The first planets beyond the Milky Way may have been discovered

Possible Planets Beyond the Milky Way

For the first time ever, scientists say they've discovered planets beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

Located in a galaxy some 3.8 billion light-years away, the extragalactic planets are too far away to be observed directly even with the biggest telescopes now in existence.

But astrophysicists at the University of Oklahoma say they were found using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory space telescope and with the help of gravitational microlensing. That’s a phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity in which the gravitational field around celestial objects can focus light just like a lens so that distant objects can be observed at high magnification.

We are very excited about this discovery,” Dr. Xinyu Dai, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the university and the leader of the new research, said in a written statement. “This is the first time anyone has discovered planets outside our galaxy.”

If the finding is confirmed, it would be big news indeed. For thousands of years, the only planets known to exist were the familiar ones in our own solar system. In the 1990s, scientists found the first evidence for the existence of planets that orbit stars other than our own sun. But all these so-called exoplanets — thousands of which are now known to exist — are all located within our own Milky Way galaxy."

Call me crazy, but I read this and had to do a double take. I could have sworn we were all taught in grade school that every star had its own system of planets. As much as I love stars and astronomy and the thought of travelling light speed to another planet beyond our solar system, I guess I never put much thought into the fact that apparently our telescopes haven't been able to penetrate the gas and dust of the Milky Way. I thought we'd been far past that and just couldn't zoom in far enough to see the planets orbiting each star.

Having said that, do you think there is a possibility that there is life on any of those planets that are close enough to thrive on the heat and energy of the star in said solar system?

Also, do you guys think we'll EVER have the technology to travel so far?

Disclaimer: I searched ATS for a thread covering this but didn't find one, surprisingly.

I do believe there is life beyond this galaxy.
Imagine that there is at least one planet like ours in each galaxy. That a lot of civilizations (advance or not).

a reply to: Thirty6BelowZero

taught in grade school that every star had its own system of planets

Sorry about the bad news, but you were lied to.

There have been heaps of exoplanets discovered in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Observing planets in an entirely different galaxy is pretty bloody amazing.

do you think there is a possibility that there is life on any of those planets

Perhaps not explicitly those planets, but life is out there that's for sure.

Also, do you guys think we'll EVER have the technology to travel so far?

No.

originally posted by: Thirty6BelowZero

Call me crazy, but I read this and had to do a double take. I could have sworn we were all taught in grade school that every star had its own system of planets.

While science had long surmised that planets were around other stars (consider "Star Trek" from the 1960s as an example of fiction built upon the science of the day), it wasn't until 1995 that the first solid evidence of those planets was found.

You were probably taught as everyone suspected that it would make sense that our sun is a star, and there are almost certainly other stars with planets -- which is a logical assumption, although not at the time a scientific certainty.

a reply to: Thirty6BelowZero It was only 1992 that first planet was confirmed, before that we were all alone and arogant to think in vastness of space we were all alone. Think we like to think we are superior to anything that may be possible.

a reply to: Abednego

Me too. I wish we could launch a high powered telescope out to the edge of our solar system to get a better and closer look into space.

One planet is located in the constellation Andromeda. Dubbed KELT-1b, it is so massive that it may better be described as a 'failed star' rather than a planet. A super hot, super dense ball of metallic hydrogen, KELT-1b is located so close to its star that it whips through an entire “yearly” orbit in a little over a day - all the while being blasted by six thousand times the radiation Earth receives from the sun. The planet appears to have been jostled in the past by a previously unknown distant binary companion star that is orbiting the KELT-1 solar system.

DailyGalaxy.com, June 19, 2012 - Two New Alien Planets Discovered in Andromeda --"Resets the Bar for Weird".

I remember that planets were discovered in the Andromeda galaxy [FAIL!], which is why I thought the claim was bogus and did not make a thread. It is MSM, they have been printing (and re-printing), the "World first fusion reactor 50% complete" story over a month. We, here on earth, have multiple fusion reactors! That are up and running! That have retired and are no longer operational!! What we do not have is energy output more than energy input.

That is MSM media for you! The abstract of the paper does not mention "first" at all. I think that is a quote from an excited person being interview who doesn't know, or remember, the earlier Andromeda discovery.

The more planets the better, I say! We have more targets for James Webb ST over the next few years!

ETA: I think I have an "Epic Fail"! :facepalm: There is an Andromeda constellation too! It is OK to be wrong! Just admit it.

originally posted by: sparky31
a reply to: Thirty6BelowZero It was only 1992 that first planet was confirmed, before that we were all alone and arogant to think in vastness of space we were all alone. Think we like to think we are superior to anything that may be possible.

As I said in my post above, scientists felt that it was extremely likely that there were in fact planets around other stars even before they found them (whis was in 51 Pegasi b, found in 1995).

I doubt you could have found too many (if any) mainstream scientist even before then who felt that there were probably no other planets outside our solar system. Maybe a few fundamentalist religious scientists, but that's probably about it.

a reply to: myselfaswell

Very amazing indeed. They say that even if there was life, it would take a million years to send one message via light sequences, and a million more years to get a response. Kinda puts things into perspective about how huge it is out there...

originally posted by: Thirty6BelowZero
a reply to: Abednego

Me too. I wish we could launch a high powered telescope out to the edge of our solar system to get a better and closer look into space.

First of all, Welcome to ATS! Sweets and beverages are on the table by the door!


A telescope on the edge of our solar system would not get us much closer than our telescopes are now.

There is no cleary defined edge of the solar system (and it depends on what you define as "the edge"), but let's assume a bit on the generous side and say the Solar System is 1 Light Year (1 LY) across. The edge of the solar system would be 0.5 LY away. The stars we find planets around are tens, or dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands of LYs away. That extra 0.5 LY would not make much of a difference.

