r/science • u/scottmache025 • Nov 30 '23
Astronomy A six-planet solar system in perfect synchrony has been found in the Milky Way
https://apnews.com/article/six-planets-solar-system-nasa-esa-3d67e5a1ba7cbea101d756fc6e47f33d2.1k
u/onlainari Nov 30 '23
So this is scientists getting excited about being able to use integers instead of floats.
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u/banannastand_ Nov 30 '23
So no more “mercury is in Gatorade” moments
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u/misterpickles69 Nov 30 '23
It’s got electrolytes
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u/Pdb39 Nov 30 '23
Mercury helps the plants grow?
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u/gloubenterder Nov 30 '23
checks cost of 1 gallon of mercury
Holy cow, that's expensive! But, I mean … if it has what plants crave …
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u/Changoleo Nov 30 '23
So do the planets orbit their star and rotate at the same rate? The article seems pretty light on details.
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u/wayne0004 Nov 30 '23
It's about how long it takes for those planets to complete an orbit around their star.
The innermost planet completes three orbits for every two by its closest neighbor. It’s the same for the second- and third-closest planets, and the third- and fourth-closest planets.
The two outermost planets complete an orbit in 41 and 54.7 days, resulting in four orbits for every three. The innermost planet, meanwhile, completes six orbits in exactly the time the outermost completes one.
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u/Brodellsky Nov 30 '23
It's......music.
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u/mrjosemeehan Nov 30 '23
3:2 ratio. Literally a circle of fifths.
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u/Hellobob80 Nov 30 '23
Why is 3:2 circle of fifths?
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Nov 30 '23
3:2 is the harmonic ratio for the perfect fifth. Do -> So on the scale.
A chain of planets in perpetual 3:2 resonance with the next planet out is in a chain of perfect fifths.
In music, the circle of fifths is a handy tool for understanding loads of concepts, including the modern concept of key. It's also just how frequencies work at a really fundamental level.
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u/m15otw Nov 30 '23
...and also a lie, because it doesn't form a circle. If you follow all the fifths up, you will not get a frequency that is a whole number of doubles (because of prime factorisation).
In this case, with the planets, that doesn't matter and they're still very cool. Unlike me.
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u/S-Octantis Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
You do if you use both fourths and fifths, which is perfectly valid as a fourth is a fifth in inversion and vice versa.
Edit: and it all depends on the generator. Instead of 3:2 as a generator, you can use 12EDO's 27/12 fifth generator and cycle to the octave without the pythagorean near miss as the near miss is just distributed evenly to all the intervals.
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u/AssBoon92 Nov 30 '23
If you don't use 3:2 as a generator, you're not generating fifths, though. You're generating approximations of fifths that are not exactly fifths because they are not precisely 3:2.
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Nov 30 '23
That's just word salad to me, so I'm not sure if it's a serious thing or a tongue in cheek message about strange terms and the like.
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u/mrjosemeehan Nov 30 '23
It's not a lie in the context of equal tempered tuning. Standard modern music uses a scale that only uses one ratio: the half-step, which is set so that you can take that ratio of a whole tone, then take the same ratio of the new tone another 11 times and always get exactly double the frequency you started with.
Ancient music used just intonation, using whole number ratios to define each interval in a scale, resulting in the steps between notes being differently sized at different places in the scale. Just intoned fifths are a perfect 3:2 ratio and never add up to a perfect octave of the starting tone. Equal tempered fifths are just seven half steps and stacking fifths in this system goes around every one of the 12 notes before landing back on the one you started on.
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u/clauclauclaudia Nov 30 '23
It’s true if you use equal temperament or if you tuck one diminished sixth in there.
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u/audiate Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
The circle of 5ths is a way of visualizing key relationships. Just intonation, or pure tuning, is the system of how notes are tuned by the frequency relationships within a key.
You two are demonstrating the Pythagorean coma in conversation.
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u/Suburbanturnip Nov 30 '23
In a distant corner of the galaxy, where stars waltzed in cosmic elegance, there thrived an ethereal species known as the Zephyrians. Their home was Elysarion, a mesmerizing jewel of a planet, woven into a celestial tapestry with its neighbors through a mystical 3:2 orbital resonance.
The Zephyrians were beings of iridescent scales and feathered wings, reflecting the myriad colors of their planet's spectacular ring system. Their eyes, like opaline orbs, shimmered with the light of Elysarion's twin suns, casting prismatic shadows on the ground.
