The exoplanet from hell: Cloudy, with a chance of molten iron rain

Astronomers could use new technique to study weather on more Earth-like worlds.

Read the whole story

 

[isparavanje]

Wickwick[/url]":144wfjet]

zarakon[/url]":144wfjet]

SmokeTest[/url]":144wfjet]

SgtCupCake[/url]":144wfjet]If there was no star for this planet to reflect light from, how did the astronomers locate this planet? Let alone study its climate features.

It's very hot (counterintuitive, since it has no star) so it glows all on its own. This only works because it's very young, around 12M years (believed based on the age of the surrounding objects it is believed to have originated from).

In a few billion years it will be dead cold and effectively invisible as you'd expect.

Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune all radiate more energy than what they receive from the Sun. Internal heating can go on for a looong time in massive planets

Even the Earth radiates (slightly) more energy than it receives from the sun and not from the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism. Mostly it's infrared radiation to space depending on our surface temperature and albedo. The extra is just good old-fashioned residual thermal energy from planetary formation that hasn't finished cooling yet. Throw in a bit of radioactive decay and a miniscule amount of gravitational tidal forces and you've got plenty of leftover energy that's still trying to equilibrate with empty space.

It kinda has to radiate more energy than it receives from the sun or it'll heat up from tidal forces and stuff.

 

[ExMancunium]

fuzzyfuzzyfungus[/url]":3h36ajfj]

Ars of Ares[/url]":3h36ajfj]That's so metal.

Hellish rains of molten iron on an alien world of eternal night, where the cold void of space is never sullied by the dawn because there is no sun.

That's so damn metal that I'd basically need a burning longship full of corpse-painted vikings and Satan shredding a wicked bass riff to even begin to express how metal it is.

Y'know how Sardaukar are the fearsome soldier-fanatics that they are because of the brutal environment of Salusa Secondus? PSO J318.5-22 would appear to be the analogous planet for extreme metal. The perfect breeding ground for music so extreme, transgressive, and unlistenable that it simply cannot be produced under terrestrial conditions.

\﹏/

I have no useful contribution to this conversation, but based on this post right here I'm now a bit in love with fuzzyfuzzyfungus!

 

[**RTS**]

0bliv!on[/url]":3p0dygjo]

Demmrir[/url]":3p0dygjo]

mcmnky[/url]":3p0dygjo]

Danrarbc[/url]":3p0dygjo]

Ars of Ares[/url]":3p0dygjo]That's so metal.

Puns make me so ferrous.

Oh the iron-y.

Already steeling myself for the inevitable pun train.

I hope not, hate to see the comments thread get derailed like that.

Me too, metal puns antag-anodize pain.

 

[dermott]

Seriously... no star? Not even one of those newfangeled Y-class room-temperature dwarves?

 

[Asvarduil]

genphp[/url]":3hmdzuwh]I'm sure that's a girl planet ... because she sounds HOT! :eyebrow:

Congratulations. I think that pickup line is in the running for "Worst Pickup Line Ever". How does this development make you feel?

 

[Lost Creation]

How many rogue planets have we found? Wikipedia lists 8, but that list doesn't include PSO JS18.5-22, and all of them were news to me.

Also, isn't referring to PSO J318.5-22 as an "Exoplanet" in the headline technically incorrect? I've only the Wikipedia definition to go by, but it certainly reads like rogue and exoplanet are mutually exclusive classifications. (Which would explain some of the confusion earlier in the thread.)

 

[psiu_glen]

arcite[/url]":6wxeisis]Probably home planet.

I want PSO-318 removed from the dialing computer immediately.

 

[JohnDeL]

Lost Creation[/url]"gztzrxi]How many rogue planets have we found? Wikipedia lists 8, but that list doesn't include PSO JS18.5-22, and all of them were news to me.

Also, isn't referring to PSO J318.5-22 as an "Exoplanet" in the headline technically incorrect? I've only the Wikipedia definition to go by, but it certainly reads like rogue and exoplanet are mutually exclusive classifications. (Which would explain some of the confusion earlier in the thread.)

