Interesting Leak: Another NASA Scientist Tells Us That ‘Somebody Else’ Is On The Moon
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The researchers say we’ll have to wait for the next generation of advanced space telescopes to come online before we can figure out exactly how much water is on K2-18 b. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to launch in December 2021, and the European Space Agency’s Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large Survey (ARIEL) telescope, launched on April 1st 2021, are both well-suited to the task.
The new study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The study’s preprint is available at arXiv.org.With only one star in the sky, our Solar System appears to be an outlier. Most stars in the Milky Way galaxy have at least one gravitationally bound stellar companion, implying that two-star worlds such as Tatooine are not uncommon.
However, star systems are not limited to a maximum of two stars. We discovered systems with up to seven stars linked together in a complex orbital dance. And now, scientists have found what they believe may be a first for astronomy: an exoplanet orbiting a system of three stars, also known as a stellar trinary.
To be clear, exoplanets have previously been discovered in trinary systems – orbiting only one of the system’s stars. If this new discovery is validated, the exoplanet will be in orbit around all three stars, which has never been observed before.Stars in the Milky Way are not typically born alone. Their birthplaces are massive molecular clouds, where dense clumps of gas collapse under gravity.
As these clumps spin, the cloud’s material condenses into a disk, which accretes onto the forming star. If this disk fragments, another star, or multiple stars, may form in the same location – forming a small stellar family of siblings. What remains of the disk after the star has formed can go on to form planets.
It is estimated that 40 to 50 percent of stars have a binary companion, with another 20 percent in systems with three or more stars.
These systems will be quite gravitationally complex, making it difficult for smaller objects to stick around – but, despite this, it is estimated that around 2.5 percent of exoplanets are in multiple systems consisting of three or more stars.
To date, 32 exoplanets have been discovered in trinary systems. And then a system called GW Orionis came along.Located about 1,300 light-years away, GW Orionis caught the attention of astronomers because it is surrounded by a massive, misaligned protoplanetary disk that circles all three stars.
Using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers confirmed another feature of the system: a significant gap in the protoplanetary disk.
Gaps in protoplanetary disks are most likely caused by planets forming, according to our models of planet formation. These planets sweep up the dust and gas in their orbital path as they orbit the star, clearing it and leaving a gap.
Things aren’t always so clear-cut in GW Orionis. Because the three stars would generate a complex gravitational field, any strange features in the disk could have been created by the stars themselves.
Previous research suggested that this is unlikely; the gravitational interaction between the stars alone is insufficient to have carved a gap in the disk, leaving a forming exoplanet as the most likely explanation.A new analysis has now confirmed this interpretation. A team of researchers led by astronomer Jeremy Smallwood of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas rebuilt a model of the GW Orionis system using N-body and three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations.
They found, just as researchers before them had, that the torque generated by the stars is not sufficient to have split the protoplanetary disk.
Instead, the culprit is most likely a gas giant in the process of formation, such as Jupiter, or a group of gas giants. We haven’t seen the exoplanet, so there’s still room for speculation, but the agreement between the two separate research efforts appears to favor the baby exoplanet interpretation.
This could imply that the planet formation process can survive more extreme conditions than previously thought, such as complex environments like the space around triple stars.
"It’s really exciting because it makes the theory of planet formation really robust," Smallwood said. "It could mean that planet formation is much more active than we thought, which is pretty cool."
The team hopes that astronomers will be able to see the exoplanet or exoplanets directly in upcoming observations of the GW Orionis system.Just 20 light-years from the Sun, a strange rogue planet without a star roams the Milky Way. And, according to a published in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has a magnetic field that is 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Surprisingly, the exoplanet appears to be capable of producing spectacular auroras that would put our own northern lights to shame.
The new observations, made with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), are the first radio observations of a planetary-mass object outside our solar system, as well as the first time researchers have measured the magnetic field of such a body.