Having said that , the closest star (Proxima Centauri) is only 4 LY away, and is thought to have planets, so in that case the extra 0.5 LY would be helpful. For the rest, it would just be a drop in the bucket, distance-wise.

By the way, the farthest object we ever sent into space are the Voyager Spacescafts, and they are barely 18 Light hours away (or about 0.002 LY).

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People Really? cause i remember growing up and thought of other planets was a crazy idea cause people were still hooked on idea we were special and if God had created us then it was just us and thought of other planets with chance of other life was a bit taboo. Even scientists would worry about breaking that rule.

I saw this article . I don't buy it . The cumulative light in a distant galaxy would make it impossible to make out planets . Imho .

Looks more like some stars tucked behind another star and being lensed around it, not planets. But really, at that distance, what difference does it make?

originally posted by: sparky31
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People Really? cause i remember growing up and thought of other planets was a crazy idea cause people were still hooked on idea we were special and if God had created us then it was just us and thought of other planets with chance of other life was a bit taboo. Even scientists would worry about breaking that rule.

Then how do you account for the Drake Equation in 1961?

Factors scientists used to full in the Drake Equation even back in the 1960s assume that there were planets around other stars. They had to make educated guesses about the number of planets around other stars because they hand no hard evidence of any, but they still believed them to exist.

Granted, it is true that scientists in the 1960s could not imagine how they would ever be able to detect those exoplanets, but the science of the day, even then, figured they most likely existed (or else why would Dr. Frank Drake have even bothered to make his famous equation?)

originally posted by: sparky31
Think we like to think we are superior to anything that may be possible.

I just like to think that we're superior to anything that we actually know of, and that doesn't include hypothetical super beings.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I don't get how they're always able to tell what the planets consist of. I mean, I get the formula, but they don't know if these stars and planets are full of gas or anything. Hell for all we know they could be inhabited if we ever made it there. We've made it to one single planet. One. And now we know everything there is to know about some other planet a couple million light years away that we saw through a telescope.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: Thirty6BelowZero
a reply to: Abednego

Me too. I wish we could launch a high powered telescope out to the edge of our solar system to get a better and closer look into space.

First of all, Welcome to ATS! Sweets and beverages are on the table by the door!


A telescope on the edge of our solar system would not get us much closer than our telescopes are now.

There is no cleary defined edge of the solar system (and it depends on what you define as "the edge"), but let's assume a bit on the generous side and say the Solar System is 1 Light Year (1 LY) across. The edge of the solar system would be 0.5 LY away. The stars we find planets around are tens, or dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands of LYs away. That extra 0.5 LY would not make much of a difference.

Having said that , the closest star (Proxima Centauri) is only 4 LY away, and is thought to have planets, so in that case the extra 0.5 LY would be helpful. For the rest, it would just be a drop in the bucket, distance-wise.

By the way, the farthest object we ever sent into space are the Voyager Spacescafts, and they are barely 18 Light hours away (or about 0.002 LY).

Thanks for the welcome, and the buzzkill, lol... But no, I was thinking that if we could get closer to the edge of our galaxy it might get through some of the gas and dust that blocks our view way down here towards the center.

18 light hours = 12,071,099,329 miles.

OOOF!

originally posted by: Thirty6BelowZero
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I don't get how they're always able to tell what the planets consist of. I mean, I get the formula, but they don't know if these stars and planets are full of gas or anything. Hell for all we know they could be inhabited if we ever made it there. We've made it to one single planet. One. And now we know everything there is to know about some other planet a couple million light years away that we saw through a telescope.

They can tell if it's gaseous or rocky by its density. A gaseous planet would have a low average density, and a rocky planet will have a higher density. That density can be calculated by dividing the mass of the planet by the size (volume) of the planet. So how do they learn mass and size? Usually through two different means:

Size:
Hardly any planets have been discoverd by actaully seein an image of that planet next to a star. Most Planets have been discovered through two indirect methods: (1) Radial Velocity, or the "Doppler method" (which will be described below) and (2) the Transit Method.

The Transit Method depends on a planat being in the proper alignment with telescope searching for it so that the planet crosses in front of its star as seen from the telescope. As the planet crosses, or "transits" its parent star, it makes the star dim slightly.

Fron the amount of dimming, the size of the planet can be deterimined. As the telescope watches that star for a longer period of time, it might catch that planet crossing in from of the star again, which would tell them another useful characteristinc of the planet -- how large is its orbital radius.

Mass:
The other main method for finding planets is the Radial Velocity methood, also calle dthe Doppler Method. This method looks for tiny wobbles in a star. As planet orbits a star, the gravity of the planet causes the star to wobble very slightly (the Earth even makes the Sun wobble). If planet hunters know the amount of wobble AND they know the orbital distance (which the could have learned through the transit method( then they have enough information to learn the mass of the planet.


Density:
Mass alone cannot tel them if a planet is rocky or gaseous, becase they don't know the size of the planet. And knowing the size of a planet (which is also loarned through the transit method) also does not tell them if it's rocky or gaseous. However, by using both the size and the mass, scientists can calculate volume, which can tell them if the planet is gaseous or rocky.

Breaking: Man finds long lost octuplets in local house of mirrors.

originally posted by: sparky31
a reply to: Thirty6BelowZero It was only 1992 that first planet was confirmed, before that we were all alone and arogant to think in vastness of space we were all alone.Think we like to think we are superior to anything that may be possible.

Surely you're not implying that people didn't believe in extraterrestrial life before 1992, I added bold to your quote where it looks that way.

This is mind blowing, I'd love to see more...