Nearby Star Has 7 Earth-Sized Worlds
NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System
“NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 22, to present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website. Details of these findings are embargoed by the journal Nature until 1 p.m.”
Keith’s update: I have now learned that tomorrow’s NASA news announcement is not about Alpha Centauri as I had been guessing (darn) but it is is something even more cool – or “warm” to be precise. Instead, the NASA announcement on Wednesday will be about a nearby star that has at least 7 Earth-sized planets.
The individuals attending this press event at NASA have been looking for planets circling other stars. Last year one of the participants, Michael Gillon, was lead author on a paper “Temperate Earth-sized planets transiting a nearby ultracool dwarf star“ in Nature detailing how his team had confirmed 3 small terrestrial (Earth-sized) planets circulating a cool dwarf star 2MASS J23062928-0502285 (now known as TRAPPIST-1), a M8V class star which is only 39.5 light years away.
It will be announced tomorrow by NASA that Gillon et al have confirmed 4 more Earth-sized planets circling TRAPPIST-1. It is possible that most of the planets confirmed thus circling far TRAPPIST-1 could be in the star’s habitable zone. The inner 6 planets are probably rocky in composition and may be just the right temperature for liquid water to exist (between 0 – 100 degrees C) – if they have any water, that is. The outermost 7th planet still needs some more observations to nail down its orbit and composition.
Astronomers are clearly excited about these planets (see below). The article will appear in Nature magazine, as noted by NASA in its media advisory.
But – and this is important for all you UK tabloid writers – NO ONE HAS DISCOVERED LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET. Got that?
Important note: No one sent us anything in advance about the details of this specific announcement or paper under embargo – or any other pre-announcement arrangement. No scientific paper – nothing. We honor embargoes – when we are under them. I saw what NASA had posted yesterday to tease people (including participant names and a topic) and went to work – hence my earlier Alpha Centauri sleuthing which strongly overlapped with TRAPPIST-1 discoveries. I eventually figured it out and sourced it – all by myself – using openly available preprints, observation proposals and results, email, and phone calls folks. I am leaving my earlier Alpha Centauri speculation up for all to see (below).
UV exploration of two Earth-sized planets with temperate atmospheres, Hubble Space Telescope Observing Program 14493
“Here we will observe the star with STIS at Ly-alpha to 1) try and measure the stellar line, and 2) search for signatures of hydrogen escape from the planets, which would hint at evaporating water oceans. Because several orbits remain possible for the third discovered planet, we will ensure the best scientific by focusing on the two inner ones.”
14873 – Exploratory observations of the TRAPPIST-1 system: essential prelude to an immediate JWST follow-up
“Owing to over 1500 hours of monitoring including a recent 20-d long follow-up with the Spitzer Space Telescope, we have now constrained the architecture of TRAPPIST-1’s system up to its ice line. There is no doubt left regarding the system uniqueness for Earth-sized comparative planetology and for the search for extrasolar habitats.”
14900 – Confirming the Presence of an Hydrogen Exosphere around the Earth-sized Temperate Planet TRAPPIST-1c
“We request here 5 consecutive HST/STIS orbits to build upon our UV exploratory program and confirm the presence of an extended exosphere exosphere around TRAPPIST-1~c. These observations will inform us on its volatile reservoir while complementing the insights gained with HST/WFC3 (GOs 14500 and 14873). Our request for immediate HST/STIS followup will fulfill the urgent need to inform the community about TRAPPIST-1 planets in order to guide their follow-up, notably in the context of the upcoming JWST Cycle 1 proposal.”
EARLIER SPECULATION
Keith’s note: Once again NASA is teasing us with some sort of important news about something. Of course the tabloids will immediately parse words, see words that NASA never used, and imagine that life has been found on other planets. Apparently Spitzer has something to do with this and there are some planets involved in this too. So I did a quick search for articles by the participants in this event as they relate to Spitzer. They are interested in finding extrasolar planets like Earth.