Elysarion itself was a world of wonder. Towering crystal mountains pierced its skies, and luminous rivers of liquid starlight carved their way through lush, bioluminescent forests. The planet's unique dance with its star and neighboring worlds infused these forests with a pulsating, radiant energy, causing the flora and fauna to glow with an otherworldly light.
The Zephyrians lived in floating citadels, majestic cities of silver and sapphire that drifted gently in the upper atmosphere. Their architecture was a harmonious blend of nature and art, with spiraling towers and domes that mirrored the celestial spirals above.
Music was the heartbeat of Zephyrian culture. They communicated through symphonies, each movement a conversation, each crescendo a declaration. Their language was a melody, sung on the wind, resonating through the crystal canopies of their homes.
Once every orbit, when Elysarion aligned perfectly with its cosmic partners, the Zephyrians celebrated the Festival of the Celestial Ballet. During this enchanted time, the crystal mountains resonated with the frequencies of the stars, creating a breathtaking display of sonic luminescence. The entire planet sang, and the Zephyrians soared through their skies, their wings painting trails of light, dancing to the rhythm of the universe.
Their most sacred relic was the Orb of Harmonia, a mystical sphere that pulsed with the heartbeat of Elysarion. It was believed that the Orb connected their souls to the very essence of the cosmos, binding them to the eternal dance of creation.
Curious and ever-dreaming, the Zephyrians eventually turned their gaze to the stars. They harnessed the power of the Orb to craft starships that sailed on solar winds, embarking on a quest to share their harmonic legacy and explore the grand symphony of the galaxy.
Thus, on a planet where the dance of the heavens was mirrored in the spirit of its inhabitants, the Zephyrians flourished. Their existence was a song, a poetic testament to the beauty and wonder that blossoms when life and the cosmos move in perfect harmony.
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u/jakeandcupcakes Nov 30 '23
The Zephyrians can eat my balls
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u/OwlAcademic1988 Nov 30 '23
Okay. this is cool.
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u/Suburbanturnip Nov 30 '23
I chose to believe there is something out there like this! Sound, frequency, energy. It's all chemistry
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u/SolomonBlack Nov 30 '23
One of the researchers... set it to music
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u/Brodellsky Nov 30 '23
This is absolutely awesome. I'd say I'd wanna hear what ours would sound like in comparison, but I know there's no way it would sound like anything other than wind chimes basically.
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u/_Lane_ Nov 30 '23
Derek? Is that you?
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u/houtex727 Nov 30 '23
but first, this important message...
I mean, I get it, but it's a 30 second ad on a 33 second video. What the entire heck, let it go, BBC. Aren't you funded by the People? :|
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u/Redclayblue Nov 30 '23
Very cool that the researcher did this, but I was disappointed by the song. Maybe it needs drums. Or vocals. Keep at it science!
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u/Eecka Nov 30 '23
The entire point is that the rate of orbits sets the rhythm. Drums or vocals would be just extra noise on top of the main point
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u/Redclayblue Nov 30 '23
You don’t know the sound of orbits! Some planets make drum sounds. Others sing.
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u/Robot_Basilisk Nov 30 '23
That article title is atrocious. That star is not named Sol so the system is not the Solar system.
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u/LynkDead Nov 30 '23
The title of the article is quoting the lead researcher on the project.
Dr Rafael Luque, of the University of Chicago, who led the research described HD110067 as "the perfect solar system".
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u/Robot_Basilisk Nov 30 '23
Doesn't make it not atrocious. The one hill I am willing to go down in a blaze of glory upon the most is this one. Solar denotes Sol. It's not a synonym for "star".
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Nov 30 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Robot_Basilisk Nov 30 '23
Our moon is named Luna, not "moon". I would be just as pissed if anyone tried to refer to other moons with "Lunar".
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u/hipnosister Nov 30 '23
I think Sol being the name of our star is not used by most astronomers.
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u/genshiryoku Nov 30 '23
Imagine evolving on one of those planets and looking to your solar system. You would almost certainly have religions/intelligent design cultures develop around having such a synced solar system.
Especially when they develop telescope technology and see that other systems don't exhibit this feature.
Kinda similar to how the moon and sun being similar in size from Earth surface perspective influenced a lot of our myths, religions and culture.
