Scientists find a planet so light it could float on water.

[mauve]

Found this on the Yahoo news headlines:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060914/ap_on_sc/puffy_planet

So Pluto CAN'T be a planet, but this new puffy mass CAN. I say Pluto should sue.

Although, you have to love a planet that can be described as "puffy" by the scientific community. You just want to cuddle it.

[Death by Stabbing]

Ok...I'm getting really sick of whoever descovers these planets...ok you can't just make shit up and call it a planet because it fits under loose guidelines...I'm still really mad that Pluto isn't a planet anymore I mean it's been a planet longer than the guy who decided it wasn't anymore has been alive...Now we have a puffy planet? Planets are not puffy...your eyes are puffy when you wake up in the morning not planets.

and just because I want to cuddle this new planet doesn't make it better than Pluto...Long live Pluto our 9th planet forever!

DBS

[Desdraftlit]

Think of the education system. All those poster companies better refund the schools for the posters that show "Pluto" as a planet. And just yesterday, and the day before, and all the other days in recent history. Classrooms have taught children that Pluto is a planet. I'm sorry, but you can't just go up to adults and children and tell us it is no more. Psshhh, if Pluto isn't a planet, then I'm Whoopi Goldberg (http://www.wma.com/whoopi_goldberg/imgs/WHOOPI_GOLDBERG_1.jpg) :rolleyes:

[ElfLad]

I'm pretty sure that Saturn is less dense than water. What I've heard anyways.

[Satan's Onion]

large and puffy...

Planet Kirby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby_(Nintendo))?

[greed]

It's density, not weight. That thing would be heavier than Jupiter, which is itself around 40 000 times Plutos weight. It may be just helium but it is an almost incomprehendable amount of it.

And you're right Elflad, Saturn would float as well.

[shiney]

Any relation to Sean 'Puffy' Combs? Is this the OG bling planet? Does this planet, persay, stand for materialist consumption and exorbitant displays of wealth?

Dare I suggest that its chemical composition may even be Cristal?

[Fifthfiend]

Hmmmm...

This planet strikes me as Kirbyish.
But also it's a little bit Puff Daddyish.
Mostly I'd say this planet is Willie Nelson.

Yeah! This planet is pretty good!

[BlackMageGirl!]

*scratches head*

Why the sudden fetish on naming and throwing away planets? I mean, did they say "whoops, since we demoted pluto we don't have nine planets...OMIGOSHMUSTHAVENEWPLANETNOWNOWNOW!!"

Or maybe they're bored and decided to randomly rewrite the borders of our solar system map?

.......

....Phantom planet is quilted for softness!

[Death by Stabbing]

I'm pretty sure that Saturn is less dense than water. What I've heard anyways.

Yes that is true


*scratches head*

Why the sudden fetish on naming and throwing away planets? I mean, did they say "whoops, since we demoted pluto we don't have nine planets...OMIGOSHMUSTHAVENEWPLANETNOWNOWNOW!!"

Or maybe they're bored and decided to randomly rewrite the borders of our solar system map?

.......

....Phantom planet is quilted for softness!

Yeah it seems really weird that they'd just start doing this now...I mean there are a whole bunch of things being discovered out in space and a whole bunch more to discover but all of a sudden every rock out there needs to be a planet.

DBS

[Sithdarth]

Except they have been searching for planets out side our solar system for years. I think its going on two decades. Hell they had over 200 of them before this Pluto thing ever hit the mass media. Its just our current detection methods are best suited to finding very large planets with strange orbits. This is not really a new thing its just suddenly been thrust into the light because anything with planet in it is big news now.

[Taliesin]

Planet? Sounds like a brown dwarf to me...

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

the word "planet" is obsolete. What do you define as a "planet"? does it have to be a certain size? or does it need to consist of a solid core? depending on which of those you think is what the term "planet" should mean, could mean that this new "planet" should not be considered as such, yet pluto and all these Keiper belt objects should be called "planets". or you may think the opposite, depending on which term you belive to be correct.

or perhaps there are other factors to be considered (orbit of said object, atmosphere, etc)

as for this new one, if it has no solid core, then perhaps it should be refered to as a "gas giant" and not a planet. but then you would have to re-classify a couple of planets in our solar system as well, which would mean Pluto could never agian be considered the "ninth" anything anymore, if it even is or ever really was.

Do you see how confusing it is to try and classify all these things that are out there? there are just too many and of too much variance to simply be given the vague title of "planet". but the important question is this:

"Does it really matter what we call these things?"

[Skyshot]

Saw something in the paper today. Apparently the planet they were going to name "Xena" has been formally named "Eris."

A planet recently named after the goddess of discord...nah, that makes no sense at all. Wonder why they would do that.

Can't wait to hear what my astronomy professor has to say about all this. Eris? Puffy planet? He wasn't enthusiastic about the whole Pluto thing; these new developments are gonna drive him mad.