– The Spitzer search for the transits of HARPS low-mass planets – II. Null results for 19 planets (Sara Seager, Michael Gillon)
– Illusion and Reality in the Atmospheres of Exoplanets (Sara Seager)
– Toward a Galactic Distribution of Planets. I. Methodology & Planet Sensitivities of the 2015 High-Cadence Spitzer Microlens Sample (Sean Carey)
– A combined transmission spectrum of the Earth-sized exoplanets TRAPPIST-1 b and c (Michael Gillon, Nikole Lewis)
– Temperate Earth-sized planets transiting a nearby ultracool dwarf star (Michael Gillon)
But then there is this interesting paper with press conference participants Sara Seager and Michael Gillon among the authors from 2015 “Hubble Space Telescope search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb“ that says “We observed Alpha Centauri B twice in 2013 and 2014 for a total of 40 hours. We achieve a precision of 115 ppm per 6-s exposure time in a highly-saturated regime, which is found to be consistent across HST orbits. We rule out the transiting nature of Alpha Centauri Bb with the orbital parameters published in the literature at 96.6% confidence. We find in our data a single transit-like event that could be associated to another Earth-size planet in the system, on a longer period orbit. Our program demonstrates the ability of HST to obtain consistent, high-precision photometry of saturated stars over 26 hours of continuous observations.”
This 2015 observation was followed up with Confirming the transit of the Earth-mass planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B HST Proposal 13927 (Co-I Sara Seager) which says “Now that we know where and when to look for, we propose to confirm the repeatability of this signal and to firmly establish Alpha Cen Bb’s existence and tighten its physical and orbital properties. We base our observing strategy on the successful approach employed just one year ago with the same instrument.” This observation has now been completed: “Confirming the transit of the Earth-mass planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B “Cycle: 21; Allocation: 9 orbits; Program Status: Program has been Completed”
There is also this proposed observation with Spitzer “Searching for the transit of Alpha Centauri Bb, Spitzer Proposal ID #10146“ with press conference participant Sean Carey listed as an author that says “We propose a novel set of observations to measure the possible transit of the recently detected exoplanet, Alpha Cen Bb. This closest exoplanet is arguably one of the most exciting detections of the previous year due to the enormous potential for followup observations as well as far-reaching public interest outside the astronomical community.”
Hmm … the authors have been looking for planets circling Alpha Centauri …
EDIT: So they’re probably going to announce that they found four more Earth-ish sized planets around TRAPPIST-1? That’s . . . . interesting. I’m very skeptical that any of them are habitable, given that TRAPPIST-1 is as small and cool as a star can get while still actually being a star. They’d be running the Red Dwarf gauntlet of Pre Main Sequence runaway greenhouse gases, flare erosion of their atmospheres, tidal locking, tidal vulcanism, etc.
The fact that they’re all around the same size is interesting, though. In our solar system, Earth and Venus are close to the same size, Mars would probably have been as well if it weren’t for Jupiter, and even Mercury might have been if it hadn’t had almost its entire mantle blown off in an impact.
At least dwarf stars have a long stable life time. OTOH the habitable zone is pretty narrow.
That is what I was wondering about. If the habitable zone is so narrow how are you able to fit seven planets in it?
I could see four spaced out among the La Grange Points, but 7? Would the orbits be stable enough? It will be interesting to see if anyone answers these questions. It also makes you wonder what the impact will be on current models of planetary system formation.
The announcement SFAIK does not claim that all are in the habitable zone, only that one or more may be in the habitable zone.
The currently-known aren’t too tightly packed. TRAPPIST-1b and -1c are at 0.011 and 0.015 AU, which is about a 25% difference. Earth and Venus are, relatively, about that far apart. -1d is _way_ out at 0.08 AU.
I was a little worried about stable orbits and perturbations. But I did a quick scaling and it isn’t as bad as I thought. I checked the gravity of TRAPPIST-1 on -1c, and compared it to the gravity of -1b on -1c when those planets are at opposition. That’s probably the strongest non-central-body force in the known system. That ratio is 17,800:1.
The similar number for the Jupiter-Io-Europa system is 3500:1. So perturbations are about five times greater an issue for the jovian moons than the TRAPPIST system. (Yes, I know that’s not even a vaguely rigorous way to do it; I was just killing time on an airplane.)
