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From 0 to 5,000 Planets in 20 Years
- antognini 11y agoIt used to be that the discovery of an exoplanet, any exoplanet was big enough news to warrant its own discovery paper. But these days we know of so many planets that putting out an individual paper describing a newly discovered hot Jupiter is a little ho-hum. There has to be something unique about the planet to justify its own paper, otherwise it'll just be lumped in a big data dump paper.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y agosuper-Earths: rocky worlds that are up to 10 times as massive as our own, and potentially habitable Wouldn't the gravity on such a planet be 10 times as strong as Earth's? Is it feasible that life could exist on the surface, or only in an ocean?
- ngoldbaum 11y agoGravitational attraction scales as M/r^2, so if the planets have larger radii they won't have 10 times the gravitational attraction. That said, any speculation about life on super earths should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
- livatlantis 11y agoOne super-grain of salt, to be precise.
- ant6n 11y agoLet's build a tiny eco system in a large centrifuge and see what happens.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoPractical, in space. Start the ecosystem spinning, and it won't stop (essentially frictionless). Maybe a balloon/bag on one end of a rope, a weight on the other end.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- adaml_623 11y agoFrom 0 (+9) to 5,000 (+8) Planets in 20 Years FTFY
- Turbots 11y agoPoor Pluto :'(