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posted by on Thursday February 23 2017, @01:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the tentatively-named-Doc-Grumpy-Happy-Sleepy-Bashful-Sneezy-and-Dopey dept.

Astronomers have observed enough planetary transits to confirm the existence of seven "Earth-sized" exoplanets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool (~2550 K) red dwarf star about 39.5 light years away. Three of the exoplanets are located inside the "habitable zone" of their parent star. These three orbit from 0.028 to 0.045 AU away from the star:

Astronomers using the TRAPPIST–South telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal and the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as other telescopes around the world, have now confirmed the existence of at least seven small planets orbiting the cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. All the planets, labelled TRAPPIST-1b, c, d, e, f, g and h in order of increasing distance from their parent star, have sizes similar to Earth.

The exoplanets are presumed to be tidally locked. The six closest to TRAPPIST-1 have been determined to be rocky, while the seventh, TRAPPIST-1h, requires additional observations to determine its characteristics due to its longer orbital period.

Mass estimates for the planets range from 0.41 Earth masses (M) to 1.38 M. Radii range from 0.76 Earth radii (R) to 1.13 R.

Spitzer, Hubble, and other telescopes will continue to make observations of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, but the best data will likely come from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is scheduled to launch in late 2018. JWST will allow the atmospheres and temperatures of many exoplanets to be characterized, which will help to settle whether the "habitable zones" of red dwarf stars are actually hospitable.

Artist illustrations and data for the TRAPPIST-1 system compared to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Earth.

Here's a website dedicated to the star.

Seven temperate terrestrial planets around the nearby ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 (DOI: 10.1038/nature21360) (DX)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:47PM (#470714)

    Its also not done by the actual scientists but those who translate the admittedly dry news of we discovered a planet that happens to be within the habitable zone to those of us who aren't astrophysicists. Its when it has to be dumbed down to fit within a newspaper for general consumption that extra crud is added, again not by scientists but copy editors. Nice try guys.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:55PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:55PM (#470715) Journal

    Wow, aren't you guys a bunch of killjoys?

    This IS exciting news. These exoplanets are almost ideal for further study: Their relative closeness ot Earth ("only" 39 LY), the smallness of the star, the short orbital periods (lots of transits), the fact that there are no less than THREE planets in the goldilcks zone, the number of planets and their gravitational interactions all help make the Trappist system a great candidate for further study. If we find life outside of this solar system, chances are good we'll find it here first.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:42PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:42PM (#470787)

      Where's the "Grumpy" mod?

      It would only take a few hundred to a few thousand years to get a probe there, plus another 40 to get the data back. We should start planning now, because there ain't much else within reach after we're done trashing our only Goldilocks planet!

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:05PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:05PM (#470943) Journal
        Mars and Venus are Goldilocks planets too. We should at least trash them too before heading out with a few thousand years worth of beer in the trunk.
        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:15PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:15PM (#470948)

          It's gonna take a lot of trashing the Earth to make Venus look hospitable by comparison...

          Old one: European beer is the best thing to carry on long trips, because you drink it once and turn it into American beer.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:31PM (#470810)

      Study? Right!

      Can't really study it, can we? Can't get to it. Really, just a guess. Might be habitable, might not. Might have a tropical rain forest, might not.

      I'm all for science, but come on, this is getting ridiculous. Lets fix our home first. Focus some scientific resources right here, right now. Figure out how to feed the starving masses, produce energy that's clean and inexpensive, better medical care, etc.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:39PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:39PM (#470849) Journal

        Can't really study it, can we?

        Yes, we can. There's a lot of information you can get just from analyzing the light spectrum when the planet passes in front of the star. For example, you can figure out the composition of the atmosphere. And if the atmosphere contains a larger percentage of oxygen, it has an extremely high probability of having life.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @08:10PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @08:10PM (#470871)

          If we can never get there, how are you going to verify.

          Too many hypotheticals for me.

          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 23 2017, @10:17PM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday February 23 2017, @10:17PM (#470927) Journal

            Then you probably also doubt that there is helium in the sun, because nobody ever took a gas probe from the sun and checked that it really contained helium atoms, right?

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 24 2017, @01:22AM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday February 24 2017, @01:22AM (#470982) Journal

        The James Webb Space Telescope can study it in 2019.

        NASA research has led to medical advances. NASA has an annual publication showing off benefits of their research called Spinoff [nasa.gov].

        A small amount of resources is spent on space travel. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and into the middle class in recent decades. Starvation is not a problem of lacking food right now, it's a problem of distributing food, usually in places undergoing a war. If you want to fix starvation, have fun fixing places like Syria or South Sudan. NASA researches energy technologies and sees obvious benefits from improved solar and practical nuclear fusion. Medical care/research has loads of money thrown into it already, but we'll see a huge decline in costs once preventative regenerative medicine takes off.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @04:58AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @04:58AM (#471014)

          It surreal to see a crowd saying 'India should stick to cleaning latrines before trying space tech' turn into 'USA should stick to solving real world problems before trying space tech' in less than a decade.

          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 24 2017, @05:46AM

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday February 24 2017, @05:46AM (#471017) Journal

            And which crowd is that? The ACs flinging their own poo at NASA have a fairly ephemeral sense of community by nature and don't represent the majority opinion here.

            On the (3 comment) Indian space mission article, nobody said that India should not operate a space program. ISRO has done its work on the cheap, and its Mars mission was successful on the first attempt.

            --
            [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 24 2017, @12:05AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 24 2017, @12:05AM (#470965) Journal

      If we find life outside of this solar system, chances are good we'll find it here first.

      Come to that, slim chances, I'd say.

      With a temperature of 2550K at the surface, the emission spectrum of TRAPPIST-1 will be too weak in UV - one would need other forms of energy to (e.g.) break down the nitrogen molecule to make proteins.
      The small mass of the star cause the planets to be close one to the other, slim chances for moons (thus significant tides).
      BTW, I read that all 7 are very likely tidaly locked [wikipedia.org] - another major obstacle for life to appear.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 24 2017, @02:29AM

        by bob_super (1357) on Friday February 24 2017, @02:29AM (#470992)

        On the other hand, given their proximity and their insanely fast orbits, living on one of these has to be quite a show.

        If it's even remotely habitable, we can send life there. Bacteria and simple plants are a lot more resilient and less needy than us.

        Finding life when we get there would be a mess. We really don't have a great track record of handling existing lifeforms when we get somewhere new.