It is odd, though. The jovian moons are locked in resonant orbits exactly because of those perturbations. The same is true of the Saturn system. I’m surprised their aren’t any resonances in the TRAPPIST-1 system. -1b and -1c are close to a 3:5 resonance, but close doesn’t count for this sort of thing. Maybe its just a young system and the planets haven’t evolved into resonances yet. Or maybe there is more going on due to the additional planets. This wouldn’t be a bad chapter for a PhD thesis in orbital dynamics.
Fabulous science…! And a great opportunity for science fiction: think of “game of thrones”, but across multiple worlds.
You mean Dune?
“NO ONE HAS DISCOVERED LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET”
Ya. These are likely all going to be tidally locked anyway. Fun to see more evidence that goldilocks planets are so common though.
We used to think Mercury was tidally locked…
I always wondered if resonance (3:2 in this case as you point out) is a subset of tidal locking- or the other way around I suppose. Or if tidal locking only applies as a technical term describing a 1:1 resonance.
No, Mercury is tidally locked. I’ve also heard the term “spin-orbit” resonance. It’s a quirk of Mercury’s eccentric orbit. The trick is that it orbits at a faster rate (degrees per day) at periapsis than at apoapsis, but it rotates at the same rate where ever it is along its orbit. That means tides will spin it up a little at periapsis and spin it down a little at apoapsis. Do an orbit average, thrown in a few more constraints, and a 3:2 resonance is stable for an eccentricity of 0.205. I’ve never heard anyone mention it, but I assume there are other ratios which work for different eccentricities.
But I don’t think this would work for the TRAPPIST-1 system. Or at least not the two closest of the known planets. If you give TRAPPIST-1b a 0.205 eccentricity, it would get awfully close to -1c. Let’s see. If -1c were in a circular orbit, at closest, the two planets could get within 255,000 km. That’s 66% of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. This system just gets stranger and stranger, but I have a feeling that sort of orbit wouldn’t be stable.
Another way to say this is that Mercury has a rotation that’s synchronous around perihelion.
This arises because tidal forces go as the 4th power of distance. Mercury’s orbit is sufficiently eccentric to make solar tides much stronger around the time of perihelion than at aphelion.
A Lifeform whit a sort off thinking/intelligence as our own would be fantastic,but if they find something simpler,It will raise the chance?
If this refers to a star cooler (redder) than spectral type G, then planets’ just being earth-size and in the “habitable” zone may not be such good news for the possibility of life: https://www.eurekalert.org/… .
Time to study their atmospheres and see!
And to study surface activity and relates of coronal mass ejections on TRAPPIST-1 itself; spectral class M8V.
You just broke Nature’s embargo. But I suppose you don’t have early access to its materials, so you can claim you don’t know there was an embargo — and Nature can’t punish you for breaking it. (And yes, I know you feel federal research shouldn’t be subject to any embargo.)
I did not break Nature’s embargo. I figured this all out with things sitting in plain sight online i.e things that are public. I already spoke with Nature (they called). Spoke with other parties (they called too). They agree with me. Nature cannot “punish” me for anything since they give me nothing to begin with. If they do not want news media to figure things out then they need to tell NASA to stop teasing people with a few details that can easily be stitched together.
I couldn’t find your plain sight source for your title.
But, Keith, I’m a fan. Not complaining. Just wondering where does that leave the rest of us in the media that were following the embargo. Has Nature informed you of any change in the embargo per se because of this, since you talked to them?
I stand by what I have reported.
I’m not sure about teasing people, but if they want to keep something secret, they aren’t doing it in a very bright way. It sounds like there was enough open and public information available for you to work it out with under a day worth of digging. If that’s the case, NASA calling attention to the subject and saying “but it’s all a big secret until Wednesday” isn’t a very effective way of keeping the secret. It’s more like inviting people to do a little digging and figure it out.
Strictly speaking, the authors of the paper and Nature broke their own embargo. They made enough information publicly available for someone outside their confidence to put the story together. That is, assuming Keith is right. We’ll find out about that tomorrow.
Exactly. Its Google’s fault for helping me find it!
Piecing together snippets of information (the way Keith did) is simply what good reporters do. If one is an inquisitive soul and hasn’t agreed to any steenking embargo, all bets are off.
