RE: Science Porn
May 13, 2016 at 7:59 am
(This post was last modified: May 13, 2016 at 8:03 am by vorlon13.)
(May 12, 2016 at 6:35 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: Seriously, this is science porn to me:
A comment about the chart:
keep in mind, as you move from left to right across the chart, you're also seeing the probability of the Kepler satellites ability at detecting planets to DECREASE.
So statistically, we know there are 'more' planets there, and the farther right you look, there are more and more that the mission missed.
It would be great if I could remember what the factor is, LOL.
And also note, the orientation of these star systems is random, so we can infer a further correction by noting, for instance, let's say of all the star systems correctly oriented for us to detect their planets and we note (just for example, I don't know what the actual # is) 1/3 have planets, then we can infer of the star systems incorrectly oriented for us to detect planets, 1/3 of them have 'em too.
A real life example:
Let's say a local high school has 1000 students and each student has a locker. We don't care specifically which kids have over due library books in their lockers, we just want to know how many overdue library books are in all the lockers put together. So we randomly check 100 lockers and find 40 have no overdue books, 20 have one, 20 have 2, 10 have 3, and the last 10 have 4 or more.
Doing a little math, we realize we have at least 130 overdue library books in all the lockers.
This technique works on the stars too. Kepler only sees a percentage, so nevertheless, we get a pretty good idea how many stars have planets. We also know. of the stars that Kepler can detect planets around, it is far better at locating ones closer to each star than further out. So that can be allowed for up to a point. And that point is, can we expect the process(es) that create planets to be sensitive to distance from the star ??
And this is where it gets interesting when the astronomers start simulating, more realistically, (we hope) how planets form, and start to realize the damn things apparently can move towards and/or away from their stars while forming. And then we get to the point of the recent Sci Am article which covers simulations of our specific solar system and it seems probable Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune aren't in their original orbits any more, another large planet may have been ejected to interstellar space, and very early on, some more planets formed closer than Mercury is now, and spiraled into the sun.
Fun stuff!
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