Speculoos-2c: A new potentially habitable earth

https://www.news.uliege.be/cms/c_16795199/en/speculoos-discovers-a-potentially-habitable-super-earth

by wiz21c • 4 years ago

145 132 4 years ago

news.uliege.be

moconnor• 4 years ago

36% larger radius than Earth means ~2.5x more volume. If it has a similar density to Earth 2.5g would probably stretch the definition of habitable for humans. This doesn't rule out habitation by other life, of course.

Cool that we're finding interesting planets though! An actually human-habitable planet would, I think, have a significant cultural impact here on Earth.

ShredKazoo• 4 years ago

2.5g means you weigh 2.5 times as much. So if you're 150lbs on Earth that means you'd weigh 375lbs on this new planet. Weighing 375lbs is certainly inconvenient, but it's not like habitation at 375lbs is impossible, especially if you have a scooter.

I wonder what happens if a human child grows up in a 2.5g environment. I imagine they grow up to be short, stocky, and extremely muscular.

Adaptation probably plays a big role here. If you give a 150lb person a suit that weighs 225 lbs and tell them to wear it all the time, they probably give up after a few days. But if you tell a 150lb person to eat more until they're 375lbs, their body has time to adapt.

Since the new planet is 100 light years away, even at the speed of light we're talking about a 100-year journey minimum. Maybe the generation ship used to make the journey could use artificial gravity to smoothly transition from 1g to 2.5g over the course of 100 years. Loading the ship with people who are stocky & muscular is another option.

I don't think living in enhanced gravity needs to be terrible. Astronauts have to exercise more in order to maintain fitness in low-gravity environments. It appears to follow that if you're living in an enhanced-gravity environment, you can get away with exercising a lot less and still maintain fitness :-)

spaceman_2020• 4 years ago

What evolutionary changes would human beings need to adapt to 2.5g?

gizajob• 4 years ago

Thicker legs

otikik• 4 years ago

It might be more feasible to remove a big chunk of matter from the planet in question

avereveard• 4 years ago

Id's say a stronger circulatory sistem.

Muscles and bone density will need to increase, but we do that as part of adaptation, evolution will favor the trait long term but regular use will already compensate in part or totally the need.

Possibly ankles and knees will need to get stronger as well

callamdelaney2• 4 years ago

We would only be adapting to 1.36g according to mamikonyana - this sounds more plausible. Because gravity is a function of size, mass and density. Not only mass.

a3w2• 4 years ago

same density, higher size does not mean 2.5 g. Only some of that mass is below you. Some is to the front, right, back, left, where vectors in sum are zero.

throwawaymaths• 4 years ago

This is incorrect, the decrease comes from being at a higher altitude from the center of the planet, see gauss' law for gravity. If you kept the altitude the same the force would be exactly proportional as expected.

anonymous_sorry• 4 years ago

Also, all the "extra" mass is further away from you, and gravitation is proprtional to distance cubed. Interesting.

Apparently surface gravity is proportional to mass/radius^2 [0]

Assuming constant density as per the grandparent, the mass increases with the cube of the radius.

Which simplifies to surface gravity being proportional to the radius of the planet.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_gravity

mamikonyana• 4 years ago

It actually gets you 1.36g, given the same density (your assumption) and using the fact that you are further away from the center of mass you get

g ~ density x radius [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth#Depth

chasil• 4 years ago

More importantly, this sounds like planets tidally locked around a red dwarf.

Red dwarfs are known for flares that would destroy the atmosphere of any nearby planet.

"Although this planet orbits very close to its star, at a distance about 10 times shorter than that of Mercury around our Sun, the amount of stellar irradiation it receives is still low... the star LP 890-9 is about 6.5 times smaller than the Sun and has a surface temperature half that of our star."

ncmncm12• 4 years ago

In any case all its water would be locked up in ice on the night side.

Razengan2• 4 years ago

More importantly, this sounds like planets tidally locked around a red dwarf.

Live on the other side? or a narrow habitable band between the 2 hemispheres

shireboy• 4 years ago

Assuming organisms adapted to live there, it would be harder for them to reach escape velocity to leave their planet. Is there a cut-off where known physics says it’s impractical to leave a planet? Ie the most powerful practical fuel wouldn’t be enough for any mass to reach escape velocity?

jmillikin• 4 years ago

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/14383/how-much-big...

There's a table in that link of how much reaction mass is needed to reach orbit. At 1.5g it requires about 500% as much rocket as Earth. At 2.5g the number is ... much larger.

est31• 4 years ago

36% larger radius than Earth means ~2.5x more volume. If it has a similar density to Earth 2.5g would probably stretch the definition of habitable for humans.

