at the moment ;)
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Sounds like the planet is one huge pressure-cooker. Who's up for steamed rice?
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Great find. :) Obviously far from hospitable to humans, but the more planets we discover with signs of water, the better the chances of someday discovering a planet with signs of life.
Just browsed through a few papers on this planet on ApJ. Interestingly, atmospheric models indicate wind speeds of a few kilometers per second.
The exoplanet GJ1214b presents an interesting example of compositional degeneracy for low-mass planets. Its atmosphere may be composed of water, super-solar or solar metallicity material. We present atmospheric circulation models of GJ1214b for these three compositions, with explicit gray radiative transfer and an optional treatment of MHD bottom drag. All models develop strong, superrotating zonal winds (~1-2 km s–1). The degree of eastward heat advection, which can be inferred from secondary eclipse and thermal phase curve measurements, varies greatly between the models. These differences are understood as resulting from variations in the radiative times at the thermal photosphere, caused by separate molecular weight and opacity effects. Our GJ1214b models illustrate how atmospheric circulation can be used as a probe of composition for similar tidally locked exoplanets in the mini-Neptune/waterworld class.
Bring your wind jackets!
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Still no planet with naturally occurring beer...
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:(
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Quite the interesting find
And psssh, 200C. That's nothing!
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Still no planet with naturally occurring beer...
i think there was a nebula made of alcohol somewhere
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Still no planet with naturally occurring beer...
i think there was a nebula made of alcohol somewhere
Yeah in coo coo land. Your just as likely to find a planet of snugglemufaluses...?
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Still no planet with naturally occurring beer...
i think there was a nebula made of alcohol somewhere
Yeah in coo coo land. Your just as likely to find a planet of snugglemufaluses...?
The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979ApJ...227..422G)
--J. B. S. Haldane
edit: It's methyl alcohol, not like the stuff that's fun to drink, but still. Nebulae synthesize some interesting things, including Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and complex organic molecules.
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Yeah in coo coo land. Your just as likely to find a planet of snugglemufaluses...?
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/beercld.htm
So where's that planet of snugglemufaluses then?
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Wow, both methyl and ethyl! That's awesome.
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Still no planet with naturally occurring beer...
i think there was a nebula made of alcohol somewhere
Yeah in coo coo land. Your just as likely to find a planet of snugglemufaluses...?
Didn't you know? Humans are the universes attempt at getting rid of all the excess alcohol :)
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well, it backfired then.
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well, it backfired then.
My guess is that your blood alcohol level is too low to properly appreciate that truth :)
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We make too much for us to get rid of it all effectively. I vote we stop wasting our time with this pansy wine and beer stuff, and convert all our breweries and vinyards into distilleries. Let's kick our drinking efficiency up a few notches!
Oh, and the planet is cool too. :nervous:
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Wow, both methyl and ethyl! That's awesome.
Too bad its virtually impossible to separate ethyl alcohol from methyl for consumption. I wonder if the resulting blindness would be worth the bragging rights of drinking ALCOHOL FROM SPACE!
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As long as the percentages are correct it doesn't matter. :p
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Wow, both methyl and ethyl! That's awesome.
Too bad its virtually impossible to separate ethyl alcohol from methyl for consumption. I wonder if the resulting blindness would be worth the bragging rights of drinking ALCOHOL FROM SPACE!
Yes
Yes it would be
Considering by then, we could all just replace them with these
(http://www.lightspeedfineart.com/Databases/Images/LPC880-07-015.jpg)
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There's booze in space?
WHY THE **** HAVEN'T WE GOT FTL YET??? :banghead:
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It is booze that's a lot more poisonous than usual, that's why.
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Sounds like our planetary finds are coming closer and closer to the Time Lord planet! ;7
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Sounds like our planetary finds are coming closer and closer to the Time Lord planet! ;7
Returning, Returning, Always Returning, through Fire, through Ice, it is Returning... ;)
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There's booze in space?
Of course! What do you think the plot of Freespace was all about?
(http://i.imgur.com/fcOYS.jpg)
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The mystery of why the Shivans wanted to blow up stars, and the origins of Bosch Beer explained... ;)
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The mystery of why the Shivans wanted to blow up stars, and the origins of Bosch Beer explained... ;)
Indeed
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Somehow the phrase liquid water and the surface temperature of 200C go together now?
I...don't think that's correct.
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It's absolutely correct, and it's explained in the article.
Water can exist as a gas, liquid, or even solid at temperatures well past 200°C. It's because phase is determined not just by temperature, but pressure as well.
(http://i.imgur.com/f3QKR.png)
GJ 1214b has a pretty thick atmosphere, so it could harbor some quite exotic forms of water on its surface.
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GJ 1214b has a pretty thick atmosphere, so it could harbor some quite exotic forms of water on its surface.
... and things with tentacles? :)
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I would kill to see water be a solid, vapour, and liquid at the same time (points to triple point)
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... and things with tentacles? :)
I'd be surprised if there's life there, but who knows! There's weird enough stuff on our own planet, living in conditions not too dissimilar to that, so... :shaking:
I would kill to see water be a solid, vapour, and liquid at the same time (points to triple point)
Does that all the time... ever have a glass of water with ice cubes in it? And there was air around it? There ya go. :P
What's really cool is when water gets chilled below its freezing point without actually freezing. Then if you shake it, it will freeze almost instantly (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9N-Y2CyYhM). Makes a kickass sound, too. Found out about that by accident one cold winter morning when I tried drinking a bottle of spring water that I'd left in my car overnight.
/me opens bottle, lifts to drink.
*CRSHIIINK!*
WAT! :C
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Glass of water, where the ice cubes don't melt, and there are visible water vapours that don't dissipate
Sidenote, got the perfect idea for a new Sauna/pool design
And I know what I'm doing at the mall this Saturday
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jouKXytWD8g&feature=related
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Quite Interesting! I would imagine, like the commnents said above, this planet would have a thick atmosphere, like Venus, but without the the lava. It would reflect the sunlight pretty well. I'l imagine.
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Not necessarily. Water vapor is actually a very potent greenhouse gas. This planet promises to have rather a lot of it.
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Whoops, I was wrong about what I said earlier regarding triple points -- water doesn't actually hit the triple point until the pressure is ~10% of sea level. When it does you literally do get water freezing and boiling at the same time.
Couldn't find a video demonstration with water, but there is a good one for Tert-Butyl Alcohol which does pretty much the exact same thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLRqpJN9zeA&feature=related) (Fast forward to 50 seconds to see the triple point). Really trippy.
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That is really trippy.
heh. I watched a documentary on Exoplanets recently and the astronomers theorize that the bottom of the ocean would be nothing but ice, because of the super-planets immense size and graviy, water molecules are scruntched together like sardines.
Although, I doubt it would be case for this planet. (As I realized just now) ;)
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It could totally be the case if it's mostly water. Water has like seven different solid phases with different arrangements of molecules, depending on temperature and pressure.
EDIT: Yeah, see? watsisname already posted a phase diagram here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80017.msg1586578#msg1586578). All those roman numerals are showing the different possible forms of ice.