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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the still-easy-to-detect dept.

WASP-104b is Darker than Charcoal

By analysing the K2 short-cadence data from Campaign 14 we detect phase-curve modulation in the light curve of the hot-Jupiter host star WASP-104. The ellipsoidal modulation is detected with high significance and in agreement with theoretical expectations, while Doppler beaming and reflection modulations are detected tentatively. We show that the visual geometric albedo is lower than 0.03 at 95% confidence, making it one of the least-reflective planets found to date. The light curve also exhibits a rotational modulation, implying a stellar rotational period likely to be near 23 or 46 days. In addition, we refine the system parameters and place tight upper limits for transit timing and duration variations, starspot occultation events, and additional transiting planets.

WASP-104b's albedo was previously thought to be 0.4 (absorbing 60% of incoming light).

Also at ScienceAlert.

Related: NASA Finds a Pitch-Black Hot Jupiter Exoplanet (WASP-12b)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:28PM (10 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:28PM (#671841) Journal

    "Bible-believing Christians" for the longest time thought the Southern Hemisphere was uninhabited because anyone living there would fall off and/or couldn't have been saved (see Augustine). You're full of it, Freeman. The theology is rotten from start to finish.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday April 25 2018, @09:12PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 25 2018, @09:12PM (#671866) Journal

    He wraps up the waters in his clouds,
    yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
    -- Job 26:8

    He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape,
    measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high.
    It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.
    -- 1 Kings 7:23

    (circumference about 45 feet or about 14 meters, or 444.505 attoparsecs)
    The ratio π (pi) does not apply. State legislators can feel free to use 3.

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    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 26 2018, @03:22AM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday April 26 2018, @03:22AM (#672006) Journal

      Butbutbutbut CONTEXT! You're obviously READING IT OUT OF CONTEXT YOU BLASPHEMING HELLBOUND ATHEIST HEATHEN!!!111eleventyone

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      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 27 2018, @06:35PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 27 2018, @06:35PM (#672714) Journal

        Actually, I don't think I read it out of context. It just seemed amusing to post here.

        As for that passage in Job about Clouds. I would point out Job was one of the very earliest books written in the Bible, despite its position within the OT books. It seems to me that Job is marveling at the clouds and what God could do, within the framework of his argument. His argument with his three "friends" (miserable comforters are you all!, he says later)

        As for the Pi reference, again, like Job, it is not meant as any kind of statement about science or mathematics. Merely some mention about the construction of a large round object and its (approximate) dimensions. Thirty cubits around, with a ten cubit diameter? The difference from thirty cubit circumference is between 1/10 and 1/5 of a cubit. Probably a rounding error to them.

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    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 26 2018, @08:04AM (1 child)

      by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Thursday April 26 2018, @08:04AM (#672070) Homepage
      10 is specified to 1 significant digit. 30 is specified to 1 significant digit. Pi is 3 to 1 significant digit.

      Of all the bullshit in the bible you could attack, half-baked mathematical pseudo-pedantry was a very weak choice of weapon.
      --
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      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 27 2018, @06:38PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 27 2018, @06:38PM (#672716) Journal

        My purpose was more amusing than as any kind of attack. If I wanted to attack (which I do not) there is plenty that I could use. But then I could defend that same attack as well.

        Example:

        What? If a woman gives birth to a boy she is unclean for seven days. But birth of girl makes her unclean fourteen days. But the point is "ceremonially unclean".

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday April 26 2018, @03:21PM (4 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Thursday April 26 2018, @03:21PM (#672178) Journal

    I would hesitate to call Catholics bible-believing Christians. Though, indeed the prevailing Scientific thought at that time was that the Earth was Flat.
    Isaiah 40:22 "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:"

    The Bible really doesn't go into the exact shape of the earth when God created it. That quote from Isaiah is about as close as you get to a description of the shape of the earth in the Bible.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 26 2018, @07:14PM (3 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday April 26 2018, @07:14PM (#672271) Journal

      Indeed. Thankfully, our civilization is molded more by the Greeks than the half-illiterate, murderous sheep-fucking savages who made up Middle Eastern Jewry and Christianity! Took a hell of a long time, but we're slowly climbing back out of that morass.

      Your God is a genocidal Bronze-Age holdover, Freeman. I don't know what angle I need to turn this at to get it through your head: he has exactly the same characteristics and temperament of the other God-figures in his milieu, and the theology evolved with the cultures it came in contact with over the centuries. Post-Exilic Judaism is a very different beast from its pre-Exilic form, for example. How much of this do you have even the slightest inkling of?

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      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Thursday April 26 2018, @07:46PM (2 children)

        by Freeman (732) on Thursday April 26 2018, @07:46PM (#672288) Journal

        Ah, you mean like with the Atomic Bomb? It sure is a good thing we've come so far as to be able to nearly totally annihilate an entire city with one bomb? Or it's so much better that we are more accepting of immoral behavior? Yes, we should be accepting of the Sinner. No, we shouldn't be accepting of the Sin.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 26 2018, @08:19PM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday April 26 2018, @08:19PM (#672299) Journal

          Atomic bombs ain't got nuttin' on the Great Flood, or that whole Apocalypse thing. Bzzzzt. Try again. Or don't; you're starting to make me embarrassed *for* you if this puerile horseshit is all you can muster.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 27 2018, @06:45PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 27 2018, @06:45PM (#672724) Journal

          Is our immoral behavior worse than say the Galatians or Corinthians? I would suspect not. It just took us a while to catch up to them. Whether or not so doesn't make modern people any less redeemable.

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