Volume scales cubically, yes. And therefore, also does the gravitational pull by the object at the same distance to the center. But due to the larger radius, you are also further away. Gravity respects the inverse square law. This means that the surface gravity of an object that maintains the same density increases linearly with the object's size.

In other words, you would have 1.36g on the planet's surface, not 2.5g. But that's assuming same density. Even within our own solar system this is not true: Mars's surface gravity is 0.38 of earth's gravity but 0.53 of earth's radius. The gravity is lower than it would be if Mars had the same density as earth.

imglorp• 4 years ago

Atmosphere unknown.

ncmncm12• 4 years ago

Most likely none.

Freak_NL• 4 years ago

They named their project, and thus this object, after the popular Belgian¹ speculoos cookie and backronymed it. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't dislike names with some pop culture basis, or even better, old sci-fi (given that there a more of those objects than we can dream up names for). On the other hand, naming it after a cookie seems frivolous.

1: Known as speculaas in Dutch.

oboes• 4 years ago

Another project from the same university is TRAPPIST. Named after Trappist beers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist_beer

CaptArmchair• 4 years ago

Well, they've already rounded that corner a while ago with TRAPPIST:

TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) is a project led by the Origins in Cosmology and Astrophysics group (OrCA) of the Department of Astrophysics, Geophysics and Oceanography (AGO) of the STAR Institute of the University of Liège (Belgium).

https://www.trappist.uliege.be/cms/c_5006023/en/trappist

Majestic1212• 4 years ago

Don't worry, it will soon be integrated in Stellaris like the TRAPPIST one, so it will become pop culture/sci-fi

eythian• 4 years ago

Speculaas and Speculoos are somewhat different things. Speculaas is older and has more spices, apparently.

Bakary• 4 years ago

I don't see how pop culture is a-okay as a naming scheme but this lekker cookie isn't. It is in fact pop-culture in its own way.

Sci-fi names tend to be tiresomely similar since they overuse gods names and anglocentric concepts

Agingcoder2• 4 years ago

A speculoos is a belgian biscuit. Someone had fun coming up with a backronym I think!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculoos

thenthenthen• 4 years ago

Cant wait for MITRAILLETTE next to my TRAPPIST

keyle• 4 years ago

They're from Liege, it would be called a ROUTIER :)

johnchristopher4• 4 years ago

That's an Herstal thing and it's already being used but for a different kind of products, not for space stuff.

abecedarius• 4 years ago

And Mallomars. Always seemed like an sf/fantasy name already.

Agingcoder2• 4 years ago

Your wish has been granted : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1

johnchristopher4• 4 years ago

I am still not over the whole Biscoff scandal.

83• 4 years ago

What scandal!? I love Biscoff.

cinntaile• 4 years ago

These scientists are doing their part to keep the original name alive.

lnauta• 4 years ago

Also a great sandwich spread!

chickenimprint• 4 years ago

I always thought they were German, but apparently the origin has not been conclusively tracked. They are called Speculaas in Dutch and Spekulatius in German

anvandare• 4 years ago

SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars)

I like silly backronyms like that[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculoos

stinos2• 4 years ago

Using a type of beer, TRAPPIST, as 'Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope' wasn't bad either

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1

torstenvl2• 4 years ago

Trappist is not a type of beer. It is a type of Catholic monastic order. They just happen to make decent beer (and jam, and many other things).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappists

sanxiyn• 4 years ago

In my opinion, H0LiCOW (H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring) was a bit too much, trying too hard.

twic• 4 years ago

I am currently reading a paper [1] about the Far-side Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets (FARSIDE).

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.02216

schwartzworld• 4 years ago

Reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes' "Get Rid Of Slimy girlS"

helsinkiandrew• 4 years ago

An orbital period of 2.73 days would mean there's no (earth like) seasons and agriculture would not be constrained to growing things at specific times of the year. A wheat farmer could split their farm into sections and be sowing and harvesting continuously.

That's assuming there isn't a cycle from freezing to boiling every 2.73 days.

simmerup• 4 years ago

The theological implications of finding planets even more hospitable than earth will be interesting.

pygy_• 4 years ago

Mirroring the fact that the cephalopod eye doesn’t have a blind spot unlike the vertebrate one.

a3w2• 4 years ago

Oh yes we still have theology. I don't know why. But as long as good books like Scott Alexanders Unsong tell me that American Pie is a song about the old testament, I do get entertainment out of it.