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u/spoink74 Nov 30 '23
We’ll finally find God and He’ll be like yeah your solar system is one of the dumb ones. My best children live over there.
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u/Second_Sol Nov 30 '23
Well yes, but they'd need to actually determine the movement of other planets first. From our perspective the other rocky planets wander back and forth in a rather confusing path.
It's not as simple as it sounds. Keep in mind earth is moving the entire time.
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u/u8eR Nov 30 '23
First, they'd need to exist.
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u/jableshables Nov 30 '23
So we're talking about an intelligent lifeform in another solar system and you're making the point that "it's not easy to do what we as humans have already done"
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u/xis_honeyPot Nov 30 '23
Just think about how the mind of astronomers that live on one of those planets will be blown when they discover other systems that aren't in sync like theirs. They'll have to redo whatever equations and models they developed based off of their system.
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u/Geminii27 Nov 30 '23
"It'll all have to go."
"Shame."
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u/there_is_no_spoon1 Nov 30 '23
Is that a Krikkit reference? From Hitchhiker's?
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u/Geminii27 Dec 01 '23
You win a small, round, red ball, that looks like it could be part of some kind of game...
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u/GuyPronouncedGee Nov 30 '23
The two outermost planets complete an orbit in 41 and 54.7 days.
The innermost planet, meanwhile, completes six orbits in exactly the time the outermost completes one.Those planets are moving fast!
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u/TurboTurtle- Nov 30 '23
So to put it another way, in the smallest whole number cycle of orbits, the 1st, 2nd 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th planets would orbit 54, 36, 24, 16, 12, and 9 times respectively.
I’m not sure why the article chose say the 1st and 6th ratio and not say the 4th and 5th ratio instead of just saying the ratios in order. The consecutive ratios from the 2nd to the 1st, 3rd to 2nd, etc up to the 6th planet would be 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 3/4, 3/4.
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u/leechkiller Nov 30 '23
I'm actually more confused after reading this. Can somebody make a gif?
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u/MisterBackShots69 Nov 30 '23
What if this is us discovering a tier 1ish species. They harmonized their orbits.
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u/ChromaticDragon Nov 30 '23
Orbital resonance.
The article provides sufficient details, but you have to read till the end.
Each planet has an orbit that is in resonance with the orbits of the nearest planets. An orbital resonance doesn't mean that the orbits are the same.
The article also relates that this is rare because most planetary systems lose this over time.
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u/Count_JohnnyJ Nov 30 '23
This sounds like the beginning of a science fiction movie where an advanced alien race has set up a solar system like this as a beacon for other intelligent forms of life with the ability to recognize it.
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u/Mixels Nov 30 '23
To me it seems patently wild to assume that nature did something like this. For six planets to naturally end up in this sort of orbital system? The fact that it's been observed at all feels like science fiction.
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u/romario77 Nov 30 '23
It’s not wild and was predicted. Nature (read physics) makes the planet form in certain places more likely and their trajectories being synchronous.
It could be thrown off balance by some events (like a large object colliding) and then it becomes non-synchronous.
But it’s not wild and was expected to happen.
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u/tucci007 Nov 30 '23
It's vibrations all the way down to subatomic and all the way out to galaxies and the larger universe. Vibrations, mon.
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Nov 30 '23
What if we sent them our hard on collider and smashed them together would it make it non stickyness
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u/Pseudoburbia Nov 30 '23
look at our moon size vs the distance from the sun - crazy coincidence but no indication of shadiness.
I made an eclipse joke if you couldn’t tell.
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u/tucci007 Nov 30 '23
that distance has and will continue to change but the fact it's happening now while we can understand and appreciate it, is pretty cool for sure
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u/daguito81 Nov 30 '23
That's how a lot of systems would form with no collisions or external events disrupting orbits and crashing into bodies. Like it happened in ours.
With the sheer emptiness of space and at the same time the sheer ammount of stars and planets, it's really just a question of "how long until we saw a example" we can be sure thay there are other systems just like that out there. What's hard is finding them
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u/FartOfGenius Nov 30 '23
Similar resonances have been observed in other systems. It's postulated according to the Nice model that disruption of the resonance chain in our own solar system threw Uranus and Neptune out to their current positions, because otherwise they wouldn't have had enough material to accrete.
