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CENTRIPETAL FORCE Unit 14 =
Dr =
John P.
Cise, Professor of Physics, Austin Com. College, 1212 Rio Grande St., Austin
Tx., 78701 & New Yo=
rk
Times Thursday March 20, 2008=
by Dennis Overbye=
=
span>
Stuff of Life (but Not Life Itself) Is Detected on=
a
Distant Planet
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: March 20, =
2008
Astronome=
rs
reported Wednesday that they had made the first detection of an organic
molecule, methane, in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system a=
nd
had confirmed the presence of water there, clearing the way for a bright fu=
ture
of inspecting the galaxy for livable planets, for the chemical stuff of lif=
e,
or even for life itself.
Skip to next paragraph=
Enlarge This Image
=
ESA, NASA and G.
Tinetti (University College London, UK & ESA)
An artist's impression of the extrasolar
planet HD 189733b.
Under
the right conditions, water can combine with organic chemicals like methane=
to
make amino acids, the building blocks of life as we know it. While the pres=
ence
of these chemicals was not a big surprise and while the planet in question
— in the constellation Vulpecula — is too hot and massive for
living creatures, the result left astronomers elated at their improving pow=
ers
of celestial discernment.
“The big news=
is that
we were able to do this at all,” said Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the lead author of the stud=
y,
being reported Thursday in the journal Nature. Other members of the team, w=
hich
used the Hubble Space Telescope, were Gautam Vasisht of the propulsion lab =
and
Giovanna Tinetti of University College London.
She said she was lo=
oking
forward to the day when the experiment would be repeated on Earth-like plan=
ets
with the much more powerful James Webb Space Telescope, set to be launched =
in
2013. In that case, she said, the existence of methane and water =
would
be indicative that the planet was habitable.<=
/p>
The planet in quest=
ion,
known as HD 189733b, is definitely not a candidate abode for life. It is a suffocatingly hot ball about
the mass of Jupiter orbiting only about 3 million miles from a star slightl=
y smaller
than the Sun. The temperatur=
e is a
toasty 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Vulpecula plane=
t was in
the news a year ago after astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope tri=
ed
and failed to find signs of water there and on another planet — a
surprise since all the theoretical models predicted it should be there in
abundance. But that was a year ago, a long time in the world of exoplanets,
where an avalanche of data in the last decade has produced a series of
milestones and some 270 new
planets.
This planet, like e=
very
exoplanet discovered to date, is too dim and close to its parent star to be
seen directly, but conveniently for astronomers it is one of a few dozen wh=
ich
passes directly in front of and behind its parent star in the course of an =
orbit,
a geometrical quirk that Dr. Swain and his colleagues were able to exploit.=
Question: =
As you
can see in the above artist’s impression of planet HD 189733b it is v=
ery
close to it’s mother star. Such stars have a very short period to
circulate about it’s mother star. Find the period(in days) for t=
his
Exoplanet thought to have methane? The discovery of methane clears the way =
for
a bright future of inspecting the galaxy for livable planets, for the chemi=
cal
stuff of life or even life itself.
HINTS: 161=
0 m =3D 1
mile , the mass of the sun =3D 2 X 10 ^ 30 kg , The gravitational constant =
=3D 6.67
X 10 ^-11
Nm^2/kg^2.=
The force of gravity supplies the
centripetal force to keep the planet in orbit about this star about the mas=
s of
the sun. So, GmM/r^2 =3D m v^2/r &nbs=
p;
where v =3D r 2 pi/period ,
Answer: 182,600 s or 4=
.23
days.
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