Training your mind to find patterns everywhere can be fun, unless you get QAnon out of it. Or, IMHO, religion that influences states or bothers non-followers. Contrast the good things, though: The aforementioned authors shows in Unsong that "Harry Belafonte - There's a Hole in the Bucket" is actually about the singluarity in AI/AGI development.

GOONIMMUNE• 4 years ago

Given that humans evolved to live on Earth, isn't it quite unlikely that we'll find planets that are more hospitable (to us) than Earth?

tsol2• 4 years ago

Why do you say that?

Come to think of it, most major religions don't treat the earth as something special for humans. In the Abrahamic faiths it's specifically not our natural home, which is why we have so many issues. In the Hindu faith, from what I understand, it's also a place of suffering we are ultimately trying to escape. Buddhism also has much the same view.

evv5552• 4 years ago

Makes me wonder how much of the day sky is taken up by the star during daytime. Would be quite the view at that distance.

appleflaxen• 4 years ago

It's a sphere next to a point source of light.

So I'm gonna guess... half?

Someone• 4 years ago

The innermost of the planets is about 2.8 million kilometers away from a star with a diameter of 217,000 km, so the angle (in radians) would be about 217,000/2,800,000 = 0.0775 radians or about 4,4 degrees. The sun is about 30 arc minutes or half a degree, so this star would have about 9 times the diameter, or 80 times the area of our sun.

(Double-check: this planet is about 1/50 as far from its sun as earth is from our sun, and its sun has about 1/7 the radius of our sun. That would give a rough estimate of the relative size of that sun in the planet’s sky of 50/7, so say 7 times as large as our sun is to us)

I would call that large, but not enormous.

(This ignores effects on perceived size of differences in the light spectrum and brightness of the two stars and differences between the atmospheres of this planet and earth)

perihelions• 4 years ago

That close to a star, the planet's rotation is probably tidally locked with its orbit, which means there's no diurnal *or* seasonal cycle. There's a summer hemisphere in permanent daylight; a winter hemisphere in permanent night; and a temperate twilight zone in between.

BobbyJo• 4 years ago

Solution: train-farms! Choo-Choo!

Hithredin• 4 years ago

That would be as windy as Contrevent

ncmncm12• 4 years ago

Wheat is hard to grow in permanent twilight. And, with no water, because it is all frozen onto the night side.

This is no more earthlike than Mars.

lastofthemojito• 4 years ago

That's gonna make it tough to keep track of when the pumpkin spice latte goes on sale. "Shoot, I missed fall again, guess I'll have to wait 48 hours for it to come around again!"

adamc• 4 years ago

Given that most of the emitted light is infrared, there would be other challenges.

scotty79• 4 years ago

It's really hard to imagine earthlike planet without vegetation. Deserts would look the same. But how would temperate zone look with soil and rocks and streams and lakes but zero plants.

genocidicbunny• 4 years ago

Deserts would look the same.

I don't think this is 100% the case. Most deserts on Earth actually have a relatively large variety of life in them -- even the most desiccated deserts will often have at least bacteria of some sort living in them.

johnchristopher4• 4 years ago

So, they would basically look the same when looking at them through my space suit helmet.

mirekrusin• 4 years ago

As it's so much closer to the star, doesn't it mean it is much more seismic?

ncmncm12• 4 years ago

Probably. And certainly tidally locked, so 1 year = 1 day, with a permanently boiling day side, a hard-frozen night side, and a temperate, twilit ring straddling them.

All moisture would naturally migrate to the dark side and freeze there, permanently, if it doesn't sublimate away into the vacuum left after all the air is blasted off the day side.

boredumb• 4 years ago

Ice mining is honest work.

somedude895• 4 years ago

temperate, twilit ring straddling them.

That sounds like a cool sci fi setting

Majestic1212• 4 years ago

Solar power production on the day side would give amazing efficiency, except for maintenance hell maybe.

I wonder if we could extract energy in other ways, like using the cold side for data centers (cheaper AC), or large pipes to extract the moisture from the cold side and heat it in the day side, to generate energy.

the8472• 4 years ago

Even a tidally locked body can still liberate (as the moon does) so the terminator would at least move around over some fraction of the surface. Maybe together with a dense atmosphere that could be enough to redistribute the heat and keep the dark side from freezing out the gases?

goombacloud2• 4 years ago

100 light-years is out of reach for humans, I would say :D

_fat_santa• 4 years ago

If only wormholes stopped being "theoretical structures"

speed_spread• 4 years ago

Haven't you heard? Wormholes are tired, Alcubierre drives is where it's at nowadays. All we need now is a way to shovel away that pesky dark matter.

