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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: 16 Candidate Stars (ES Planets)

Hubble SWEEPS

What a photo; zillions of stars. 

This crowded star field towards the center of our Milky Way Galaxy turns out to be a great place to search for planets beyond our solar system. In fact, repeatedly imaging about 180,000 stars in the field over a one week period...

In the end, SWEEPS astronomers found 16 candidate stars (green circles identify 11 in this cropped picture) that are likely closely orbited by large Jupiter-sized planets with periods of a few days or less.

Why so many super-Jupiters out there, seemingly?  Is our diversely beautiful Solar System an anomaly?  We've pondered that before and I'm wondering again.

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

samy

Banned

From: Turku, Finland

Registered: 2006-01-25

Posts: 180

Website

Re: 16 Candidate Stars (ES Planets)

Because they're all we can detect so far?

Once we're able to detect small, rocky planets, I'm sure they'll be more numerous than the brown dwarfs we're limited to finding at the moment.

flashgordon

Member

Registered: 2003-01-21

Posts: 314

Re: 16 Candidate Stars (ES Planets)

sixteen out of such a small star field is pretty good I must admit, but I would think the seti searches done so far must indicate a maximum of e.t's.

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: 16 Candidate Stars (ES Planets)

Blasting out Earth’s location with the hope of reaching aliens is a controversial idea – two teams of scientists are doing it anyway

https://theconversation.com/blasting-ou … way-182036