There are more things in heaven and earth…
…Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Recently scientists announced:
Triple-star systems with detected planets are rare enough; this is believed to be just the fifth such discovery. But the giant gassy world in this one ”” formally known as Planet HD 131399Ab ”” has the biggest known orbit in a multi-star system.
Its orbit is double Pluto’s ”” or roughly 550 Earth years. That’s how long it takes to orbit its system’s brightest star, a super-size sun. The two smaller stars orbit one another and, as a pair, orbit with their big stellar brother…
During part of the planet’s orbit, all three stars are visible on the same day, offering triple sunrises and sunsets and allowing for day and night. For about one-fourth of its year ”” around 100 to 140 Earth years ”” there’s continuous daylight. That’s because as the big sun is rising, the two smaller ones are setting.
“With three suns, the planet will see different weird combinations of sunrises and sunsets,” said co-author Daniel Apai, a University of Arizona astronomer.
He added: “This is a system for which I would not want to design a calendar.”
“Such is a system up with which I shall not put.”
Not really all that surprising. Our own system could have easily been a double star system. Just give Jupiter a bit more mass and it would have been an M class dwarf star, ad we would have had two suns.
physicsguy,
I’ve read that before about Jupiter and finally decided to confirm it, as I just read that Jupiter contains 2.5 times the mass of all the planetary material in our solar system. But only 1/1,048 of the sun’s mass.
That of course is far less mass than the sun’s.
It turns out that M class dwarf stars range in mass from .075 (7.5%) to about .50 (50%) of the mass of our sun. So Jupiter would have had to contain considerably more than ‘a bit’ more mass… 😉
I read recently that some astrophysicists are speculating that solar systems with gas giants along with ‘rocky’ planets in the ‘goldilocks’ or life bearing (as we know it) zone… may be not uncommon in the universe. And also that gas giants may play a vital role in enabling life to arise on the planets in the goldilocks zone.
Best. Thread. Ever.
Decades ago, a first-person scifi in which the guy was a reporter. While not saying what kind of beings these were, there were no indications they were not human. It was not relevant.
Point was, according to historians, their advanced cultures all collapsed, one after another, after thousands of years, but every time the same number of years.
It was a multi-star system. The astronomers had just figured out that, after a familiar number of thousands of years….the sun(s) were all going to be down at the same time. It would be night for the first time in (this) thousands-of-years era.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
“…solar systems with gas giants along with ‘rocky’ planets in the ‘goldilocks’ or life bearing (as we know it) zone… may be not uncommon in the universe. And also that gas giants may play a vital role in enabling life to arise on the planets in the goldilocks zone.”
Current estimates based on exoplanets already discovered range up to 40 billion++ earth size planets in habitable zones in our galaxy alone, and there are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. This does not include large moons around gas giant planets outside the zone, which can maintain enough heat for liquid water necessary for life as we know it for billions of years from core radiation and tidal stresses from the host planet’s gravity.
In our own solar system, there are a number of moons which appear to have substantial liquid water oceans under their crust, such as Jupiter’s Europa and Ganymede, and Saturn’s Enceladus. Pluto and maybe even its moon Charon may have water oceans under their crust.
“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; but stranger than we CAN imagine.” (various attributions)
Astronomy is my first love; unfortunately it’s got way more math in it than I cared to master as a child. The universe contains so many wondrous sights it is the only thing that makes me doubt my own atheism.
Here’s some of those:
Colliding Galaxies
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field – long-term exposure taken of a very tiny speck of the sky thought be empty but instead showed 10,000 galaxies dating back to almost the Big Bang.
Hubble Ultra Deep Field
Richard Aubrey:
“It would be night for the first time in (this) thousands-of-years era.”
The sci-fi flick “Pitch Black” (2000, Vin Diesel) is about a planet with three suns that all set at one time every 22 years, which is when the nasties come out.
The Three Body Problem, science fiction novel translated from Chinese, check it out. It had a very intriguing premise.
It turns out that M class dwarf stars range in mass from .075 (7.5%) to about .50 (50%) of the mass of our sun. So Jupiter would have had to contain considerably more than ‘a bit’ more mass… 😉
That system initial condition doesn’t include what happens when a dwarf planet or star starts pulling in more and more mass. I would think, due to how gravity works, that everything loose falls into the biggest gravity well. But during the formation of the gravity wells, the contest is still ongoing and matter can be grabbed up by the strongest well. Jupiter, thus in the formation, lost the contest and hence, is much less massive. Even though there’s all those moons around it.
As for life and astronomy, people should consider the unique properties of water, including the unexplained phenomenon of water, which often behaves contradictory to models of liquids. Why is water necessary for life? Has science figured out what makes liquid water unique?
There are some 70 odd anomalies with water, such as expanding when becoming ice. Water often functions as source of memory, using molecular blocks. What and how it stores information as memory, is what people are trying to figure out.
GB, just depends on how the system evolves. While maybe not making an M class, Jupiter could have developed into some of the new L and T classes of “almost” stars. Kepler mission has shown a lot of gas giants out there, and as there are many more binary systems than solo stars, one would expect that such gas giants, given the right circumstances, have a good chance to become stars.
Richard Aubrey — That’s Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall”, his first big hit.
