

NASA creates alien's eye view of solar system - mars
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2010/09/aliens-eye-view-of-solar-system.html

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devmonk
Nice video and really like the closed captioning! I was able to get the gist
of it with the volume turned all the way down as I usually watch videos when
the kids are watching T.V.

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Swizec
So if I understand this correctly, it all boils down to how far the aliens
are? If they're too far, there is no way to discern that there are planets
around here, but if they're close enough they can detect the presence of a
large source of gravity that would potentially intrigue them enough to make a
closer look?

Or more to the point, it means our chances of discovering inhabitable
exoplanets are next to zero despite there being a near infinite number of
such, simply because even when we do discover them, what we really discovered
is a planet from thousands or even millions of years ago. Useful!

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teamonkey
I'm not sure that was the conclusion at all.

They modeled the dust particles in the solar system at various stages of the
solar system's development. They saw that today, Neptune's gravitational pull
creates a noticeable footprint in the Kuiper belt (a massive body of dust and
rocks forming a ring outside the orbit of Neptune). When looking at other star
systems they could potentially see similar footprints, which would imply the
presence of Neptune-sized planets.

They also saw that when modelling the young solar system, the result looked
very similar to the Fomalhaut system. This system is known to be young and
also known to have at least one large planet. So from that the technique could
also be used to identify young star systems that may contain planets.

