06-02-2014, 11:01 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Newcastle, Australia
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'Godzilla' Earth Discovered
This new rocky planet is going to be rewriting the scientific textbooks.
And, potentially, any future editions of GURPS Space. Not only is it a rocky planet that weights as much as 17 Earths (which scientists thought was impossible, since they believed such a planet would end up vacuuming up all the gas in the area and turn into a gas giant), but it is in a system that is 11 billion years old, only 3 billion years after the big bang, at a time when rocky materials are supposed to be scarce. Scientists are going to be doing a lot of head scratching about this one. :) http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-0...t-star/5496112 |
06-03-2014, 04:54 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: 'Godzilla' Earth Discovered
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For that matter, how firm is the age of the star? If there really aren't any heavy element lines in its spectrum, which is one of the ways you diagnose it as being old, then there is a pretty interesting anomaly if it has rocky planets. If they actually formed with the system, then there is some mechanism for sorting heavy from light elements when a star forms, and absence of those heavy metal lines actually *doesn't* mean something is an old population star.
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-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 06-03-2014 at 05:01 AM. |
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06-03-2014, 05:02 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: 'Godzilla' Earth Discovered
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But "The scientists are going to have to rewrite the planet-forming model" has been the story ever since they started discovering worlds. We only knew about 9 worlds for a very long time in one solar system. Now, suddenly, we're getting mountains of data from other worlds, and lots of them are bat-guano crazy. This is just another one to toss up onto the pile of crazy, along with the planet o' diamond, the black doom-world with a giant, glowing red eye, and that planet circling a pulsar (Wow!)
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
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06-03-2014, 05:18 AM | #4 |
Banned
Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: 'Godzilla' Earth Discovered
I suspected all along that the universe couldn't be a boring and rote as portrayed in GURPS Space (4e).
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06-03-2014, 05:25 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: 'Godzilla' Earth Discovered
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-- MA Lloyd |
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06-03-2014, 06:07 AM | #6 |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: 'Godzilla' Earth Discovered
Or maybe we need to swallow a big glass of Humble Juice and admit that we don't know what we thought we did...
...which is what some of the scientists who are active in the field actually seem to be doing. Good for them. :) Others should follow that example. |
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