First planet found that orbits in opposite direction to its star

sorry for the techno geek babble...

but i know of planets that rotate backwards....

but a backwards orbit? am i the only one that thinks this is extremely weird and crazy?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...st-planet-orbits-opposite-direction-star.html

Its an evil death planet that should be destroyed. So I guess some of the Fibonacci laws about orbits have been proven wrong? Or does my Fibonacci knowledge fail me again?

mightybh said:

Its an evil death planet that should be destroyed. So I guess some of the Fibonacci laws about orbits have been proven wrong? Or does my Fibonacci knowledge fail me again?

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imo, this challenges a lot of theories out there....and for them to say ' its backward orbit could be due to a near miss with another large heavenly body that acted like a 'gravitational slingshot''doesn't make sense...

let's say there *was* a near miss collision.... i would think that it would send the planet traveling in the opposite direction...for a while.......but that the star's gravitational pull would eventually force the planet back into a normal orbit. how is it that this planet can sustain an orbit opposite it's star is beyond me


imo, it's like...

imagine a string with a ball attached at the end. you start spinning the string in a clockwise direction...logic says that the ball is gonna go in the direction you are spinning (ie, clockwise)

but in this case...the ball is going the opposite direction you are spinning


crazy

imo, either the data is wrong and the planet isn't revolving backwards, or we need to go back to the drawing board on some existing theories

tonlilaz said:

imo, this challenges a lot of theories out there....and for them to say ' its backward orbit could be due to a near miss with another large heavenly body that acted like a 'gravitational slingshot''doesn't make sense...

let's say there *was* a near miss collision.... i would think that it would send the planet traveling in the opposite direction...for a while.......but that the star's gravitational pull would eventually force the planet back into a normal orbit. how is it that this planet can sustain an orbit opposite it's star is beyond me


imo, it's like...

imagine a string with a ball attached at the end. you start spinning the string in a clockwise direction...logic says that the ball is gonna go in the direction you are spinning (ie, clockwise)

but in this case...the ball is going the opposite direction you are spinning


crazy

imo, either the data is wrong and the planet isn't revolving backwards, or we need to go back to the drawing board on some existing theories

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I hope the data isn't wrong. It would force us all to open our eyes that much more.

Crazy...but wonderful shit

Nice post. In our solar system, Venus spins on its axis in the opposite direction to the other planets. Just a little oddity there. Apparently it's caused by atmospheric tides....

Micallef said:

Nice post. In our solar system, Venus spins on its axis in the opposite direction to the other planets. Just a little oddity there. Apparently it's caused by atmospheric tides....

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yeah....i mean, i know that...and like w/uranus it not only spins backwards..but it as spins on it's side almost parrallel to it's orbit...as if it was knocked over....and i can see how that's possible

but this a whole different thing

again, imagine a whirlpool....or a tornado...everything traveling in the same direction (clockwise or counter clockwise)....except one tiny particle the size of an atom..... some how being able to travel in the opposite direction a everything around it

The answer to this lies in the comments......Labour did it...

Thanks for the link.

The universe amazes me more every day.

I remember from the Cosmos series where Carl Sagan made a calculation on the probability of life on other planets.

Out of a billion stars there will only be a handful that qualify to have some sort of life.....

I know that this is off topic but it just fascinates me.....and there's not a lot of astronomical talk here one BHW....

i wonder why...

because according to the theory of evolution (which i don't really believe)it is possible for some sort of life to evolve some how ....maybe not life as we know it....but something

blackhit said:

The answer to this lies in the comments......Labour did it...

Thanks for the link.

The universe amazes me more every day.

I remember from the Cosmos series where Carl Sagan made a calculation on the probability of life on other planets.

Out of a billion stars there will only be a handful that qualify to have some sort of life.....

I know that this is off topic but it just fascinates me.....and there's not a lot of astronomical talk here one BHW....

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Lest we forget aeronautical genius and pioneer Burt Rutan who has designed, developed, built test flown a brand new experimental aircraft every year for the past 30 years (no mean accomplishment, believe me), in a small building, in the middle of the Mojave desert [Google 'scaled composites']. A national treasure of the U.S.A, in my opinion. All the Americans on this forum should be really proud of him!
He has designed Space ship One and space ship two is being test flown this year to take tourists into suborbit to experience weightlessness. He also has plans for a tourist spaceship to travel around the moon. The moon has no atmosphere, so you could travel at 100 miles per second 10 feet off the ground!