Planetologists are a bit lackadaisical about that. An exoplanet just has to be a planet that doesn't belong to our Solar System. Rogue planets are planets that either formed in interstellar space or were ejected from a solar system (which happens a lot more often than you might think). So rogue planets are a subcategory of exoplanets for a lot of planetologists.

As to the question of where the heat for this planet comes from, most of it is almost certainly from the formation of the planet, what we call gravitational binding energy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitati ... ing_energy ). Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

 

[mcmnky]

iJared[/url]":1tw5h7pq]I think we can safely assume that we have not in fact found Gallifrey, but on the other hand, maybe Krypton wasn't destroyed.

Not Gallifrey, but perhaps evidence of Magrathea.

"Here's the planet you ordered. Careful, it's hot."

 

[Asvarduil]

JohnDeL[/url]":2i6jscvn]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

 

[Statistical]

Lost Creation[/url]":3d7map7i]How many rogue planets have we found? Wikipedia lists 8, but that list doesn't include PSO JS18.5-22, and all of them were news to me.

Also, isn't referring to PSO J318.5-22 as an "Exoplanet" in the headline technically incorrect? I've only the Wikipedia definition to go by, but it certainly reads like rogue and exoplanet are mutually exclusive classifications. (Which would explain some of the confusion earlier in the thread.)

There is no specific universally accepted definition of rogue planets, exoplanets, and brown dwarfs (so called "failed stars"). The IAU only has working drafts not formal definitions for those terms however by the working draft you are right; no rogue planet would be an exoplanet (or planet as the definition of planet specifically refers to our solar system and sun).

 

[Statistical]

Asvarduil[/url]":1zr811w7]

JohnDeL[/url]":1zr811w7]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

http://www.rawstory.com/2013/10/neil-de ... -a-planet/

Simple version: The deathstar laser/blaster/colored light generator would simply punch through the planet like a drill. Gravity is what holds a planet together, gravity which is the result of the mass of the planet acting upon itself. Having enough energy is not sufficient as something with a lot of energy would just go through the planet. That would be pretty catastrophic for inhabitants and probably totally fubar the biosphere but it wouldn't "blow up" Hollywood SFX style.

 

[Asvarduil]

Statistical[/url]":1pnh83j1]

Asvarduil[/url]":1pnh83j1]

JohnDeL[/url]":1pnh83j1]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

http://www.rawstory.com/2013/10/neil-de ... -a-planet/

Simple version: The deathstar laser/blaster/colored light generator would simply punch through the planet like a drill. Gravity is what holds a planet together, gravity which is the result of the mass of the planet acting upon itself. Having enough energy is not sufficient as something with a lot of energy would just go through the planet. That would be pretty catastrophic for inhabitants and probably totally fubar the biosphere but it wouldn't "blow up" Hollywood SFX style.

I see. Even if the "L-A-S-E-R" had greater energy than the binding force of the planet, all that would happen is you would have as big of a hole as if you had a "L-A-S-E-R" of sufficient power to simply burn through the planet, thus no boom.

I've always thought that scene was silly, because lasers typically don't explode things they hit in the real world in the first place, but now that I know why it's completely wrong, I can properly laugh at it, while continuing to eat my popcorn. Thanks!

 

[qchronod]

JohnDeL[/url]":na0x6u4i]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

Wow, I really should google more before trying to answer technical things. Had a big long post with lots of math and some really goofy comparison values, and then I found this page, that's a much easier calculation to make.

To answer your question it takes unimaginable amounts of power to explode a planet. To blow up the Earth with a "laser" you would have to basically build a Dyson sphere and then store one week of the suns output before firing your "laser" at the earth. Or you could create 2.5^10x15kg of antimatter and teleport that into the core of the planet. (That would be a sphere of ~8.5km across at the density of iron, almost the size of the Chicxulub impactor.)

(I had originally calculated ~3.7x10^32J, so I was only about 50% too high. Actual value is 2.24x10^32J.)

 

[Asvarduil]

qchronod[/url]":n5eim7ub]

JohnDeL[/url]":n5eim7ub]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

Wow, I really should google more before trying to answer technical things. Had a big long post with lots of math and some really goofy comparison values, and then I found this page, that's a much easier calculation to make.