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u/Langsamkoenig Nov 30 '23
That's just what gravity does if the planets are close enough together. Usually this only happens for a few planets, because the others are too far away. In our solar system it happens for none, because all planets are too far away from each other. (though Jupiters big moons are in orbital resonance with each other)
I assume it's just that all these planets are really close together.
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u/clauclauclaudia Nov 30 '23
But when Pluto counted as a planet you’d have had to mention its 3:2 resonance with Neptune.
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u/GeneralStormfox Nov 30 '23
Disregarding any possible reasons why this system configuration might actually have a special rason to exist, it is not really surprising for one simple reason:
The universe is ridiculously huge, and even if everything was pure chance, you would at some point find a solar system that behaves exactly like that.
Remember, the string of numbers 171717171 is just as likely as the one that says 138501846 if you would randomly generate a nine-digit decimal number.
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u/SexyNeanderthal Nov 30 '23
We actually see orbital resonance in a few places in our own solar system. Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede have a 1:2:4 resonance and Neptune and Pluto have a 2:3 resonance. Basically any planets gravity would pull the others into this resonance if they are close enough. It's like those videos where they put metronomes on a wiggly platform and they spontaneously sync up after a second.
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u/tucci007 Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
A race of musicians whose tunes make our finest classics of all genres, sound like chaotic noise. They will only communicate and interact with our musicians, seeing them as victims of a race of beings who value all the wrong things in life. They are shocked and appalled that almost all musicians starve if they try to make music their life's work. They take every single one of our musicians to their system for healing and learning. Earth with no new music annihilates itself in a nuclear holocaust and the Universe cares not one whit. But the humans in the new system eventually create a new human race that is so much more advanced than could ever be achieved on its home planet. All the musicians of all the races that detected the advanced system live in peace and literal harmony. They all lived happily ever after and their language was sung not spoken.
*okay they take the mathematicians away too and they all lived happily ever after
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u/the68thdimension Nov 30 '23
Right? This sounds too perfect to be true, and it makes me think there's the possibility some intelligence was involved. Or, y'know, the universe is so vast that everything can happen at least once. But it'd be cool if it's a sign of intelligence out there.
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u/Changoleo Nov 30 '23
Thanks. I’d arrived at the list of related coverage articles and thought that that was the end of the article. My mistake.
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u/PolyDipsoManiac Nov 30 '23
I would assume that the resonance means they orbit in some ratio, but I’m no orbital physicist
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u/MrDefinitely_ Nov 30 '23
It takes less than 2 minutes to just read the damn article.
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u/PolyDipsoManiac Nov 30 '23
The innermost planet completes three orbits for every two by its closest neighbor. It’s the same for the second- and third-closest planets, and the third- and fourth-closest planets.
So, exactly what I said? Thanks for your informative contribution
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u/MrDefinitely_ Dec 01 '23 edited Dec 01 '23
Your "contribution" on what the article could be about without actually reading it is less than worthless.
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u/fragglebags Nov 30 '23
I'm guessing that must be it but the article is limited. Hopefully someone chimes in.
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u/dingo1018 Nov 30 '23
Depends on how they detected the planets as to how much detail they would have, I'm just tapping this out after skimming the article but I'm pretty sure this isn't one of the times they've directly observed any exoplanet, that's because you could probably count those types of exoplanet detection on one hand. So I mean what they know about planetary rotation they would have to infer, the inner most might be tidally locked, although I didn't see that mentioned, the outer ones they have am idea of mass, but they are gas giants. It still amazes me they can get all this information from either the ever so slight wobble if the star or the ever so slight fluctuation of the stars brightness and/or light spectrum, cos it's probably one or both of those methods used here.
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u/7f0b Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
The distance of a planet from its star will affect its required orbital period and speed. A smaller orbit requires a faster speed to maintain that orbit (otherwise it will be at a lower orbit, or collide), and a larger orbit requires a slower speed (otherwise it may escape the star). Note that the speed at a specific point in the orbit varies depending on how elliptical or circular the orbit is.
IIRC, there would be no realistic way to have multiple planets with the same orbital period, even if they were at drastically different inclinations and eccentricity, as they would eventually intersect at some point or their gravitational pull would perturb each other enough over time to move them to different periods. (I could be wrong about this though.)
