Force 1800 superhurricanes snapped on far-off world Californian astronomers have used a NASA orbital telescope to generate unique "photorealistic" imaging of a planet nearly 200 lightyears away while it swung close by its parent star, causing an "explosion" of terrifically powerful atmospheric storms as the far-off world heated up to 1200°C. The blue is sunlight: the red is the …
..it's things like this that make me love science. Force 1800 storms on a planet 190 light years away (seriously, get your calculator out and work out the miles) that's scooting at a right pace around it's parent sun in a weird orbit?
Awesome.
Nice one distant-planet-gazing-boffin-type-dudes.
The parent star is a dwarf of spectral class G5, a little less massive than the Sun. The orbital period is listed as 111.78 days (plus or minus 0.21 days): see http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/HD80606.html
If the orbital period was less than a day, the orbit ... all of it ... would have to be much closer to the star.
... is an utterly fuckin' bollox thing to do when you're fitting a quadratic curve. Use the bleedin' formula:
v = 0.836 B^(3/2) m/s
5kps = 5000m/s, so B^(3/2) = 5000/0.836, or iow
B = (5000/0.836) ^ (2/3) = Force 329.5
Not as impressive as your figure, but not as utterly wrong either.
"Yes, we know"? Like buggery do you, you're fooling nobody. Get back to maths class, you stupid boy!
Well you're even worse now!!
In the limit of large x the difference between x^2 and x^(3/2) is far far greater than the difference of x^(3/2) and x. So a straight line is an infinitely better approximation than a quadratic. It's pretty simple really - get back to maths lessons, arsehole!
So, I thinko'd "quadratic" when I should have written "polynomial." BFD. I'm still right about the numbers, and your English comprehension skills are lacking: my post makes it quite clear that it's the underlying data I'm referring to by the term quadratic, not that I'm proposing to use yet another curve that still isn't the real one for fitting the data.
"Generally the faraway gas-planet sees a balmy 500-odd degrees, but as the massive world barrelled in to periastron, sun swelling hotter and hotter in the sky, this soared by 700 degrees in just six Earth hours."
That's the old estimate.
James Hansen has already adjusted it upward.
Another measure of time which could throw the "six earth hours" into disrepute.
I am, of course, talking about microsoft time which is completely different to earth time.
You can all prove this for yourselves by transferring some files from one place to another and keeping an eye on the time remaining. Ever noticed how earth time passes much quicker than Microsoft time. When it says 1 hour remaining, you might just be able to get a cup of tea made and the job will be done.
Paris cos she likes it quick......
Sure, I don't know anything. My engineering degree is only from Cambridge - I'd never be able to cope with hard sums like that. I'd never remember where to look up the Beaufort formula, having only spent the two years as a Royal Navy navigating officer giving met briefs several times a week. You certainly saw through my pathetic suggestion that a thick journalist might know these things.
Of course your figure is as utterly wrong as mine, you turkey. A 5km/sec wind is >32m/sec, thus it is still just Force 12, or possibly Force 17 if you prefer the unathorised systems used by some down on the China coast. If you're going to call it anything bigger than that, you are joining me in the 'utterly wrong' place. In my case, I'm there on purpose - the purposes of entertainment/generating a bit of interest/making science popular/doing my job. Thus one chooses to make the figure nice and big, and as an added benefit waste less time on a trivial thowaway paragraph. In your case, you're utterly wrong because you aren't very intelligent - unless you actually enjoy making yourself look an arse.
On the matter of conduct. Fair enough, perhaps not your fault that you have no understanding of how grownups normally hold a discussion - no doubt you sacrificed that sort of thing while acquiring your super O-Level maths skills. But just for future reference, you don't know me well enough to address me as 'stupid boy' and call me a liar, even if you are much older than me (very plausible, all the signs of incipient senility are there). Try to remember, you're not standing alone in an alley shouting at the bins just now - you are addressing adults you don't know in public.
Get yourself down to remedial manners, you rude old git.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
