Planet with two suns found.

[Shaun]

A planet orbiting two suns - the first confirmed alien world of its kind - has been found by Nasa's Kepler telescope, the US space agency announced.

It may resemble the planet Tatooine from the film Star Wars, but scientists say Luke Skywalker, or anyone at all, is unlikely to be living there.

Named Kepler-16b, it is thought to be an uninhabitable cold gas giant, like Saturn.

The newly detected body lies some 200 light years from Earth.

Though there have been hints in the past that planets circling double stars might exist, scientists say this is the first confirmation.

It means when the day ends on Kepler-16b, there is a double sunset, they say.

Kepler-16b's two suns are smaller than ours - at 69% and 20% of the mass of our sun - making the surface temperature an estimated -100 to -150F (-73 to -101C).

The planet orbits its two suns every 229 days at a distance of 65m miles (104m km) - about the same solar orbit as Venus.

The Kepler telescope, launched in 2009, is designed to scour our section of the Milky Way galaxy for Earth-like planets.

"This is really a stunning measurement by Kepler," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a co-author of the study.

"The real exciting thing is there's a planet sitting out there orbiting around these two stars."

Kepler finds stars whose light is regularly dimmed, which means there is an orbited planet between the star and the telescope.

Nasa's scientists saw additional dips in the light in both stars at alternating but regular times, confirming the dual orbit of the planet.

The finding was reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55402000/jpg/_55402342_012923419-2.jpg

-thinks this is kinda cool-

[CharlieO]

I think its cool too. :amazed:

[Benjamin]

I'm such a geek. I love things like this. :blush:

[Locke.]

Looks like someone is playing a game of marbles

[Saph]

I hope the aliens are cute :amazed:

[Ninastar]

i got kinda excited by this, im such a geek :sad:

[Shaun]

it's not geeky to get excited by planets... it's much more inspiring than getting excited by, say, I dunno, a "cool" thing like celebrity gossip or how much you can drink.

[Tom]

I don't see how they can say chances of life are slim without actually going there. I also never understand how they can say life can't live without water on other planets. Other life forms would just find a different way to adapt/survive?

[fruit_cake]

interesting

[Glenn.]

Life on Earth evolved in hostile environments so I think its quite plausible to say that some form of life may actually evolve on other planets. Just because the human race couldn't live on a planet of gas doesn't mean that something else couldn't.

[Beastie]

I bet it's hot hot hot on that planet. They must get a lot of daylight!

[Glenn.]

And two sunsets. How amazing would that be :amazed:

[Niall]

I'm such a geek. I love things like this. :blush:

[2]

[LaLaLand]

^ [3]

[Jordan.]

I hope the aliens are cute :amazed:

http://img.geocaching.com/cache/37ee1e8c-7e53-4440-9ec8-db35e44c8049.jpg

[Jords]

Wow :amazed:

There are more suns?

[Joelle.]

Anything to do with Physics I love :amazed:

[Doogle]

How could anyone not be interested by this?!

And I hate science with a passion, but I admit this is fascinating. :D

[Ninastar]

I find this one of the most interesting points in science, but we never really learned about it :sad: I was always the best as well /arrogant

[billy123]

That is so cool i love things like this.

i made a video about 5 years ago showing how insignificant the earth really is in the scheme of things the original video was up to about 80,000 hits before youtube banned my old account the swines.
5_PCx244QTc

[Photon]

I bet it's hot hot hot on that planet. They must get a lot of daylight!

No. It's a cold gas giant.

For those of you discussing the possibility of any life forms on this planet, it's extremely unlikely. Gas giants have pretty much been ruled out for being capable of supporting any form of life.

[Shaun]

Wow :amazed:

There are more suns?

suns are stars, so many more :tongue:

[Smithy]

so does it orbit them like a figure of 8 or something?

Im confused as to how it works :(

[Smithy]

so does it orbit them like a figure of 8 or something?

Im confused as to how it works :(

[Stu]

Someone needs to dig up that .gif that shows our local solar system then zooms out and out and out and out and out.

It's absoloutely mind blowing.

[GypsyGoth]

This thread is like an ep of Big Bang Theory.

[CharlieO]

This thread is like an ep of Big Bang Theory.

:love:

[Stu]

Only better written.