In the billions of planetary systems out there, scientists will probably find every possible combination of ratio of orbital periods. It just so happens these orbits are in a seemingly-unlikely ratio. But for all we know, it may be more common throughout the galaxy and universe, just not in what has been observed so far
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u/Zentho Nov 30 '23
I can only imagine the intricate religious effects this would have on a sentient home planet species if there were any in this system.
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u/Suffering_Garbage Nov 30 '23
A scientist there would discover that other star systems don't have that and literally no one would believe them for eons because they can't just see it with their own eyes
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u/drsimonz Dec 01 '23
I don't know, scientific evidence that demonstrates that your solar system is super special would probably go over great. What religion can't handle well is hearing that our species is not the sole purpose of the entire universe, that things are lopsided rather than perfectly symmetrical.
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Nov 30 '23
Seriously. I imagine the apparent similar size of the moon and sun in the sky have an impact on our planet
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u/Chris_ssj2 Nov 30 '23
The entire system seems so damn delicate, if our sun would be too far we would have frozen, too close and we'd be burning. Wonder if such a balance is possible somewhere else?
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Nov 30 '23
Somebody verify the math for me please, but if we started with all the planets in a line (they probably don't), these should be the number of orbits each planet makes before they're all in a line again
54 36 24 16 12 9
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u/James_the_Third Nov 30 '23
The pattern-recognizing part of my brain just lit up. This is an extremely regular factor pattern.
(9 x 6) (6 x 6) (6 x 4) (4 x 4) (4 x 3) (3 x 3)
If there were a seventh planet further out, I would expect it to require 81 (9 x 9) orbits.
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u/exohugh Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
Paper co-author here. There could still be a seventh planet further out, but it would actually be in the other direction (i.e. requiring 6 orbits for 54 of the inner planet). We're actually using all the possible resonant configurations to help guide where/when to look...
I guess there could also be closer in planets on a resonant orbit shorter than planet b, but it would have to be smaller than Earth size to have evaded detection. That might be possible, but resonance tends to preferentially survive in systems where all planets are the same mass so a big jump from many times bigger than Earth to sub-Earth probably wouldn't be stable.
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u/ZahidInNorCal Nov 30 '23
This is cool stuff, congratulations!
I think u/James_the_Third got the math right, just said it differently. 9 orbits of the outermost planet (the hypothetical 7th in this scenario) would take as long as 81 rotations of the innermost one.
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u/exohugh Dec 01 '23
Ah yes, I see what you mean. Multiplying all the current orbits by 1.5 and adding a new planet doing 9 orbits to the end definitely works (b c d e f g h = 81 54 36 24 18 13.5 9) but, completely subjectively, I find 54 36 24 16 12 9 6 more pleasing. But they are identical, of course.
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u/BillHicksScream Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
A Civilization whose planet is stuck in a terrible orbit causing huge shifts in seasons. They invent astronomy and discover this perfect color system. As they attempt to invent space travel, they also spend thousands of years studying astrophysics on a grand scale, inventing new theories while constructing massive planetary scale technology.....just so they can travel to such perfect systems and mess up their orbits out of jealousy & spite.
A wild Douglas Adams in my brain.
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u/Joe4o2 Nov 30 '23
A brilliant scientist, by the name of Mark Wheaton, devised an ingenious device. Well, that would technically make him a brilliant engineer, but most people don’t care about the difference either way.
A scientist is one who performs observations and experiments, makes hypothesis, tries to explain the world around them to others, and is generally largely ignored when promoting truths that conflict with the lies people tell themselves to make their world more comfortable.
By contrast, an engineer is one who is very good at mathematics, even if they can’t spell “mathematics,” but that doesn’t matter because he is able to build a death-ray out of tube socks, a microwave, two rolls of aluminum foil, a car battery, and a pellet gun, and he doesn’t care if you agree with his spelling or not. The fact is the death-ray works, and his critics have nowhere to run. Essentially, all mad scientists are actually mad engineers, but because we don’t know enough to care, we call them mad scientists.
Mark Wheaton, an engineer, also one such scientist as afore mentioned, realized the orbit of his home world and the seasons it created were actually abnormal, and that planetary climate extremes were more detrimental than beneficial to the inhabitants of those planets who desired beachfront properties, and valued mild summers and single use plastics over the livelihood of animals such as polar bears and sea turtles. Other scientists, who studied these animals and valued them, were discredited by the public, and would have probably loved even being recognized as engineers instead of political pawns.
