WISE, a mission that will find ALL the neighbours |
WISE, a mission that will find ALL the neighbours |
Aug 27 2009, 08:31 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
I'm used to reading excellent articles by Emily, but this one I found to be of truly extraordinary interest:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002070/ |
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Nov 28 2009, 06:52 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1018 Joined: 29-November 05 From: Seattle, WA, USA Member No.: 590 |
Proxima Centauri is 0.21 ly from the Alpha A/B barycenter, and even after 100 years, we're still not QUITE sure it's actually orbiting the other two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri I'd hope we'd do a BIT better with an object nominally orbiting our own sun, but it'd still take a while. Even with the overlapping observations, I think the trouble with the WISE data will be that it spans just one year. Of course, something that barely moves after one year (like a remote brown dwarf) probably won't get lost easily, but an Earth-crossing asteroid might well be hard to find again. As for black dwarfs, the Universe probably isn't old enough for any to exist yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf There are already known brown dwarfs with estimated temperatures as low as 500K: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf#D...gh_mass_planets It seems plausible that smaller, cooler ones exist and even might be more plentiful than regular stars, given the mass/frequency curve we seem to see everywhere else in the universe. WISE could well find LOTS of brown dwarfs closer to the sun than (say) 4 light years. I guess we'll know in eighteen months or so! --Greg |
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