To answer your question it takes unimaginable amounts of power to explode a planet. To blow up the Earth with a "laser" you would have to basically build a Dyson sphere and then store one week of the suns output before firing your "laser" at the earth. Or you could create 2.5^10x15kg of antimatter and teleport that into the core of the planet. (That would be a sphere of ~8.5km across at the density of iron, almost the size of the Chicxulub impactor.)

(I had originally calculated ~3.7x10^32J, so I was only about 50% too high. Actual value is 2.24x10^32J.)

That's a ridiculous amount of work, even for Michael Bay.

Above and beyond that...If you're going for destruction, the Dyson Sphere alone blocking solar output would result in the end of life on Earth...in fact, even with colonies in bodies in the Solar System, those would all probably experience very bad side-effects as a result of having no sunlight anymore.

It seems to me much more energy-efficient to just find the biggest asteroid you can and accelerate it on a collision course, if you're going for planetary destruction.

You know, this conversation is going in a very dark direction, can we talk about something else? I nominate ponies.

 

[Danrarbc]

Asvarduil[/url]":m27xukgc]

qchronod[/url]":m27xukgc]

JohnDeL[/url]":m27xukgc]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

Wow, I really should google more before trying to answer technical things. Had a big long post with lots of math and some really goofy comparison values, and then I found this page, that's a much easier calculation to make.

To answer your question it takes unimaginable amounts of power to explode a planet. To blow up the Earth with a "laser" you would have to basically build a Dyson sphere and then store one week of the suns output before firing your "laser" at the earth. Or you could create 2.5^10x15kg of antimatter and teleport that into the core of the planet. (That would be a sphere of ~8.5km across at the density of iron, almost the size of the Chicxulub impactor.)

(I had originally calculated ~3.7x10^32J, so I was only about 50% too high. Actual value is 2.24x10^32J.)

That's a ridiculous amount of work, even for Michael Bay.

Above and beyond that...If you're going for destruction, the Dyson Sphere alone blocking solar output would result in the end of life on Earth...in fact, even with colonies in bodies in the Solar System, those would all probably experience very bad side-effects as a result of having no sunlight anymore.

It seems to me much more energy-efficient to just find the biggest asteroid you can and accelerate it on a collision course, if you're going for planetary destruction.

You know, this conversation is going in a very dark direction, can we talk about something else? I nominate ponies.

Nope. Staying dark.

 

[Asvarduil]

Danrarbc[/url]":16n0karb]

Asvarduil[/url]":16n0karb]

qchronod[/url]":16n0karb]

JohnDeL[/url]":16n0karb]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

Wow, I really should google more before trying to answer technical things. Had a big long post with lots of math and some really goofy comparison values, and then I found this page, that's a much easier calculation to make.

To answer your question it takes unimaginable amounts of power to explode a planet. To blow up the Earth with a "laser" you would have to basically build a Dyson sphere and then store one week of the suns output before firing your "laser" at the earth. Or you could create 2.5^10x15kg of antimatter and teleport that into the core of the planet. (That would be a sphere of ~8.5km across at the density of iron, almost the size of the Chicxulub impactor.)

(I had originally calculated ~3.7x10^32J, so I was only about 50% too high. Actual value is 2.24x10^32J.)

That's a ridiculous amount of work, even for Michael Bay.

Above and beyond that...If you're going for destruction, the Dyson Sphere alone blocking solar output would result in the end of life on Earth...in fact, even with colonies in bodies in the Solar System, those would all probably experience very bad side-effects as a result of having no sunlight anymore.

It seems to me much more energy-efficient to just find the biggest asteroid you can and accelerate it on a collision course, if you're going for planetary destruction.

You know, this conversation is going in a very dark direction, can we talk about something else? I nominate ponies.

Nope. Staying dark.

The only reason I know that's Midnight Sparkle is because I thought Twilight Sparkle and Midnight Sparkle were the same thing. Google 'corrected' me.

 

[brionl]

Asvarduil[/url]":iasutp2w]

Danrarbc[/url]":iasutp2w]

Asvarduil[/url]":iasutp2w]

qchronod[/url]":iasutp2w]

JohnDeL[/url]":iasutp2w]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

Wow, I really should google more before trying to answer technical things. Had a big long post with lots of math and some really goofy comparison values, and then I found this page, that's a much easier calculation to make.