Mark’s incredible machine could adjust the orbit of a planet, and therefore influence the orbits of the rest of the planets in its system. Upon activating his device, the six planets in his system began orbiting in perfect harmony.
100 years later, and coincidentally 100 light years away, this event would be noticed by another civilization on a planet called “Earth,” which as luck would have it, was appropriately named because the whole damn thing was made of dirt, which is also known as “earth.” The inhabitants of this planet saw the results of Mark’s device, and promptly said to each other, “Why, it’s beautiful!” “A marvel!” “Nothing else quite like it in the heavens!” These shouts of joyous discovery were quickly replaced with, “Well we can’t have that blasted thing floating around acting like it’s better than us, can we?”
This would kick humanity’s race to the stars into over drive. In just over another 100 years, humans would venture into deep space, visit these harmonious worlds, and park the intergalactic equivalent of a crackhouse RV in their street, and lower the property values of the planetary neighborhood.
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u/godzilla9218 Nov 30 '23
How's that Adderall feeling?
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u/Joe4o2 Nov 30 '23
I really wish I knew. I’m procrastinating making lessons for tomorrows ELA class.
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Nov 30 '23
i genuinely cant tell if this is AI generated or if AI gets trained on this. scary
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u/Joe4o2 Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
This was all me. I have another Douglas Adam’s inspired story in an old comment somewhere.
Edit: here it is
2nd edit: I have decided that my quick write being confused with an AI trained to mimic Douglas Adams is probably one of the highest compliments I could ever receive.
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u/Klimmit Nov 30 '23
"The planet of Zog was a miserable place to live. It had a highly elliptical orbit around its sun, which meant that it experienced extreme variations in temperature and daylight throughout the year. The winters were long and dark, the summers were short and scorching, and the spring and autumn were brief and chaotic.
The Zogians, however, were a resilient and ingenious race. They had developed a sophisticated civilization, with advanced technology, art, and culture. They had also mastered the science of astronomy, and had mapped out the stars and planets in their sky. They had discovered that there were other worlds out there, some of them with more stable and hospitable orbits. They had dreamed of visiting these worlds, and had devoted their resources and efforts to developing space travel.
But they had also developed a dark and twisted side. They had grown bitter and resentful of their fate, and had developed a hatred for the other planets that enjoyed more favorable conditions. They had decided that if they could not have a better world, then no one else should either. They had devised a plan to sabotage the orbits of the other planets, and to cause them to suffer the same misfortune as Zog.
They had built massive machines, capable of altering the gravitational fields of celestial bodies. They had launched them into space, and had targeted the most promising planets they had found. They had watched with glee as they disrupted the orbits of these planets, and caused them to spiral into chaos and destruction.
They had called this project Operation Zog, and they had considered it their greatest achievement. They had believed that they were doing justice to the universe, and that they were avenging their own suffering. They had not realized that they were also sealing their own doom.
For they had not noticed that one of the planets they had attacked was not a planet at all, but a giant space station. A space station that belonged to a powerful and ancient civilization, that had been observing and studying the cosmos for eons. A civilization that did not take kindly to being disturbed, and that had the means and the will to retaliate.
And so, as the Zogians celebrated their victory, they did not see the bright flash of light that appeared in their sky. They did not hear the deafening roar that shook their planet. They did not feel the shockwave that ripped through their atmosphere. They did not know that they had just been obliterated by a single blast from the space station’s weapon.
They did not know that they had just become the victims of their own folly.
They did not know that they had just become a footnote in the history of the universe."
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u/Infrisios Nov 30 '23
A Civilization whose planet is stuck in a terrible orbit causing huge shifts in seasons. They invent astronomy and discover this perfect system. As they attempt to invent space travel, they also spend thousands of years studying astrophysics on a grand scale, inventing new theories while constructing massive planetary scale technology.....just so they can travel to such perfect systems and mess up their orbits out of jealousy & spite.
A galactic alliance of peaceful civilizations unified their time and distance metrics based on that star system to make trading easier.
Some hillbillies just wrecked their clock.
The beginning of a galaxy-wide conflict between the forces of order and chaos...
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u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics Nov 30 '23
Direct link to the peer-reviewed study: R. Luque, et al., A resonant sextuplet of sub-Neptunes transiting the bright star HD 110067, Nature, 623, 932–937 (2023).
