Major Breakthrough: First Photos of Planets Around Other Stars

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081113-hubble-exoplanet.html

by Anon84 • 18 years ago

96 41 18 years ago

habs3• 18 years ago

"Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles."

- Richard Dawkins

habs3• 18 years ago

This article made me think of another quote my old physics teacher use to quote -

"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion"

- Democritus

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

What about photons?

unalone2• 18 years ago

I know you didn't quote this because of the latter part of that quote, but: I discovered Chopin by playing a song on DDR that used one of his themes. So I've always been partial to people who use grandiose things for the sake of pop. Or at the very least, I'm a bit forgiving of it.

Astrology I can't stand, though. I'd like it a lot more if people didn't actually believe in it.

gaius2• 18 years ago

Or paperback polemics for evolutionary theory, eh?

ionfish• 18 years ago

I remarked earlier to my flatmate how much it said about our society that this wasn't the top item on all the major news sites. At least it's the first thing on Hacker News.

habs3• 18 years ago

Scientists and engineers have long been the engine of progression for societies. I think it's a shame that people don't have more of an appreciation at the technological and scientific wonders of the modern world. But like you said "At least it's the first thing on Hacker News" :D

jackchristopher2• 18 years ago

We don't get the credit because we're nerds; The suits will.

Suits believe they are progressing things. And the rest will always credit the nearest authoritative looking type.

Worse still, many scientist and engineers credit the suits themselves.

gaius2• 18 years ago

That's a relatively recent thing. Back in the day, engineers like Brunel were rock stars.

jsyedidia• 18 years ago

It is currently #3 on news.google.com and on the front-page of nytimes.com. It's not exactly being ignored.

jimbokun• 18 years ago

Now number 1 on Google News, and considering that Google News is a news aggregator, this must mean that a lot of other news sources are giving prominent coverage as well.

abstractbill• 18 years ago

I have a theory about this: Misleading headlines often make people tune actually interesting things out.

I've seen a bunch of articles before this one, with headlines that make it seem like photos have been taken of planets in other solar-systems. On closer inspection they've often turned out to be artists' impressions, computer renderings, or similar things.

The net result is that today, when I saw this article, my reaction was a mix of "didn't that happen already?" and "are they real photos?".

unalone2• 18 years ago

Your comment just made me click on this link. Thanks for clearing through the noise a bit.

Anon84• 18 years ago

HN isn't like any other site out there.

alecco• 18 years ago

Space.com doesn't give the photos and they don't even link to the original paper. The article mostly speculates and link to themselves. Sorry, no up.

Wired did a much better article, and shorter, with less speculation: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/first-direct-im.h...

Original paper: http://tinyurl.com/6fdeu5 or http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;1166585v1...

13ren4• 18 years ago

They do, but it's hard to find: http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display...

13ren4• 18 years ago

pic: http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display...

jodrellblank• 18 years ago

Did anyone ask the inhabitants whether they agree to have their information stored in our computer systems under the terms of the Data Protection and Privacy laws?

mechanical_fish2• 18 years ago

I'm no legal expert, but I'm guessing that the Universal Supreme Court will affirm that a nation doesn't have legal jurisdiction outside of its light cone.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

I thought we were in their light-cone, if we can see them.

hugh3• 18 years ago

If they don't wanna have their photos taken, they shouldn't reflect the damn photons.

rgrieselhuber2• 18 years ago

Wouldn't it be interesting to have a Google Earth-like products of other planets (due to spectacular advances in imaging, of course :-) ) long before we ever have the means to travel there?

hhm2• 18 years ago

That already exists! There is a product by NASA that allows you to do that, I don't remember the name (you can see the moon, mars, mercury, etc).

hhm2• 18 years ago

This one: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

Enjoy! It's really amazing

altano• 18 years ago

There's also Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope (Windows only): http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/Home.aspx

mynameishere• 18 years ago

What kind of telescope would be necessary to actually view the details of a distant planet? Also, this seems to be the uncolored version of the pic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HR_8799_planetary_system_...

hugh3• 18 years ago

What kind of telescope would be necessary to actually view the details of a distant planet?

An incredibly large one. I don't have time to figure it out right now, but if anyone feels motivated then what you need to be looking at is the diffraction limit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_limit

That's the fundamental limit on how small a feature you can pick up using a telescope of a given size.

lutorm2• 18 years ago

Yeah, if you mean "detail on the planet" and not just resolve the planet from its star, then it's completely infeasible. The current 30m-class telescopes that are under development (ie www.tmt.org) in combination with high-contrast adaptive optics will make it possible to see earth-size planets, if I'm not mistaken, but not to resolve detail on their surface.

jmtame• 18 years ago

Sorry kids, My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles is going to become merely an introduction for the book you'll have to memorize after this project is finished ;)

hugh3• 18 years ago

The planets are called a, b and c. I think we can remember that.

13ren4• 18 years ago

If there was a habitable planet in that system with intelligent life, with the same capabilities as us, they wouldn't be able to see any of the planets in our solar system.

breily• 18 years ago

Why not? It seems like if we can see them they could see us - unless you just mean our planets are smaller so they'd need a better telescope than we can make?

gommm• 18 years ago

Because we do not have any planets as huge as Formalhaut a, b and c in our solar system...

mellow2• 18 years ago

This is incredible. If astronomers analyse the spectra of the planets they can now image and find oxygen, methane and CO2 in certain proportions, the only conclusion will be life. Imagine if they find the spectral lines from chemicals produced by an industrial, polluting society!

albertcardona• 18 years ago

If current technology had enough resolution, scientists would have scanned the planets already for oxygen, methane and water (which mixed together don't quite exist unless there's a continuous force, like life, unbalancing the physical reaction).

mellow2• 18 years ago

I realise they would have done this already if they could. I was thinking more in the medium term - the next 3-5 years?

Major Breakthrough: First Photos of Planets Around Other Stars

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