What Burt says, Burt does

tonlilaz said:

i wonder why...

because according to the theory of evolution (which i don't really believe)it is possible for some sort of life to evolve some how ....maybe not life as we know it....but something

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Well, before you dismiss evolution, you should probably try to understand it, because it does not really deal with the kind of ambiguity required by statements like "some sort of life" or "some how." Most planets do not have the elements and environmental variables necessary to compose or produce "life as we know it." Biological evolution doesn't agree or disagree because biological evolution assumes the existence of those elements and variables.

Blackhit, you're referring to the drake equation. I feel that one of the variables to be applied to the equation - the chance of intelligent life arising on a given planet - is generally over-estimated. I would not be surprised if we were the only intelligent life in the universe, and I would say that any estimate of more than 10 intelligent species existing in the visible universe is far too optimistic.

I think that prokaryota (primitive microbes) may be relatively widespread, but the rise of eukaryota (advanced cells) and anything above this level of complexity recedes into an ever diminishing probability given the number of delicate factors required. You need to look at the biology to see what an astonishing and unlikely leap this was.

The fact that we have arisen once gives no indication that something similar will ever happen again, or ever has happened before this instance. If intelligent life only arose on one planet, it would by necessity be on this one.

And in the end, if it turns out (though we'll never know) that we are not the only ones with thoughts and voices, we may as-well be. The stars are so far apart, and space so deadly, that human survival for long periods of interstellar travel is completely impractical. The stars are just too far away.

Very interesting article. I'm a bit of a space nut, so these things fascinate me. This kind of throws the theory of planetary physics upside down and then kicks it down a hill. Like someone else said, if this was simply the result of a near-miss collision in the planet's "early stages of life", the gravitational force of the sun it's orbiting would have pulled it back into the proper orbit by now.

Planet Nibiru,Planet-X if true is predicted to arrive soon.
Approaching from the south pole direction.

Reading Immanuel Velikovsky, his beliefs could explain a lot about planetary "fly bys" as the cause of many earth catastrophic events.Ancient history's calendar is off though as it is currently believed but, if you calculated the dates as he suggests it, the events line up very nicely.
Electricity,gravity, in fact light for that matter is far from understood.
This stuff is facinating and I am in the crowd that feels the more the scientists learn, the more we only discover how little they/we REALLY understand about "reality".
JB

oldenstylehats said:

Well, before you dismiss evolution, you should probably try to understand it, because it does not really deal with the kind of ambiguity required by statements like "some sort of life" or "some how." Most planets do not have the elements and environmental variables necessary to compose or produce "life as we know it." Biological evolution doesn't agree or disagree because biological evolution assumes the existence of those elements and variables.

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i'm not dismissing it... it's just that all our theories and scientific laws are based on our little world...or at least the world as we know it.

then we are thrown a curve ball ie that strange little planet that seems to defy the laws of physics.... it would be interesting to see if a life form is found on a planet that we would perceive as uninhabitable...because it evolved from the existing conditions.

if that makes any sense

tonlilaz said:

i'm not dismissing it... it's just that all our theories and scientific laws are based on our little world...or at least the world as we know it.

then we are thrown a curve ball ie that strange little planet that seems to defy the laws of physics.... it would be interesting to see if a life form is found on a planet that we would perceive as uninhabitable...because it evolved from the existing conditions.

if that makes any sense

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That definitely makes a lot of sense.

If this is true - then it breaks a lot of laws that were previously thought of as "unbreakable"

Therefore, it's not a stretch to say that we could be wrong about other things (such as how life can come to be in certain conditions)

Very interesting it would be neat to have some very solid theory's have to be re-worked within our generation.

Found some info that might have a bearing on this. Neptune's moon, Triton, orbits in retrograde around the planet. It is thought that this is due to the moon having been formed elsewhere and captured by the planet's gravity.

Right, retrograde orbits are not common, but have been observed before even in larger objects. That we haven't found a planet with a retrograde orbit is just a matter of statistics and the number of eyes we have on such behaviors. It is an interesting story for sure, but really isn't extraordinary in any way.