Mystery object orbiting distant star baffles astronomers

I thought this might be interesting to some of You so below is the link to the article . Since I am not any expert in those areas (just curious ;] ) I will refrain from commenting on it until I read some of the more wise people on ATS

"500 light years away, nestled in the constellation Scorpius, scientists have found an object that shouldn't exist. Eight times larger than Jupiter, the object is in distant orbit around a very young star. And it breaks the laws of physics."

Link to the full article : io9.com...

Well I guess it just shows how little we really know about what is going on out there

[edit on 3-7-2010 by Thill]

Personally, an annalysis about this object cannot be accurate until things such as density, composition, and additional observation of the object is confirmed.

Does it have atmosphere?

I read about this object on space.com a few days ago, and apparently they've been able to determine that the object has temperature, a rather high one too I might add. so IMHO this object is more likely to be discovered to be a Brown Dwarf in syncronous orbits with it's host star.

reply to post by Thill


That's a pretty cool object they found, I just wonder when they will stop saying 'defies physics' about everything they find that defies our current theories and instead admit that our theories aren't infallible.

I bet they'll find out it's the death star and Darth Vader is on his way!

reply to post by sirnex


It's the writers saying it "defies physics," not the scientists in question. "NEW OBJECT DEFIES LAWS OF PHYSICS!" is a nice attention-grabbing line. it's completely bunk, too, but who cares, it got your attention. Then after it has your attention, it gives you the scientists saying "it works differently than we thought it would. That's really neat, I can't wait to revise my formulae!"

reply to post by sirnex


Well said.. nice to see that i'm not the only person on the planet who agrees that our version of the "laws of physics" are probably not even close to reality..

reply to post by Ouroborus2012


Yep, some people rely upon mathematics just a tad bit to much, it's like god to science. Except this god is not infallible at all and can describe a great deal of things that have no relation to reality. I always like to remind others that it was mathematically proven that heavier than air flight is impossible. I suppose the guy had to revise his formula after the wright brothers took their first flight.

reply to post by sirnex

I always like to remind others that it was mathematically proven that heavier than air flight is impossible.

Any source for this?

reply to post by sirnex


Presumably he did. And that's exactly why you can't equate science and religion; religion never self-revises when disproven. Science welcomes changes and renovation, while religion avoids it at all costs.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
reply to post by sirnex

 

Presumably he did. And that's exactly why you can't equate science and religion; religion never self-revises when disproven. Science welcomes changes and renovation, while religion avoids it at all costs.

Actually, religion is highly adaptive to current trends and knowledge. Nowadays, religious people will readily lay claim that evolution is discussed in the bible as a tool used by God to create life on this planet, or that the Big Bang was initiated the moment God uttered the words 'let there be light.

Even now we can see many people here on ATS who've created new Gods based off the biblical mythology by attributing new traits to their personal deities of invention. So in essence, religion can and does frequently change and accept changes through new interpretations.