Quote:
Originally Posted by timb
It's interesting that they are circumbinary, but other than that it's yet another system with super-Jovian planets in eccentric orbits. The authors seem keen to classify both objects as planets, even suggesting that they must have accreted mass during the primary's red giant phase. Oops, taboo topic. |
Circumbinary? And what is the eclipse timing method exactly? If this is a first, i would definate welcome this discovery whatever it is boring planets or not
I did a little calculation and there's a small fun task in it for you guys since i can't remember much math from collage and i'm too lazy looking through it all atm.
OK, if we consider the first discovery to be in 1995 (i know this isn't what
http://exoplanet.eu/catalog-all.php?mdAff=stats#tc says, but it is the general thought) and consider those 61 planets found last year, we can do a little calculation on how fast the exoplanet searching is progression making an exponential function of the progress so far (way too early, but i can't wait several years to do this calculation
). So, we have:
Planets discovered in 2007 = 61
n = 13 (13 years since the first discovery of an exoplanet)
x = ? (the progress per year - what i wanted to find out)
Exponential function:
y = (1+x)^13
Here goes...:
61 = (1+x)^13
13\sqr{61} = 1+x
13\sqr{61}-1 = x
x = 0,372 = 37,2% progress per year.
So in 2008 we need 61*1,372=84, which is another 25 exoplanets to go for december.
So let's take a look at the total for each year for a moment:
2008: 354
2009: 486 (first year with more than 100 new exoplanets)
2010: 666 (this is probably where we find imperialist aliens with warp drive, just by new years eve 2010/2011
)
2011: 914
2012: 1254
So 1.000 exoplanets by 2012 in this holds water (isn't that an english expression or just danish?)
Trying to find out when all exoplanets in the galaxy have been discovered - just for fun.
Let's say there are 200*10^9 stars in Milkyway, and each solar system (can we settle something here: Is it called a solar system or a star system?) has 8 exoplanets, so that will be 10^12 exoplanet in total.
y = 10^12 (exoplanets in Milkyway)
x = 0,372 (progress per year)
n = ? (how many years from year 1995 that we will have all exoplanet discovered)
y = (1+x)^n
10^12 = (1+0,372)^n
10^12 = 1,372^n
So how is it that i can isolate n in this equation? I just can't remember what i learnt at the university