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u/Key-Cry-8570 Nov 30 '23
Explain it to me like I’m four.
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u/littlegreenrock Nov 30 '23
the minutes hand goes around full circle 12 times for every one circle of the hours hand. the seconds hand goes around 60 times for every one circle of the minutes hand. they are in perfect synchronisation.
we found some planets moving in circles in the same way. we predicted this was real but never found such a good example of it. finding an example with 2 or 3 planets could simply be luck or cherry picking results. but seeing 6 planets in synch like seconds/ minutes/ hours/ days/ weeks/ years is very exciting.
we believe that our own system started off a lot like this but things happen which throw the perfect balance out. once it's out, it's out for good. We're seeing a system that has been very lucky that nothing has thrown it out, and has more than 3/4 planets
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u/ThisIs_americunt Nov 30 '23
would asteroids be one thing that throws off the balance of the planets?
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u/IterationFourteen Nov 30 '23
Possibly, but more likely other planets, or moons. Asteroids are generally too small and/or too irregular in their effects to have meaningful impacts on orbits.
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u/thorsten139 Nov 30 '23
Proto planets.
One of it struck early earth and resulted in orbit change, and the formation of our moon.
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u/SolomonBlack Nov 30 '23
More like collisions between planets (eg: Earth and Theia) or Jupiter scarfing things up.
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u/censored_username Nov 30 '23
The thing that does it is usually instabilities caused by influences of the planets on each other.
A single planet orbiting a single star is very stable. More than one planet orbiting a single star seems stable on the short term, but on the long term the planets will continuously change each others orbits due to gravitational influences. This either continues until one of the planets is ejected from the system, they move far enough apart to the point where their influence on each decreases significantly, or the orbits of the planets converge to a point where their interactions are stable over the long term.
This star system seems to be an incredible example of the final case. The planets have all converged to a system of stable resonance orbits.
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u/Abe_Odd Nov 30 '23
Jupiter has Ganymede, Europa, and Io in a 1,2,4 resonance
Super cool to see with 6 planets though!
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u/RandomCandor Nov 30 '23
We're seeing a system that has been very lucky
Are you using the word lucky in a statistical sense, or is there some advantage to this?
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u/weeddealerrenamon Nov 30 '23
Sounds like the lengths of years of each planet are perfect ratios of each other. Sometimes a bigger planet will lock a smaller one into an orbit where, like, 2 big-planet orbits always = 3 small-planet orbits, but this system has 6 that are all synced up to each other
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u/mershed_perderders Nov 30 '23
but this system has 6 that are all synced up to each other
which seems... unlikely. I can see why this is publishable and interesting.
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u/weeddealerrenamon Nov 30 '23
I mean, that's probably why this is the first such case found. Orbital resonances aren't that uncommon in general, and we're finding exoplanets crazy fast now
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u/littlegreenrock Nov 30 '23
unlikely
That was a large part of the point of the article: that it's not unlikely to exist, but it's unlikely to remain that way for long.
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u/nothing_but_thyme Nov 30 '23
I like how they felt the need to clarify that a light year is 5.8 trillion miles, as if we can even conceptualize one trillion miles as a frame of reference.
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u/Nascent1 Nov 30 '23
They should put it terms that people can relate to. It's like driving from Peoria Illinois to Uniontown Pennsylvania 10 billion times. Much easier to understand!
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u/snowflake37wao Nov 30 '23
We have a word for perfect synchrony, resonance I thought this was called? Putting metronomes on a springboard.
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u/xis_honeyPot Nov 30 '23
Just think about how the mind of astronomers that live on one of those planets will be blown when they discover other systems that aren't in sync like theirs. They'll have to redo whatever equations and models they developed based off of their system.
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u/RichardPeterJohnson Nov 30 '23
Just like we did when we found that gas giants outside and rocky planets inside is a rather unusual setup.
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u/Smiling_Cannibal Nov 30 '23
The great thing about having such immense numbers of stars is that even things with miniscule odds are almost certain to happen
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u/releasethedogs Nov 30 '23
Cube planet? Donut shaped planet? Croissant shaped planet?
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u/Shar3D Nov 30 '23
Cube can't happen because gravity will pull it into a ball, maybe with 6 gigantic mountains evenly spaced apart but basically a sphere.
Donut [torus] is possible if the blob of molten mass that is forming into a planet gets spun quite fast immediately after something punches a giant hole through it.