[Stu]

jJ8UAMR98y4

1:25

:amazed:

[Shaun]

:laugh:

Sheldon: LONG-WINDED SENTENCE
Asian guy: LONG-WINDED SENTENCE IN AN ACCENT
Howard: I'M A VIRGIN
Penny: omg geeks

and judging by the picture Smithy, one of the suns orbits the other sun, and this planet orbits that one.

[Stu]

If you watch it without the laugh track it's a real eye opener. So many of these meh comedy shows you watch at three in the afternoon because you're bored only make you laugh because of this odd infectious stimuli with hearing others laugh on telly. When you remove the laugh track the super obvious, tame as hell lines have no impact whatsoever. Any of us could have written the thing.

[Shaun]

-directs that post to the writers of Friends, Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother-

[Shaun]

YES KARL I WENT THERE.

****ING NEIL ****ING PATRICK ****ING HARRIS AND HIS CHARMS AND HIS NO REAL FUNNY MATERIAL. caps

[Smithy]

friends finished nearly 10 years ago shaun :nono:

[Stu]

I love How I Met Your Mother. I know I'm being a real hypocrite with this one but NPH's character really does make the show. It fills that stupid TV when I'm lazy niche just fine [And it is a valid niche, don't get me wrong. It's just not a masterpiece].

Peep Show does have a tendancy to make every other sitcom around these days look like childs play though. It's actually too good.

[Doogle]

Tbf, the way the lines are delivered is something to do with the laugh track/live audience. If they weren't ever meant to have the laugh track I think they'd act it very differently. It wouldn't be much funnier but it'd be less awkward :joker:

[Photon]

Stop talking about a TV show in a thread about astronomy.

[Doogle]

Yes sir. sorry sir.

[Patrick]

:love: Space.

[Grimnir]

jJ8UAMR98y4

1:25

:amazed:


i found the longer version that is even more epic

HEheh1BH34Q&feature=related

:amazed:

[Photon]

Wow :amazed:

There are more suns?

Yes. When you look up in the night sky, those dots you are seeing are distant stars, and sometimes planets in our solar system.

http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/56/images/Hdfwf3.jpg
This is a smaller section of the Hubble Deep Field image. Every bright point is a galaxy like our own(known as the Milky Way), containing billions of stars in each of them. Some of those galaxies are actually colliding with other galaxies.

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/milkyway.jpg
If you set a camera to take a very long exposure in a region with no light pollution(such as a desert), you can see the interior of our galaxy. That bright area contains what's known as the Galactic Core. It's packed full of nebulae, stars, solar systems, black holes, radiation, gas, etc. It is theorized that every galaxy contains what is known as a Supermassive Black Hole, directly at the center of the galactic core, which is what holds the galaxies together.

[Benjamin]

jJ8UAMR98y4

1:25

:amazed:

:amazed:

I loved that!

[Stu]

Aye that's the supposed .gif I was on about I think, Grimnir.

Photon : That's bloody awesome. Makes me guilty about totally snubbing Photography in our first year of film last year. That's amazing that you can do that with a camera in a desert. I'd never even thought of such a thing as light pollution.

Patrick : Next time you're looking out the window stoned remember plenty of the stars you see in the sky are actually now dead and you only see them because it takes the light from them so many years to reach us. Time travel right in front of your eyes, baby.

http://www.thecitrusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/carl-sagan-smoke-weed-everyday.jpg

[Doogle]

**** the Earth is tiny. Never ever realised there were stars that big :o

[Benjamin]

Do you know what else fascinates me? Black Holes. They always intrigue my curiosity.

[Photon]

Stu, you should never snub photography. Many great filmmakers were also awesome photographers.

Ukturtle, indeed they are quite fascinating. In fact, SETI recorded a burst of energy that was so brief, powerful, and unique, they imagined it could only be two black holes colliding.

[Stu]

Photography bored the bejaysus out of me in fairness. And I'm a writer so I've dropped most of the technical camera & lighting stuff this year anyway :laugh:.

That darkroom. Man. It still gives me nightmares. I can still smell those awful non ingestible chemicals.

[Photon]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1661793/060606galaxy3.jpg

Some dudes combined a bunch of blue and red shift data to chart out how galaxies have moved over billions of years. It seems they bunch together to form a web like structure.

[Shasown]

Photography bored the bejaysus out of me in fairness. And I'm a writer so I've dropped most of the technical camera & lighting stuff this year anyway :laugh:.

That darkroom. Man. It still gives me nightmares. I can still smell those awful non ingestible chemicals.

Hell on earth eh?