Astronomers have for the first time demonstrated directly what was known inferentially to be true:
NRC astronomer Dr. Christian Marois and an international team of researchers are the first to capture images of three planets circling a star other than the Earth’s Sun.
Using high-powered telescopes to capture these images, the team then identified three planets larger than Jupiter orbiting a star known as HR 8799. This star is 130 light years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It is faintly visible to the naked eye.
“We have known for a decade through indirect techniques that the Sun was not the only star to have planets in orbit around it,” said Dr. Marois of the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, B.C. “We finally have an actual image of an entire solar system. This is a milestone in the search for planetary systems around stars.”
It’d be neat to take a closer look, if only we could only learn to cheat the physics.
As the great Carl Sagan once said – If we are the only ones here, then it’s a terrible waste of space.
saw elsewhere we received radio broadcast acknowledging our presence. They wished us luck with the economy, world peace and all…said it was realllllyyyy hard for them too, six thousand years ago….
The radio broadcast I thought was in response to the media contained aboard Voyager 1. So far NASA and SETI weren’t certain on the translation, but the best guess is that the message reads, “Send more Chuck Berry.”
– Max
*Sigh* 130 lightyears…so close, relatively speaking, (sorry for the pun), yet so far. For me, heaven would be eternity to explore the cosmos…as you point out, this mortal shell and the laws that control it, are somewhat restrictive. Then again, humans have always been stargazers…perhaps to actually visit the stars would mean we had become something else.
Of course, at this rate, I’d like to see humans step on Mars before I die (I’m hoping they’ve got 50-60 years to do it in). Nearly 40 years after the moonlanding, who would have guessed we’d still be so earthbound?
Lex/
RE: that “cheating physics” article you linked to. I’m putting my money on quantum gravity. When you think about it gravity seems to act almost instantaneously everywhere–especially
upon objects in inter-stellar space–especially light waves.
Virgil: Higgs boson, baby, Higgs.
Personally, m=e/c^2 is just as interesting. Energy creates mass?!
Higgs Boson is cool, but I’m just praying the LHC at CERN doesn’t create a singularity and suck us all into a black hole.
They’re planning high power turnups for December. . .
Of course, at this rate, I’d like to see humans step on Mars before I die (I’m hoping they’ve got 50-60 years to do it in).
H3ll – I just hope!(tm) to see an American footprint on the Moon again before the quarter-century mark…
- SJS
Kris, If I remember correctly, Carl Sagan was (sadly) basically ridiculed for saying that the formation of planets around stars was probably a very common thing.
It’s a shame he didn’t live to see discoveries like this one.