DailyDirt: The Rest Of The Universe

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Mar 5th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

There's a lot we don't know about the universe. Until relatively recently, we weren't even sure how big the universe is. Telescopes looking deep into space have gathered a lot of interesting information, and we're finding all sorts of strange phenomena and types of extra-solar planets. Here are just a few cool tidbits about planets from far, far away.

Nomad planets could be floating around our galaxy without orbiting a star in surprisingly large numbers. Based on some new estimates, there might be 100,000 times more nomad planets in the Milky Way than stars. [url]
The Hubble telescope has found a totally new class of planet that is made of an enormous amount of water. Given the density of this waterworld, GJ1214b has more water than Earth and much less rockiness. [url]
The Kepler Space Telescope has discovered over a thousand planets outside our solar system, and a few other star systems have interesting planetary orbit patterns. One "Kepler Object of Interest" (KOI) is a system in which there are planets that share the same orbit. In another KOI, all the planets circle their star in under a week. Strange, new worlds, indeed. [url]
To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: astronomy, exoplanets, hubble, kepler, koi, nomad planets, telescopes

6 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

abc gum, 5 Mar 2012 @ 5:13pm

That's no Nomad Planet, that's a space station.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2012 @ 5:22pm

A water planet? That's great news!
We finally found a place to send Kevin Costner.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael Ho (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 5:52pm

Re:
Heh. Nice Star Wars reference... but it would actually be really cool if there were advanced civilizations cruising around in huge planet-sized ships.

It would even still be cool if there were just single-celled life existing on a nomad planet....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
silverscarcat (profile), 5 Mar 2012 @ 7:28pm

Re: Re:
Unicron?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pixelation, 5 Mar 2012 @ 9:46pm

Future Earth?
"A recent look at the data has found one system that could have two planets in the same orbit."

It is thought that the earth had another planet in the same orbit which impacted the earth and created the moon.

Cool "factoid"... the moon was likely about 15,000 miles from the earth when it was formed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2012 @ 6:02pm

Single-celled life?
We...are...Nomad. Must...sterilize.
Now let the Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate begin!
[ link to this | view in thread ]