No doubt about that. However, I find it objetionable (and unlikely) that Keith really didn’t know about the embargo. He wasn’t subjected to it, true, but to say he didn’t know. Specially since this is not an investigative subject. We’re not talking about something that would go unnoticed if not for one clever reporter. We’re talking about something that has to be reported the best possible way, and that’s why scientific embargoes exist — to eliminate the need for speed and get the best possible reporting. In this case, he got the scoop, but, let’s face it, it is not terrific reporting. (No offense here, I understand that’s the spirit of NasaWatch, to work with snippets and not with full reporting, so that’s ok — and probably the reason Nature didn’t take any action regarding his posting.)
As I said, I’m a longtime fan of NasaWatch, although just recently started to comment on it, and I’m grateful for the critical views it offers on the space program. But going around embargoes is not what I find interesting about NasaWatch, and I wonder what would happen if all the media started to ignore the value of embargo — we would have lousy reporting, and not better reporting, all across the board.
I’m speaking, of course, as a member of the traditional press, since I work for a daily newspaper in Brazil. Things are changing, no doubt. And not always for the better, no doubt about that either.
You are calling me a liar. You won’t be posting here any more. Have a nice day.
Keith, I’m sad about your reaction. I apologize if any offense was taken. I didn’t intend to call you a liar. I’m just saying I find it unlikely that you didn’t hear a thing about an embargo when talking to people that knew about the discovery. The mere fact that NASA called the press conference without giving any specifics and informed it was a piece from “Nature” (which works with embargo since forever) should at least suggest (but not inform, of course) an embargo is envolved. That’s why I was careful enough to say “unlikely.” Unlikely doesn’t equal certain. So I’m not saying you’re a liar. Never said that. Fake news! LOL
Anyway, seriously, I guess you can understand how disturbing this situation can be to the people who effectively are behind the embargo wall and working for the traditional media, such as myself.
In my comment, I was just trying to bring home the relevance and importance of embargoes for accurate science reporting, what I think is an important contribution to the debate. It was not meant as an attack on you.
But I’ll understand if you decide to keep the ban. It’ll be enough if you personally get to read the “Sorry!” part. We all can be civilized.
A nice day for you too.
I have no idea who you are or what you do. You questioned the veracity of my statements – in other words that I was lying. You also do not read very well.
I was not under an embargo for this story. Nature never contacted me and told me that I was under an embargo. There was nothing on their website about this research being embargoed – nor was there even any mention of this forthcoming article. In 20 years Nature Magazine has never directly sent me anything under embargo – no releases, no papers. NOTHING. They refuse to send me anything. Yes, I have asked. They cannot stop me from reading things that have already been published, doing some analysis, and then coming up with a story based on what I have found.
My story was posted many hours before Nature sent an embargoed release to reporters under embargo. I had already figured this story out all by myself using publicly available information before Nature told anything – to anyone – and I wrote my story based simply on clues NASA’s publicly released media advisory – a media advisory, approved by Nature, that anyone, anywhere on Earth could read. Then I read a bunch of preprints and did Google searches. I then checked with people not under any embargo to make sure I got the science right.
NASA cannot impose an embargo for Nature – or anyone else. In fact they did not impose an embargo at all – nor do they impose embargoes. NASA noted that Nature had an embargo on some nebulous information about extrasolar planets that they would be releasing. At first I thought this was about Alpha Centauri then I noticed that everything pointed back to TRAPPIST-1 and I figured it out.
Everything I wrote was based on material already posted online or available from already published sources i.e. publicly available information. I have been following various extrasolar planet searches and knew the prior 2016 TRAPPIST-1 paper well. Everyone did. And lots of people posted proposals to look for more things – and they found them.
If people do not want their information to be written about then they should not post it in public places. When I agree to accept material under embargo I always honor that embargo. ALWAYS.
No one at Nature or any of the authors/sponsoring organizations gave me anything under embargo or otherwise about this research.
Do not question my honesty again unless you have proof. Got that?
Have a nice day
All right, no sweat. I didn’t mean to question your honesty. I’m actually embarassed, because that was not my intent at all.
I received Nature’s email on Monday morning, with links for early access to the papers (both the letter and the News and Views article) at their press site (press.nature.com). As part of the media, you should consider applying to it. It is very useful even to consult older papers from the Nature group. And it gives you, of course, early access to future publications — but then the price to pay is to be under their embargo… where this mess has begun.