[Long-Haired Narcissist]

Ok...I'm getting really sick of whoever descovers these planets...ok you can't just make shit up and call it a planet because it fits under loose guidelines...I'm still really mad that Pluto isn't a planet anymore I mean it's been a planet longer than the guy who decided it wasn't anymore has been alive...Now we have a puffy planet? Planets are not puffy...your eyes are puffy when you wake up in the morning not planets.

and just because I want to cuddle this new planet doesn't make it better than Pluto...Long live Pluto our 9th planet forever!

DBSGet over it, it never did matter whether Pluto was a planet. Besides, this planet isn't orbiting our solar system so IMO it matters even less than Pluto did.
WASHINGTON - The largest planet ever found orbiting another star is so puffy it would float on water, astronomers said Thursday. The newly discovered planet, dubbed HAT-P-1, is both the largest and least dense of the nearly 200 worlds astronomers have found outside our own solar system.

[POS Industries]

Any relation to Sean 'Puffy' Combs? Is this the OG bling planet? Does this planet, persay, stand for materialist consumption and exorbitant displays of wealth?

Dare I suggest that its chemical composition may even be Cristal?

Quit spamming.

Hmmmm...

This planet strikes me as Kirbyish.
But also it's a little bit Puff Daddyish.
Mostly I'd say this planet is Willie Nelson.

You, too.

Regarding what officially makes a planet a planet, allow me to point out that, were it on fire, Jupiter would be a star. Pluto fails at being a planet because, not only is it smaller than our moon, it's smaller than its own moon. Furthmore, it's orbital path is so wonky that Pluto spent half the time as our eighth planet.

Planet Charmin-Ultra is a planet because it's big, fairly spherical, and orbits it's star (or stars) in a manner appropriate to a true, blue (or whatever the hell color it is) planet.

Pluto is just a little, bitty rock in space. Get over it.

[ApathyMan]

OMG LEIK WAT SUP WITH DOSE ST00PID ASTARNOMERS AND THEIR NOWLEGE!!! HOW DARE THEY MAKE PLUTO INTO A DWARF PLANET INSTEAND OF A REGULAH PLALNET?! Y R THEY SO GAY TO ADAPT THEIR DEFINITIONS AND THEORIES OVER TIME TO GET RID OF USELESS AMBIGUITY AND DEBATE WITHIN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMOUNTINTY??? TAHTS JUST GAY!!! WHAT THE FUCK?! WHY DONT THEY JUST CALL ME A PALNET IF TEHYERE SO GAY! SERIOuSLY!?

I mean... by the older "undefined definition" we could have had some 50~ planets in the Solar System, all of the new ones being small chunks of ice in the Kuiper belt. Now we have different classes of planets, and everybody is happy, except for a few stubborn scientists and people, like me, who don't study astronomy but simply have a passive knowledge of our system.

As far as this new planet is concerned... I was never too keen on gas giants. They always seemed like poseurs to me - which would mean that the answer is that this planet is most similar to Sean Puffy Combs.

[TheSpacePope]

The interesting thing about finding the gas giants is the possibility exists of finding a similar solar system to ours. It is in the creation of solar system from nebulae that these plants and bodies form, so it is fairly exciting to see other planets discovered. The main reason that we can only find these gas giants is because we are unable, with current technology, to see a planet the size of earth and distinguish it from dust or farther bodies.

It is funny that they described it as Puffy though.
I bet P diddy just bought it.

[Sithdarth]

Oh we have the technology to see Earth sized planets just not the funding. NASA is giving it a shot though. Maybe in the next 30-40 years we'll be naming off earth like and sized planets.

[Kerensky287]

About the whole "Puffy/P. Diddy" thing, I seem to remember seeing The Daily Show where they made fun of the fact that he removed the P from his name. Apparently it was getting between him and his fans.

About the whole planet/nonplanet thing, I think there should just be different classifications of planets. So, you could still call them planets, but they may not be "true" planets, making them... nanoplanets...? Something like that. I think that terrestrial planets like Earth should be the only things to keep the definition of Planet. Meaning that they have water, an atmosphere, and other things necessary to support life. Then come sub-planets, like mercury... gas planets, like Jupiter... see what I'm getting at?

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

I think that terrestrial planets like Earth should be the only things to keep the definition of Planet. Meaning that they have water, an atmosphere, and other things necessary to support life. Then come sub-planets, like mercury... gas planets, like Jupiter... see what I'm getting at?

which is exactly why Pluto has been de-classified to a "minor-planet" but everyone gets all pissed off about it!! there is no solution to this whole fucking problem because people dont like the classifications that the scientists come up with. Dam human idiocy!! :mad:

[Long-Haired Narcissist]

Oh yeah, can someone explain the Willy Nelson joke to me?

[TheSpacePope]

Oh we have the technology to see Earth sized planets just not the funding. NASA is giving it a shot though. Maybe in the next 30-40 years we'll be naming off earth like and sized planets.
Show me wise man, show me please.

Oh yeah, can someone explain the Willy Nelson joke to me?
That might be too inside....
I don't know.

[Sithdarth]

Show me wise man, show me please.

http://www.llnl.gov/str/March03/Hyde.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98221&page=1
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/about.html

and that's just for starters and about 10 years of actually getting funding for some of the projects.