(The editor, John Campbell, gave Asimov a bonus for the story, much to Asimov’s surprise. When he got the check, he walked to the Astounding office and tried to return it, thinking there had been a mistake.)
Richard Aubrey Says:
July 9th, 2016 at 3:28 pm
You mean “Nightfall.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_%28Asimov_short_story_and_novel%29
Deemed the all time classic short story written prior to 1965.
Deemed the all time classic short story written prior to 1965.
However, it wasn’t even his own favorite in his prodigious body of work. That was a short story titled “The Last Question“, which he wrote in 1956.
It’s a quick read and very enjoyable, with his usual prescient vision about future technology.
Thanks for the reference. Campbell was a great mentor, or recruiter, or discoverer, or something. I’l bet he was sorry Fantasy and Science Fiction got Starship Soldiers. Still, Dune wasn’t too shabby.
I recall a novel starting out with a line of men looking for a little girl. The line talked to each other (or itself) and then the story got into a murderer or something. Always thought the only real humans were the ones out looking for the little girl.
Oh, yeah. Agreed with a couple of friends and a currently-working scifi authoer that Murray Leinster could explain anything–like a hyperdrive–so clearly that you figured if you took your next allowance to the hardware store, and in connection with what you had in your junk drawer, you could build it.
I have always liked Crow T Robot’s description of Asimov’s literary output, ” Isaac Asimov, Destroyer of Forests “.
The late, great Jack Vance set one of his novels, “Marune: Alastor 933”, on a world with four suns. He had fun exploring the concept of a human culture that had adapted to ever shifting combinations and levels of light. They had an elaborate system of names for the different sorts of days and the appropriate behavior for each. And, of course, for the rare nights when all four suns were down at once. These, significantly, were called “murk”.
OT:
Please watch this shocking video and PASS IT ON.
Video compilation of cops being shot in a matter of a split second, and they ask, “Do you want to make the decision whether someone is armed or unarmed?” because they can kill you Just. This. Fast.
http://tinyurl.com/zc65fn4
Jupiter hot? You, you … Velikovsyite! LOL
[For those who are not up on old and once very entertaining catastrophist controversies http://skepdic.com/velikov.html
DNW. “Worlds in Collision’ was plausible.
Given the era in which it was released, the early 1950s, and the state of astrophysics at the time, I suppose so; though the main objections to violations of certain Newtonian principles could not be overlooked.
I was in high school much later when an uncle-in-law, one of those autodidact/working man machinist types with a broad interest in all kinds of eccentric theories, mentioned the name to me. He had apparently read the books decades before.
It just happened to be about the time the “Velikovski affair” question was being revisited as a matter of academic freedom, and as some early data was coming in that planetary predictions, or assertions, he had made – on the basis of whatever methodology he was using – turned out to be right, or sort of right, in some respects.
I remember subscribing to a journal called Pensee written by some college students. Felt like a big deal. Really enjoyed reading the stuff.
Compared to Von Daniken, the Bermuda Triangle and Morning of the Magicians and other similar s–t that was circulating at the time, it was positively intellectual. LOL
VelikovskYYYYY … Geez
“Plausible”.
I think you used exactly the right word.
Thanks, Neo.
Thanks, Other Commenters.
Great links, too.
How wonderful for a few minutes of the simple happiness of thinking about the comments here, and following the links.
DNW. WRT “plausible” is a particular concept, IMO.
Something is plausible if it connects to, relates to, takes part of, is similar to, extends and expands, things you already know, whether they’re right or wrong.
“Plausible” does not, as far as I know, mean that everything you hear is new to you when the conclusion is asserted.
Decades ago, on the old Jack Paar show, there would be a comedian, a dignified middle-aged man, who told hilarious stories. He didn’t do jokes. But he’d start out seriously and drag you in by referring to what everybody already knew, or say something about a famous restaurant with “you know how they are” and if you’d never been there, or possibly even heard of it, it made sense, fit with the theme. And then he’d have you snorting and continue……
As a two-liner, it would have flopped like a wet blanket.
It’s why, IMO, Streiber’s “Wolfen” was so terrifying. He grounded everything in what we already knew. I gave the book to an engineer friend of mine who said, after he read it, he was nervous going into the basement.
It’s said that Hitler’s speeches started out as if he were a respected neighbor stopping by to give some advice you hadn’t thought of. It’s not that it would have forever been beyond you. You might have gotten to it, eventually. It was new but plausible. The screaming and spittle spewing came later and that’s the part we see.
He once said that three hundred years of blood and terror stand in no relation to the position of Germany today. That would have been just about three hundred years after the start of the Thirty Years War, about whose horrors presumably all Germans knew. So they could say, “See, he knows. He understands. It’s going to be okay.”
Ambrose Bierce wrote a bunch of horror stories. They were lousy except for “The Damned Thing”, the only one anthologized, afaik. In it, a doctor and others attempt to explain with talk of light and refractions and so forth why you can’t see The Thing. That makes it plausible.
وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بَنَيْنَـٰهَا بÙأَيْي۟دÙÛ¢ ÙˆÙŽØ¥Ùنَّا Ù„ÙŽÙ…ÙوسÙعÙونَ [٥١:٤٧]
With power and skill did We construct the Firmament: for it is We Who create the vastness of pace.