Comments on: Exoplanet Reflects Practically No Light—and Scientists Have No Idea Why

By: Tony Milton

Tony Milton — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:40:25 +0000

The inhabitants probably burned evrything.

By: Jonny

Jonny — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:14:24 +0000

@Gustavo Santos – Oh indeed! But then the black monoliths turned Jupiter into a glowing star of its own! I think I got the reference, if I didn’t or even missed part of it I am deeply sorry.

Pray I don’t let Larry Niven down now. “Larry Niven” should have a familiar “ring” to it for most of you guys. I know I know that was really bad, roasting an orange cat would have been funnier.

By: Zoltan

Zoltan — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:38:12 +0000

Sphere symmetrical accelerating collapse at speed i=lim(adt)=c will not return in practice any light impact, rather “swollows” it as red shift. We are probably experiencing a neutron process of this magnitude. Can we call it as neutron star?

By: Jeremy P

Jeremy P — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:03:26 +0000

if you read the pdf, the transit time is roughly 4624 seconds (roughly 77 minutes, give or take 42 seconds) and the orbital period is only 2.470619 days. (section 3.2).

By: Gustavo Santos

Gustavo Santos — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:41:58 +0000

Didn’t you get it? Remember the black monolith on Arthur Clark’s book “2001 – space odissey”? In that book, coincidentally, it was a mistery to scientists why the black slab was so black. In fact, if reflected no light at all.
So that’s it: the planet is in fact the black monolyth

By: Big_Ed

Big_Ed — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:12:36 +0000

I agree with Erik. Maybe it’s a giant sunspot like the big red spot found on Jupiter, and it just never goes away. If there is a wobble, there may be another undetected planet, possibly with the same period as the rotation of the star / sunspot.

By: Jonny

Jonny — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:46:22 +0000

It’s probably a primitive form of cloaking device around an alien mega-cruiser that doesn’t actually bend light around it properly, just absorbs it. Actually by absorbing 100% light the mega-cruiser might actually be using that as a power source perhaps temporarily to charge a super-powerful weapon or transgalactic FTL drive.

To respond to #43, direct use of the sun as an energy source is almost impossible and only the Ancients managed to figure that out (you fly one of their crafts into a star to recharge it) without being ripped apart by radiation, heat, electromagnetic flux, gravity, or all of the above .

@#39. Hah, maybe somebody wants to create a binary system eh?

By: Duane

Duane — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:42:09 +0000

Have we taken into consideration that there could be planets that revolve around distant stars orbiting in a plane where the planet does not cross the stars light from our perspective? I doubt that every planetary system in the galaxy has an orbital path of planets on the same plane as our system is on. If this is true then there could be far more planetary systems out there than we can detect with current methods.

By: charlie

charlie — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 22:25:00 +0000

#4 ‘Tim’ states an advanced civilisation would need energy so built a giant solar collector. Shame they didn’t just use the massive energy source right next to them known as a sun.

By: Grimace

Grimace — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 14:47:54 +0000

Maybe it’s Maybelline!

By: Grimace

Grimace — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 14:45:35 +0000

Maybe our instruments are wrong!!!

By: Ashran

Ashran — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 01:34:34 +0000

I have a low libido also. Does that make me a black hole?

By: praedor

praedor — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:21:43 +0000

Sheesh. CLEARLY it is merely an alien high school science project. The students converted a planet into a true black body to test black body radiation – for real.

The project took 3rd place in their local science fair.

By: Ray Fowler

Ray Fowler — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:57:14 +0000

To me, it seems like an error in the observation measurements. That seems a lot more likely than the planet being covered in some heretofore unknown substance that would be the darkest substance ever discovered.

Measurement error. HAPPENS ALL OF THE TIME.

By: BohdanUke1

BohdanUke1 — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:21:53 +0000

Blind inhabitants painted it black by mistake. End of story. WAIT! just one more idea……. DOH!

By: tangojuli

tangojuli — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:02:15 +0000

Mystery solved: It is Z’ha’Dhoum–homeworld of the “shadows” (Babylon 5 ref)
@Lila-humor will keep this in the front of people’s minds.

By: Ray Fowler

Ray Fowler — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:14:44 +0000

@Devin, surely this planet is the stuff of album covers

By: Lila Sovietskaya

Lila Sovietskaya — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:48:29 +0000

Many humorous comments do not solve this puzzle. Either the astrophysicist came to the wrong conclusion. An atmosphere of carbon gas would be read not black. Very likely the atmosphere has low albedo because itemits non-visible light, either infrared or ultraviolet

By: Stephen Fretwell

Stephen Fretwell — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:47:07 +0000

If it were dark matter, it would not dim it’s sun when it passes in front. Dark matter planets have to be discoverd through solar wobble, or periodically distorted light bending around the star.

By: pj

pj — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:43:30 +0000

I like floodmouse’s hypothesis the best! Write us a story, floodmouse!