Edit: and this thing too
http://constellation.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Now its going to take some time to get the X-ray version up. Put there was some talk of using the same multi-telescope approach with standard optical telescopes like the Hubble. Even perhaps using the new super light weight giant folding mirror technology. Basically creating a telescope thousands if not millions of times more sensitive than the Hubble in a decade or two at the most.

[Bobbey]

HAT-P-1 is an oddball planet, since it orbits its parent star at just one-twentieth of the distance that separates Earth from our own sun. While Earth takes a year to orbit the sun, the newly found planet whips around its star once every 4.5 days.

I don't quite get this...this planet is apparently as close to it's sun like mercury is to ours(maybe even closer). How can it be possible that this planet is a gas planet? Wouldn't it's gasses have evaporated from the intense heat coming from it's sun? And how come it isn't a solid planet? Being that close to it's sun would make it become solid, no?
And could it be possible that this planet does not have an atmosphere? For sure, this planet's gravitational force is strong enough to keep it's own atmosphere, but again, because of it being so close to it's sun, wouldn't it's atmosphere have been evaporated like mercury's?

I'm quite confused...

[Archbio]

For sure, this planet's gravitational force is strong enough to keep it's own atmosphere, but again, because of it being so close to it's sun, wouldn't it's atmosphere have been evaporated like mercury's?

A small Telluric planet like Mercury has only a small fraction of the gravity that a Gas Giant can have, unless I'm greatly mistaken.

[Sithdarth]

I think the common explination is that they form out where Jupiter formed and then for some reason they take a trip inwards kicking out all the little planets in the way. Of course they're already huge by then so they have more than enough pull to hold onto the vast quantity of their gasses. They probably lose what amounts to trace bits of thier atmosophere every few years.

Also, the wonderful thing about being giant and made of gas is that you have a lot of places to put and use extra heat. Like say powering giant ass super storms the size of several Earths. It is considered impossible for a gas giant to form that close but there is nothing to wrong with it moving that close from farther out.

One of the main problems is that we have is that we have very little observational evidence on how solar systems form. This is why we build giant ass telecopes and then shoot them into space.

[Michael Morris]

Saturn in our own solar system is less dense than water - so it's not a first.

[Fifthfiend]

Oh yeah, can someone explain the Willy Nelson joke to me?

It was more of a Katamari Damacy joke, really.

I don't know how Willie Nelson got pulled into that one, it just sort of happened.

[Mr.G.Williams]

It was more of a Katamari Damacy joke, really.

I don't know how Willie Nelson got pulled into that one, it just sort of happened.
I can explain that one for yah'! You see, Willie Nelson is actually a student of the ancient art of Shiki-wiki-hiki-bomm, allowing him to dominate the minds of lesser beings. Using this power, he expands his commercial influence. His latest move has been try and steal a planet for his own personal use...because Willie Nelson is awesome and will one day rule the universe.

On a less grave note, this whole sudden upsurge in interest in the objects in our solar system has me slightly peeved, but I try not to keep up with it. It's better that way. I plan to wait until interest has died down, then see exactly how many planets we have left...

[Bear]

Isn't there a theory that states that all planets start as gas giants?

The theory states that during the final stages of development, some stars let off a massive amount of energy, "blowing" the gas off of nearby planets. Thus, planets close to the sun don't have tons of gas, and all thats left are the cores, a.k.a small planets like ours. Therefore, the stars that didn't go through this process can have massive gas giants very close to them.

Anyone else heard of this? I read it a while ago...

[Preturbed]

That ones new to me.

I agree with the guy who said its a brown dwarf. It sounds like a double star system that burned out its first half.

[Sithdarth]

Isn't there a theory that states that all planets start as gas giants?

The theory states that during the final stages of development, some stars let off a massive amount of energy, "blowing" the gas off of nearby planets. Thus, planets close to the sun don't have tons of gas, and all thats left are the cores, a.k.a small planets like ours. Therefore, the stars that didn't go through this process can have massive gas giants very close to them.

Anyone else heard of this? I read it a while ago...

The thing is even during the first few millions of years during star formation the gas and dust near the star is hotter and just generally oribiting a lot faster. This tends to make it clump into denser bits. Also, all the heavy elements sink toward the center of the cloud leaving mostly hydrogen and helium out on the edges. Then when every star finally takes that last step into fusion it blasts all the excess gas out the the entire planetary system. Its just that the outer most planets had both more stuff to eat to begin with and slightly more time to eat. Not to mention the blast does miss some of the stuff in the outer parts of a planetary system leaving some left overs to eat. At least that's the current theory.

That ones new to me.

I agree with the guy who said its a brown dwarf. It sounds like a double star system that burned out its first half.

Most large gas giants like Jupiter or larger are in fact brown dwarfs. That really doesn't make them not a planet. Not to mention stars do not burn out into brown dwarfs. They burn out into white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes. A brown dwarf is simply a large ball of gas that just missed accumulating enough mass to intiate sustained fusion.

Not to mention the article mentions that there is already a second star in the system right in the first sentance of the second paragraph.