Again, sorry. I admire your work with NasaWatch. Thanks for understanding and not banning me from the comments.
Do you even read what I write? I have asked both Nature (and Science) for this access more than once. They have said “no” or refused to respond more than once. I have been a subscriber to both Nature and Science for decades and read as much of each issue as I can every week. They have both quoted me multiple times over the years. I did not start doing this whole space news thing yesterday. This discussion is ended.
I don’t think he was questioning your honesty. It sounded more like questioning you professional ethics. I think he’s wrong about that, but I like to get the charges straight before deciding they are bogus.
Same difference.
So, Keith sat down and did some actual research to piece together a story that actually makes sense. That’s called work.
Spoiler Keith. 😉
That won’t make him any new friends inside the planetary science arm of NASA.
Quite the contrary.
P.R. Department then. 😉
Honestly, I think almost all planetary scientists, or PR people, or managers, over 35 fall into two categories. The ones who don’t really care about NASAWatch and the ones who have already made up their mind (one way or another) about Keith. I don’t see this story changing many people’s opinions of him.
Wow, life on another planet..and so nearby!
NO ONE HAS DISCOVERED LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET. Got that?
Well, that misunderstanding or misreporting reminds me of an old Monty Python line. “Pray that there is intelligent life somewhere out in space, because there’s bugger all here on Earth.”
So they’ve discovered life on another planet, but not here on Earth?
Fine. That just reminds me of another quote. Someone (I forget who, but it may be Sagan), said that Percival Lowell’s reports of canals on Mars were definitely evidence of intelligent life. But he was wrong about which side of the telescope the intelligent life was on.
Lowell read Schiaparelli’s report of “canali” (channels) on Mars and translated it as “canals.” Not so intelligent after all.
But Keith, the newspapers said…
No.
Congratulations, you “worked it out on your own” by emailing people who were almost certainly under the assumption that you wouldn’t break the embargo. I have absolutely no problem if you discuss these results in private, but by publishing on a public blog, you undercut the scientists who did the work and the good journalists who have read the paper and spoken to the authors.
This has a few hundred retweets now, the link is on reddit. I’m certain some of the less respectable newspapers and websites are readying their own embargo-breaking release (“The news is out now, why wait?”). If and when that happens, the worst media with the worst science journalism get the most views. So when the press briefing happens, and the scientific paper is released, the news wont spread as far, or worse it will be incoherent.
I bet this page is your most-viewed post ever, and you’re pretty proud about “working it out”. But the direct effect is that the actual results released tomorrow are diluted.
Feel better now? Spare me your indignation. I undercut no one. All the data was easily findable online in open sourced locations. All you need is Google to find it. I just pieced it all together and then confirmed it. If you do not like NASAWatch then stop reading it. FWIW this is hardly the most popular thing NASAWatch has published in the past 20 years. Have a nice day.
I don’t think so. The information he posted is a list of selected HST observations. Those abstracts are online and available from the time they are selected. He also mentioned online version of preprints. If people trying to keep their results embargoed, and they make the preprints publicly available online, who broke the embargo? Also, in my experience, everyone given embargoed information is usually warned about getting calls and emails from the press. We’re told not to assume a reporter has agreed to the embargo because he can make some leading questions. On one occasion I and the other scientists were told we should ask for direct quotes from the paper. If the reporter could provide them, we could assume he had been given advanced notice and agreed to the embargo. If he couldn’t, we should assume he hadn’t agreed and was fishing. To me, it sounds like someone wanted to keep a secret and couldn’t do a competent job of it.
It’s called journalism. Embargoes themselves do not apply to those who have not agreed to them. Frankly, being a taxpayer who has helped paid millions of dollars for scientists to use these tools and then being told a commercial entity says I can’t hear about it when I want is ridiculous. Keith did what he should be doing on this.
Its a trappist!
Hahaha! That note to the UK tabloid editors made my day.
somebody needs to call Amy Adams
Why not? An asteroid hits one, throws up bacteria on a few rocks, which goes to seed the others. They could all have life.
There has to be something smarter and kinder than us out there. Donald Trump and inductive reasoning proves that, right?