To answer your question it takes unimaginable amounts of power to explode a planet. To blow up the Earth with a "laser" you would have to basically build a Dyson sphere and then store one week of the suns output before firing your "laser" at the earth. Or you could create 2.5^10x15kg of antimatter and teleport that into the core of the planet. (That would be a sphere of ~8.5km across at the density of iron, almost the size of the Chicxulub impactor.)

(I had originally calculated ~3.7x10^32J, so I was only about 50% too high. Actual value is 2.24x10^32J.)

That's a ridiculous amount of work, even for Michael Bay.

Above and beyond that...If you're going for destruction, the Dyson Sphere alone blocking solar output would result in the end of life on Earth...in fact, even with colonies in bodies in the Solar System, those would all probably experience very bad side-effects as a result of having no sunlight anymore.
[/quote]

I hate to break it to you, but that's Nightmare Moon.

Anyway if *I* was going to blow up a planet, I'd open a hyper-spatial tube to a parallel dimension where all objects have an intrinsic velocity of 5 times the speed of light.

 

[vhoracek]

So this is where the rogue engineers who doctored the VW emission-cheating software come from. No wonder they have hardly any regard for measly NOx emissions!

 

[Wickwick]

Statistical[/url]":20p5chzw]

Asvarduil[/url]":20p5chzw]

JohnDeL[/url]":20p5chzw]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

http://www.rawstory.com/2013/10/neil-de ... -a-planet/

Simple version: The deathstar laser/blaster/colored light generator would simply punch through the planet like a drill. Gravity is what holds a planet together, gravity which is the result of the mass of the planet acting upon itself. Having enough energy is not sufficient as something with a lot of energy would just go through the planet. That would be pretty catastrophic for inhabitants and probably totally fubar the biosphere but it wouldn't "blow up" Hollywood SFX style.

Ok, but let's just assume for the moment that the Death Star has the power output necessary to impart world-self-orbit in the few seconds of operation we see. Also, obviously, then that laser could be strong enough to punch right through Alderaan. But, obviously we don't want to do that. Instead we put the power high enough that we punch down near the core quite quickly. Then we turn the power down a bit so we stop drilling and just focus on the center of the planet. Said point is going to get wicked hot in short order turning into a plasma. As we all know, plasmas are optically opaque - they can be punched through with enough laser power but if we let this ball of plasma grow enough we can then dump our planet-killing burst into the cloud of plasma. The pressure of the plasma trying to expand (and possibly the nuclear reactions are triggered) are what blows up the planet - not the laser itself.

See? Very straightforward...

Edit: Mind you, if you've got THAT much power available to you in your Death Star you may as well just boil off the oceans and strip the atmosphere. But I digress.

 

[Wickwick]

qchronod[/url]":20n869ar]

JohnDeL[/url]":20n869ar]Remember that when an Earth-sized body forms, the gravitational energy of its collapse (which is lost as heat) is roughly equivalent to two weeks of our Sun's output! That's why planetologists always giggle when Alderaan gets blown up; it just couldn't happen.

Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second.

I've never heard of why a planet can't be exploded. I'd like more information on this, because being able to giggle at cheesy Hollywood SFX is always worth it, and that sentence doesn't paint a very clear picture. More info?

Wow, I really should google more before trying to answer technical things. Had a big long post with lots of math and some really goofy comparison values, and then I found this page, that's a much easier calculation to make.

To answer your question it takes unimaginable amounts of power to explode a planet. To blow up the Earth with a "laser" you would have to basically build a Dyson sphere and then store one week of the suns output before firing your "laser" at the earth. Or you could create 2.5^10x15kg of antimatter and teleport that into the core of the planet. (That would be a sphere of ~8.5km across at the density of iron, almost the size of the Chicxulub impactor.)

(I had originally calculated ~3.7x10^32J, so I was only about 50% too high. Actual value is 2.24x10^32J.)

