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New Outlooks In Science & Engineering
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| 26 April 2007 |
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's not a bird or a plane, its an extrasolar planet, which doesn't look anything like either a bird or a plane, but is definitely awesome. |
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There was some cool news yesterday. Astronomers* published some results about an exciting new finding in the search for extrasolar planets.
But waaaaiiiit a second, before I even attempt to waffle like a crazy person about this cool news, just what is the search for extrasolar planets? Well I suppose that anyone reading this has probably already heard a fair bit about this and the associated cool news from a newspaper or the good ol’ gogglebox (if not then check it out!: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6589157.stm ). So over the next two or three blogs i’ll try to gradually build up to describing what astronomers have found by giving a not very technical, but somewhat lengthy, description of what it means to “search for extrasolar planets” in the first place. Then when I get to the cool news, even though you may already know it, you can hear about it in a bit more detail than you might have from newspapers and the like ;)
First up, what is an extrasolar planet anyway? Let’s set the scene:
Our sun is a star - you know, big burning ball of gas an’ all that. Just like there are eight planets (and one slightly smaller piece of rock) orbiting around our sun, we know that there are other planets orbiting around some of the other stars that you can see at night when you look up into the sky and go “oooooooh”. And so voila! we have the idea of extrasolar planets! All that is meant by an “extrasolar planet”, is a planet that is orbiting around stars other than our own sun (there’s also the possibility that planets might somehow end up drifting along on their own in deep space, not really orbiting around any particular star, but as far as I know, no-one has ever observed a planet doing this). Only around 229 of these extrasolar planets have been found to date. Studying these extrasolar planets is interesting for lots of different reasons, but one cool thing is that they might help astronomers learn about how planets form. In particular, not all the stars that they’ve found planets around are like our own Sun. There are loads of different types of stars, and these different types behave differently. Some stars are massive and burn all their fuel really quickly, whilst others are smaller and burn slower. The big ones are kinda like the angry live-fast-die-young Fonzie stars, whilst the smaller ones a bit more like the chilled out and longer lived Richie Cunninghams of the sky. Having a look at what kind of planets might end up forming around the different types of stars could perhaps help scientists learn about what kind of planets will form under these different kinds of conditions. And perhaps that could even let them learn something about the different types of stars themselves!
But there’s one big question which I’ve failed to answer so far: How do we even know that there are planets around the other stars that we see up there? I’ll try and answer this in my next post.
*A special breed of scientist that looks up a lot and is mostly nocturnal.
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| 12 April 2007 |
Distrorted electric guitairs wail loudly as a new blog is born... |
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Hello the internet! Welcome to my blog which will feature cool science things such as time travel, robots (maybe robot-dinosaurs*), and generally all the things in science that make me say 'awesome'.
I'll also try to give you a taste of what my working life is like, my primary job (or 'cover') being a theoretical physics research student. I'll also endeavor to occasionaly describe my other job. I can't be too specific, but it involves climbing walls, spinning webs and fighting crime.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, my name is nic, nice to meet you :)
*Pending fossil evidence. |
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| NOISE (New Outlooks In Science & Engineering) is a UK-wide campaign funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Initiated in 2000, it aims to raise awareness of science and engineering among young people. www.epsrc.ac.uk |
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Nic's biography 