layer84• 4 years ago

Not necessarily, if we could reach significant fractions of light speed. The subjective travel time can be shorter than 100 years, and approaches zero as you approach the speed of light. (Photons don’t experience time, so to speak, they are everywhere on their trajectory at once.)

awestroke• 4 years ago

As your target speed approaches the speed of light, the energy required aproaches infinity

robofanatic• 4 years ago

suppose we have the tech to travel at a significant fraction of light speed, how long will it take for the spacecraft to reach that speed and similarly how long will it take to slow down when you are approaching a target planet?

legohead• 4 years ago

At 1g constant acceleration, including deceleration, it's only 9 years. A flyby is only 5 years [1]

[1] https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/space-travel

goombacloud2• 4 years ago

That's the time passing in the vessel, not bad but still it means that such a mission would have to be completely self-sufficient and not rely on anything on/from Earth…

fluoridation• 4 years ago

Where would you get the energy to accelerate constantly for nine years?

swamp40• 4 years ago

completes an orbit around the star in just 2.7 days

I wonder if you feel centrifugal force spinning that fast around a sun?

jerf2• 4 years ago

The equator of the Earth is spinning much faster, on a much tighter radius. Do you "feel centrifugal force" when standing there?

It does actually affect your weight a bit, but if you mean what I think you mean that it would be something you perceptibly feel, it is not.

Moreover, this merely shows that the idea that the magnitude is significant isn't a good one. Even more importantly, you don't "feel" anything in an orbit ever, because when you're on a geodesic, you're in "zero g". You never "feel" anything in an orbit, no matter how fast it is. People on the ISS don't "feel centrifugal force", because they're in zero G.

(Except tides, if you're large enough, but a single person in this orbit is nowhere near large enough or sensitive enough to feel any tides.)

layer84• 4 years ago

The equator of the Earth is spinning much faster, on a much tighter radius.

Centrifugal force is proportional to the radius, so a smaller radius actually decreases it, for the same angular velocity. The reason we associate smaller radiuses with increased force is actually because if the energy stays the same, reducing the radius increases the angular velocity (like in a pirouette), which then “feels” like a stronger force.

dvh• 4 years ago

Isn't parent star flare star stripping atmosphere from any planet in habitable zone?

rdevsrex• 4 years ago

It would be great if one day we could visit planets such as these, even if just with robots.

I mean, the ethics of commiting your descendants to life aboard a generational ship is very sketchy.

a1pulley• 4 years ago

Ethics have a cultural and temporal context: if you believe strongly enough in the expansionary imperative of humanity, you would gift the generational ship's inhabitants with a suitable religion.

douglaswlance• 4 years ago

It's possible store billions of humans as embryos that are grown and raised by robotic parents upon arrival. And it should also be possible to genetically engineer those humans to be better suited to that new planet's environment.

Though, by the time we figure out how to do that, "we" probably won't be purely biological, naturally evolved beings any longer.

dzonga• 4 years ago

I would gladly take a one way trip to one of these planets. provided I have a way of reaching there and spending at least 1 day alive there. 100 light years is no joke - but if the math on this is correct https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/612645/does-spec...

I can leave say when i'm 60 and hopefully reach star at age 70. Trade-off I'm willing to do

holoduke• 4 years ago

Yes with a 1g rocket you can travel millions of light years in less than 80 years, when you come back earth is millions year older. In the future people will only live a billion years from now.

marssaxman• 4 years ago

The ethics of creating descendants at all are sketchy. Once you've gotten past the fact that you are inflicting a possibly-unwanted life which will definitely include suffering, and certainly end in death, onto a soon-to-be-conscious being who is not yet capable of giving consent, the specifics of where that life takes place are not so significant.

erehweb• 4 years ago

Does this or other discoveries give us any better estimates for terms in the Drake equation?

tsol2• 4 years ago

Interesting, but if we have a hard time keeping this one habitable we'll likely have a much harder time traveling 100 lightyears and terraforming this one to be organic. It's fun to think about but we're centuries from such capabilities(if possible at all)

Nanana909• 4 years ago

Amazing. Fantastic research continually coming out of ESO. Had the opportunity to chat with someone involved (not on this project). Super talented.

Wondering what the follow up opportunities to study this more are coming up.

danabrams• 4 years ago

Phew! Found a new one just in time.

alecfreudenberg• 4 years ago

speculoo 2: electric boogaloo

hoseja• 4 years ago

Planet-finding is (understandably) restricted to very extreme types of planets, those which influence their host star in a detectable manner. Certainly cool but I doubt the usefulness.

Speculoos-2c: A new potentially habitable earth

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