Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy the first pictures of planets like our own solar system’s circling a star like our own.
First, from the Keck Observatory, two planets orbiting a star about a 130 light years away:
Next from the Hubble, of one planet orbiting a star a mere 25 light years away:
Expect Bush to issue a desperate Executive Order, demanding equal time for the intelligent falling theory in American classrooms.
(Via an uncharacteristically hysterical Discover Magazine blog.)
Mmmmm…
eye of sauron; or gigantic fiery vagina? Fox reports, you decide.
Perhaps one of them is Kolob.
Alright, we’re gonna need someone on the INSIDE to do this. But Joseph Smith is totally somewhere out there, and the only way you can get to him is to leave your flesh.
Also, they have to “bring” their kids.
bullshit.
am i to understand that this is somehow proof against “intelligent design”? i don’t get it.
phil plait getting hysterical is uncharacteristic? you must not read his blog much. he gets happily hysterical quite a bit.
Those scientists just pull numbers out of the air. Oh, and my kid could paint that!
Whoa, Tim Keck has a whole observatory, too?
@8
But “those scientists” don’t just pull numbers out of the air – that’s what makes them scientists. If you weren’t so intellectually lazy, you could obtain the the scientific journals which detail those “numbers”, but I suspect you’d much rather go to a Palin 2012 rally instead.
@10:
I believe @8’s comment falls into the category of what is generally known as “sarcasm”.
In any case, direct visual evidence of extra-solar planetary systems is still mighty impressive, considering all we’ve accumulated to-date has been indirect, based on gravitational lensing and offsetting “wobbles” and such.
Um, what’s the scale? Planet B is two inches from its sun, and planet A is half an inch away? Or does the ” character mean something else in astronomy?
These are pictures of planets, to be sure. But where is the proof they don’t all orbit the Earth?
12. I believe those marks signify ‘arcseconds’, as in degrees, minutes, and seconds. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcsecond#A…
Who cares? Their sun is only, like, 1.5″ in diameter.
Peh.
That’s really, really cool.
I understand that there’s some sort of documentary coming out before too long about how we’re building a starship. The pictures of that look pretty awesome too. Maybe we can go visit one of those planets.
Stars, like our own, develope planets by accretion. Scientists believe this is happening around billions of stars much the same way it happened around our own with heavier iron core planets closer to the star and gas giants further out. This means the odds of planets like our own developing in habitable zones (orbits neither too close nor too far) where life can flourish are vast. Get ready for more surprises!
“[…] we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere … and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.”
http://www.planetclaire.org/junk/rocks.m…
Hm, four times the distance from its star of Neptune to the Sun, and about the same size as Jupiter. Cold and gaseous. Not likely to support life. But! planets in general look a lot more common than you’d think…
And just in time for the new Star Trek!!
This is awesome. And yet somehow I doubt the geocentrists will be convinced.
Dang! Those are some planets! BTW, looks like your website got hacked. What happened?
Hello again! I believe it was Giordano Bruno who speculated about this very thing some five hundred years ago. It got him burned alive at the stake by the Catholic Church!
Gee, you guys are easily convinced. All I see are dots. I will be convinced only when I can see dinosaurs on them. And what has that got to do with disproving geocentrism. That biblical order has everything going around the earth. So how does a few new dots out there disprove what we see every day/