By: Odin

Odin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:34:37 +0000

@Komees

LOL, how can a planet from outside the solar system protect life on earth from the sun’s UV rays?

By: lacey redd

lacey redd — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 08:58:30 +0000

like a bottle of oil and vinagar…our earth is settling, and seperating into like elements…maybe this planet connsists of only one element that will not seperate until it colides with another planet…. maybe it is a part of our of our indrocrine system and our planet and solar system is an artry….different laws obide…does this mean that the big picture fell down and skinned it’s knee?

By: gw

gw — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 03:55:11 +0000

Any chance it could be mostly carbon? Too simple for the techies and the conspiracy theorists, I guess.

By: floodmouse

floodmouse — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:48:39 +0000

Tim #4 states: “Perhaps it’s an uninhabited planet, converted into a giant battery – a solar energy collector and storage system. Advanced civilizations (maybe living on a nearby, yet undetected planet) surely need advanced power sources, right?”

I agree with Tim, except for the location of the advanced civilization. How about this sci-fi scenario: The whole planet has been terrascaped & textured to absorb light like a giant solar panel, creating immense amounts of electricity to power a civilization located UNDERNEATH the planet’s surface . . . possibly in response to some environmental catastrophe. Maybe the lights are still on, but nobody is home due to a massive population die-off. I saw something similar in a movie. I think this was the movie in question:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054330/

The technology they used to blacken the planet is undoubtedly derived from the special optical properties of giant space-bug wings. You will want to check out this link to see a Terran analogy:

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/03-bugs-can-teach-us-a-lot-about-solar-power/?searchterm=insect solar black

By: Iain

Iain — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 01:11:57 +0000

Oh! I know! I know! Because the planet absorbs light.
Next problem please.

By: Karlin

Karlin — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:00:10 +0000

It is possible that this dark planet was at one time populated by humanoids, and as on earth, they would need energy, so maybe they burned up 100 million years worth of stored fossil fuels in a short time, in about 100 years or so.

Inefficient combustion led to hydrocarbon pollution which blackened the atmosphere.

Just a thought…

By: Kees

Kees — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:31:15 +0000

The link: “lead author David Kipping said in a prepared statement” is broken. (should be .html; not .htmll)

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2011/pr201121.html

By: Moonman

Moonman — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:37:13 +0000

Man this planet is Black!

How black is this planet? it’s blacker than the blackest person on earth painted black

-bowlofknowledge.blogspot.com

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:45:59 +0000

@ david 19&20
They can determine how big the planet is by the amount of light that is dimmed when it passes in front. If our Sun were to become a black hole it’s Schwartzchild radius would be only 3 km. So if a black hole were to have a size even approaching a small moon, much less a planet, the wobble on the host star would be easily noticeable and the star would have probably be eaten up long ago.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:31:56 +0000

This is clearly a Xindi artifact intended to frighten us. We must destroy it, without mercy. Or mayonnaise.

By: david

david — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:10:01 +0000

How about a small black hole in orbit around the star? No reflection, right?

By: david

david — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:01:57 +0000

How about a small black star in orbit around the star? No reflection, right?

By: Tetzauh

Tetzauh — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:38:37 +0000

I remember reading something similar about pluto. Maybe by 2015, when New Horizons flies by we may have an answer to the puzzle.

By: Devin

Devin — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:23:58 +0000

There’s something about this planet that’s so black, it’s like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

By: m

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:12:37 +0000

Why don’t they look at Mercury and see what it’s reflectivity is? Too bad we do not know over what time period those 50 orbits occured. Also, could this planet have an oversized moon that would give a false reading?

It’s fun to conjecture. And yes, maybe it is composed of a material we don’t know about…..yet.

750 ly isn’t so far. We should send a probe. Our ancestors 2 million years from now will thank us. :)

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:29:07 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ender%27s_Game_series_planets#Eros

By: scott

scott — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:59:06 +0000

perhaps it’s completely covered in super-efficient photosynthetic life…?

By: Erik

Erik — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:41:54 +0000

Somebody tell Flavor Flav!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_a_Black_Planet

Seriously, any chance this is actually a sunspot? A sunspot would produce a cyclical dimming and of course no albedo at the end of the transit. Is 1% reflectivity close to the noise level when looking close to the star right beside it to measure the albedo of the candidate planet?

By: Jovan

Jovan — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:01:21 +0000

It’s Wesley Snipes.

By: Georg

Georg — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:51:58 +0000

That is some “soot” or carbon black very likely. Temperature
in the upper atmosphere and UV from the nearby star will crack the methane
(or other hydrocarbons) to form sooty material and hydrogen.
That hydrogen can diffuse into space.
In case that soot floats for some time in the atmosphere, it
wiil make the gas behaving as a black body thus radiating
like a candle flame.
Saying that it is “black” is not correct. It radiates a light red
light, (1000 °C, a candle is anout 1200 °C, thus yellow).