SpaceRef.com:

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

It is almost certainly related to this old news not confirmed since: Hubble discovers 100 new planets.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

The abstracts for two HST programs which are (almost) definitely part of the work described in the press release:

HST proposal 9750, PI Kailash Sahu

We propose to observe a Galactic bulge field continuously with ACS/WFC over a 7-day period. We will monitor ~167, 000 F, G, and K dwarfs down to V=23, in order to detect transits by orbiting Jovian planets. If the frequency of "hot Jupiters" is similar to that in the solar neighborhood, we will detect over 100 planets, more than doubling the number of extrasolar planets known. For the brighter stars with transits, we will confirm the planetary nature of the companions through radial- velocity measurements using the 8-m VLT. We will determine the metallicities of most of the planet-bearing stars as well as a control sample, through follow-up VLT spectroscopy. The metallicities of the target stars range over more than 1.5 dex, allowing for a determination of the dependence of planet frequency upon metallicity--a crucial element in understanding planet formation. We will be able to discriminate between the equally numerous disk and bulge stars via proper motions. Hence we will determine, for the first time, the frequencies of planets in two entirely different stellar populations. We will also determine for the first time the distribution of planetary radii for extrasolar planets for both these populations. Parallel observations with NICMOS will provide ultra-deep near-infrared images of a nearby bulge field, which will be used to determine the stellar luminosity and mass functions down to the brown-dwarf regime. The data will also be useful for a variety of spinoff projects, including a census of variable stars and of hot white dwarfs in the bulge, and the metallicity distribution of bulge dwarfs.


HST proposal 10466, PI Kailash Sahu

We propose to observe a Galactic bulge field continuously with ACS/WFC over a 7-day period. We will monitor ~167, 000 F, G, and K dwarfs down to V=23, in order to detect transits by orbiting Jovian planets. If the frequency of "hot Jupiters" is similar to that in the solar neighborhood, we will detect over 100 planets, more than doubling the number of extrasolar planets known. For the brighter stars with transits, we will confirm the planetary nature of the companions through radial- velocity measurements using the 8-m VLT. We will determine the metallicities of most of the planet-bearing stars as well as a control sample, through follow-up VLT spectroscopy. The metallicities of the target stars range over more than 1.5 dex, allowing for a determination of the dependence of planet frequency upon metallicity--a crucial element in understanding planet formation. We will be able to discriminate between the equally numerous disk and bulge stars via proper motions. Hence we will determine, for the first time, the frequencies of planets in two entirely different stellar populations. We will also determine for the first time the distribution of planetary radii for extrasolar planets for both these populations. Parallel observations with NICMOS will provide ultra-deep near-infrared images of a nearby bulge field, which will be used to determine the stellar luminosity and mass functions down to the brown-dwarf regime. The data will also be useful for a variety of spinoff projects, including a census of variable stars and of hot white dwarfs in the bulge, and the metallicity distribution of bulge dwarfs.

The original press release title had a typo--there are of course more than one planet discovered.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Yikes. I wonder how the astronomers felt when BBC came out with the story. Also it looks like it took them more time to get spectrographic follow-up than they first expected.

Here's some good speculation about the discovery.

If the transit candidate stars have magnitudes around V = 21-22, spectroscopic follow-up work must have been very difficult.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Just a reminder.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

On now. Watch NASA TV.

Introductions

Planets around other stars

Kailash C. Sahu
Mario Livio
Alan Boss

Stars about 26000 ly away
Monitored field of circa 180000 stars to spot Jupiter-size transits
Detected 16 candidates, many orbit very fast

Bulge stars hosts planets at same rate as other stars. Must be billions of planets in galaxy.

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News Starry tales: Galactic bulge yields new class of planets

MSNBC/Reuters: Newfound worlds zoom fast around suns, Hubble detects signature of ‘ultra-short-period planets’

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0.4 days?! Wow, that thing is either MOVING, or is skipping off the corona!

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

STScI News Release: Hubble Finds Extrasolar Planets Far Across Galaxy

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Hubblesite/NASA press release

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NASA Feature: Hubble Finds Extrasolar Planets Far Across Galaxy

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Main points:

• Planets are everywhere, including the bulge of Milky Way.
• The probability to have a Jovian planet strongly depends on how much heavier elements the star has, no matter where the planets are (similar study found no planets in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, where stars are very metal-poor).
• Based on the number of detected planets, there should be 6 billion Jovian planets in the Milky Way (likely a highly conservative value).
• The transit method will soon be the leading discovery method.
• Although only two planet were confirmed by radial velocity, rigorous constrains and statistic methods give a reason to believe that the detected planets are real.
• There are so called ultra-short-period planets (USPPs) around low-mass stars whose orbital periods are less than a day. Such planets cannot survive around solar mass or more massive stars for billions of years.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Wow!!!
I wonder what is the probability of also having Earth-like planets in those same systems!

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"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address

During the conference the astronomer involved said that they detected such planets(with short periods) because they only had 7 days of observation on Hubble. I wonder if it the estimate takes into account only those short period planets or expands into more long period planets.

The value is not mentioned in the paper but only in the press releases which says "When extrapolated to the entire galaxy, Hubble's data provides strong evidence for the existence of approximately 6 billion Jupiter-sized planets in the Milky Way."

By the way, the article's preprint is available here.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

My God, it is full of... planets!

Well, this would be more adequate when describing results from COROT or Kepler, but I can't resist...

Now we're finally getting nearer to a little reasonably intelligent meat on the Drake Equation.

__________________
The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

The post on oklo.org gives a different reason for the lack of planets in 47Tuc

That is probably another reason. But if you look this image, you can see a clear correlation between a star's metallicity and its probability of having planets.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

The original article gave both as a reason. Specifically they said:

"The cause of the absence of close-in planets in 47 Tuc is not yet known; presumably the low metallicity and/or crowding of 47 Tuc interfered with planet formation, with orbital evolution to close-in positions, or with planet survival."

A short google search brought up this page, which seems to support the idea that metallicity is the main culprit. But before they find at least some planets around higher metallicity in globular clusters it will be hard to decide either way.

Somehow I find the metallicity dependency saddening. That would mean that most stars that formed in the early universe (that means majority of stars) would have no planets.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

I'm not sure we've heard the end of this. It might just be that higher metallicity leads to more massive planets or planets that are more likely to migrate very close to their stars.

I mean, I expect that there will be less planets around older stars but it might be too early to tell just how much less.