Or create an artificial black hole on the surface. It's tricky in that it has to start out massive enough to not evaporate (sublimate?) before it really gets going. Technically, that doesn't "explode" the planet but once the black hole does disappear everything that was the planet will be flying away at light speed!

 

[sheepless]

Voldenuit[/url]":ctfft9o7]

fuzzyfuzzyfungus[/url]":ctfft9o7]

Ars of Ares[/url]":ctfft9o7]That's so metal.

Hellish rains of molten iron on an alien world of eternal night, where the cold void of space is never sullied by the dawn because there is no sun.

That's so damn metal that I'd basically need a burning longship full of corpse-painted vikings and Satan shredding a wicked bass riff to even begin to express how metal it is.

Y'know how Sardaukar are the fearsome soldier-fanatics that they are because of the brutal environment of Salusa Secondus? PSO J318.5-22 would appear to be the analogous planet for extreme metal. The perfect breeding ground for music so extreme, transgressive, and unlistenable that it simply cannot be produced under terrestrial conditions.

\﹏/

Do they crash ultra-black limo spaceships into the sun during their concerts?

Oh wait, no sun.

No sun now. There was one until the concert. Hotblack was reported to be "mildly disappointed" with the outcome.

 

[JohnDeL]

brionl[/url]":39g6pgvp]
Anyway if *I* was going to blow up a planet, I'd open a hyper-spatial tube to a parallel dimension where all objects have an intrinsic velocity of 5 times the speed of light.

That's a Ploor excuse for a planet-killer.

 

[jbode]

If you could build a laser or particle beam weapon that could deliver the same amount of energy as an asteroid impact in, say, a millisecond burst, would the effect be the roughly the same as an actual asteroid impact?

 

[Wickwick]

jbode[/url]":1g9pcc0s]If you could build a laser or particle beam weapon that could deliver the same amount of energy as an asteroid impact in, say, a millisecond burst, would the effect be the roughly the same as an actual asteroid impact?

I'm sure there would be some minor differences but the further you go from the impact the less of a difference that would make. If the seismic contribution from the impactor were a large fraction of the spread of the devastation then your particle beam might not capture that detail (no tsunamis on the other side of the world perhaps).

It's like blowing something up with a shaped charge or TNT. If you're right next to the explosive the shaped charge can cut through metal like butter but an equal explosive amount of TNT cannot. However, 30 feet away they're both similar.

When doing initial predictions of what would happen during an atomic bomb blast the assumption was that a point source of energy was deposited into the fluid instantaneously. Sure, that's not how it happens (and totally neglects the radiation burning things) but it's close enough to first-order approximations of blast waves, etc. Besides, the radiative processes can be decoupled and modeled separately.

 

[Phyllis Stein]

Sunless planets which roam the galaxy alone in eternal darkness are now known to be common.
The existence of such "black planets" was anticipated by the writer H.P. Lovecroft when he wrote this poem in 1917:
.
I have whirled with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name
...
Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright...

 

[MrHandsome]

strange to hear there is rain of molten iron when surface temperature is a "merely" 800 Celcius bout half of the MELTING point of iron. All heat must come from the planet itself, for its a rogue planet without a star.

So I'm a bit skeptical on the "raining molten iron" part.

 

[Statistical]

MrHandsome[/url]":2mbvdz2e]strange to hear there is rain of molten iron when surface temperature is a "merely" 800 Celcius bout half of the MELTING point of iron.

The melting point at what pressure?

 

[Ed1024]

“Raindrops are falling on my h... AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!"

 

[Onyx Spartan II]

MrHandsome[/url]":2h57ehyy]strange to hear there is rain of molten iron when surface temperature is a "merely" 800 Celcius bout half of the MELTING point of iron. All heat must come from the planet itself, for its a rogue planet without a star.

So I'm a bit skeptical on the "raining molten iron" part.

All the paper says is that temperatures are "at least" 800C. Plus the planet's bigger than Earth so pressure is probably higher.

 

[maehara]

Asvarduil[/url]":3scdw1q0]The only reason I know that's Midnight Sparkle is because I thought Twilight Sparkle and Midnight Sparkle were the same thing. Google 'corrected' me.

Googling anything My Little Pony-related: dangerous business.