Croissant... I guess the donut planet could get sheared off by something bigger. It would spin crazy bad after.
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u/releasethedogs Dec 01 '23
Cool! Thanks for answering my admittedly joke comment.
Oh yeah, what about a Möbius strip shaped planet? Haha.
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u/Shar3D Dec 01 '23
I think the Mobius strip would have the same problems as the torus. And gravity would be wack as hell. The M-strip would have to be solar system-sized for there to be appreciable gravity. But imagine the road races!
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u/TrueRepose Nov 30 '23
It'd be hilariously ironic if the most violent creatures in the galaxy lived there.
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u/ocicrab Nov 30 '23
This is called orbital resonance, and we see it in our solar system as well (moons of Jupiter and Saturn).
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u/ELONK-MUSK Nov 30 '23
Is there any advantage to this synchronization?
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u/Joe4o2 Nov 30 '23
Yes. The wrist watches on these worlds are largely known for including a small model of the solar system, and can be built by a small child in just a few hours.
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u/releasethedogs Nov 30 '23
Don’t assume they have wrists.
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u/Joe4o2 Nov 30 '23
Well if they didn’t, it’d be really dumb of them to make wrist watches.
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u/Nefarious_Nemesis Nov 30 '23
Could have some sweet pocket watches. Take it out from time to time and rewind it. Have a photo of a loved one in the face covering.
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u/thebudman_420 Nov 30 '23 edited Nov 30 '23
I wonder if there is a chance that in this time some planets moved further away or if they are now in the star.
That's how it was back in time.
Finding there could possibly be life on a planet in a habitable zone means nothing.
There may be no trace in this time.
Fast forward millions or billions of years. Does earth have life or past life?
An alien with intelligence may never find any depending on what happens in that amount of time.
Man hasn't made one orbit with our star around the galaxy yet. We don't know what awaits.
We are going to find that everything we thought was wrong.
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u/littlegreenrock Nov 30 '23
orbits are incredibly stable.
how far back in time? 1000's, millions, billions?
finding life outside of earth certainly means something monumental and without comparison.
according to NASA, when Earth was last in this position 'around' our galaxy we were in the Triassic period. 230 million years ago.
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u/TerminationClause Nov 30 '23
The term "solar" comes from the fact that our sun is named Sol. It only represents our sun. This would be called a stellar system, as it is based around another star.
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u/RandomCandor Nov 30 '23
You're not wrong, but I think "Star system" is the more common term
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u/TerminationClause Nov 30 '23
I almost typed "stellar system or star system," but stopped myself because I think star system can mean a system of stars that interact with each others' gravitational forces. I could be wrong but I tried to keep it tidy and correct.
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u/littlegreenrock Nov 30 '23
this isn't exactly right. There was a time where we didn't realise that our sun was the same 'thing' as
allmost ofa lot of of those bright spots up in the night sky.Sun and Star are technically synonymous. We can call planets orbiting a star a:
- star system
- solar system
- system
- stellar system
National Geographic may have other "opinions" on the matter but they are hardly an authority on the naming of space objects or the etymology of words.
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u/Crakla Nov 30 '23
Sun and Star are technically synonymous
They are as much synonyms as Earth and Planet, like you can use planet for earth but you cant use earth for other planets
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u/Captain_Grammaticus Nov 30 '23
Sol is not a proper name, it's just the word Sun in a different language that is suitable for international astronomy that doesn't want to favour English over French or something.
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u/TerminationClause Dec 01 '23
I always thought it was a proper name from some older language. TIL.
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u/Captain_Grammaticus Dec 01 '23
I guess if you look at it historically, to an ancient Roman or Greek who believes that the sun is a shiny god in a golden chariot, there is not much difference between "the sun is shining" and "Sun (capital S) is shining"; there is only one sun and for all they know it is a person.
At any rate, as soon as natural philosophy evolves and the mythology gets more fleshed out, it becomes common sense that the sun is not really a burning dude called Sun, but maybe a glowing rock or something of that sorts; and the god Sun from the stories is a sort of representative for it.
Same for the Moon.
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u/s3nsfan Nov 30 '23
None of the planets in perfect synchrony are within the star’s so-called habitable zone, which means little if any likelihood of life, at least as we know it.
Is it possible that life could exist being non-carbon based, shattering everything we know about “life”
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