Sizing up SIMP
SIMP J01365663+0933473 (we’ll call it SIMP for simplicity’s sake) is a strange and untethered object that was first discovered in 2016. Simp was thought to be a brown dwarf at the time, an object that is too big to be a planet but too small to be a star. However, last year, another study showed that SIMP is just small enough, at 12.7 times the mass and 1.2 times the radius of Jupiter, to be considered a planet — albeit a mammoth one. "This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets," said Arizona State University’s Melodie Kao, who led the new study on SIMP, in a .
SIMP is also quite hot for a planet, with a surface temperature of over 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (825 Celsius). The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus, with an average temperature of around 875 degrees Fahrenheit (470 degrees Celsius), while the Sun, a relatively small and cool star, has a surface temperature of around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 C). However, it’s important to note that Venus gets most of its heat from the Sun. And since solitary SIMP is not orbiting a star, its heat must be leftover from its initial formation some 200 million years ago. So, over time, the planetary goliath will continue to radiate away its warmth.
Unparalleled Magnetism
SIMP, according to the latest research, is not only gigantic by planetary standards, but it also has a magnetic field that is millions of times stronger than our own. Although the magnetic field aids SIMP in producing spectacular light shows, auroras are not generated in the same way they are on Earth.
Jupiter has, by far, the most powerful magnetic field in the solar system. Jupiter’s magnetic field is nearly 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s, resulting in stunningly bright auroras. Electrically charged particles are accelerated along Jupiter’s magnetic field lines before smashing into atoms in the planet’s upper atmosphere at speeds of around 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) per second.
The northern and southern lights are formed by a similar process on Earth; however, the charged particles that cause Earth’s auroras primarily come from the Sun in the form of solar wind. The charged particles on Jupiter, on the other hand, come primarily from its moon Io, rather than from the solar wind. Since SIMP does not have a star bombarding it with wind like Earth does, the researchers believe that SIMP’s auroras may be produced more like Jupiter’s, which means SIMP may have a moon.To recap: SIMP seems to be a massive and magnetic exoplanet without a star that may have a moon that is generating brilliant auroras while wandering the Milky Way.
Whew. That’s impressive. But how will this fascinating find help astronomers learn more about the universe?
"This particular object is exciting because studying its magnetic dynamo mechanisms can give us new insights on how the same type of mechanisms can operate in extrasolar planets," said Kao. "We think these mechanisms can work not only in brown dwarfs, but also in both gas giant and terrestrial planets."
In other words, SIMP will help astronomers better understand how magnetic fields are generated in exoplanets. But wait, that’s not all!
"Detecting SIMP J01365663+0933473 with the VLA through its auroral radio emission also means that we may have a new way of detecting exoplanets, including the elusive rogue ones not orbiting a parent star," said co-author Gregg Hallinan of Caltech.
So, there you have it. SIMP is a fascinating object in its own right, but more importantly, this new research opens the door to new insights into explanatory magnetic fields and auroras, as well as assisting in the search for exoplanets that seem to value their privacy.For the first time, astronomers have discovered evidence for a giant planet orbiting a tiny, dead white dwarf star. And, surprisingly, the Neptune-sized planet is more than four times the diameter of the Earth-sized star it orbits.
"This star has a planet that we can’t see directly," study author Boris Gänsicke from the University of Warwick said in a press release. "But because the star is so hot, it is evaporating the planet, and we detect the atmosphere it is losing." In fact, the searing star is sending a stream of vaporized material away from the planet at a rate of some 260 million tons per day.
The new discovery is the first proof that a massive planet can survive a star’s transition into a white dwarf. It implies that evaporating planets orbiting dead stars are fairly common in the universe. The discovery could also shed light on the fate of our solar system, as our Sun, like most stars, will eventually evolve into a white dwarf.
An unexpected pairingThe white dwarf in question, dubbed WDJ0914+1914, is located in the constellation Cancer, about 1,500 light-years away. Although the white dwarf is no longer undergoing nuclear fusion like a normal star, its lingering heat means it’s still a blistering 49,500 degrees Fahrenheit . That’s some five times hotter than the Sun.
After sifting through about 7,000 white dwarfs identified by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers discovered the smoldering stellar core. When the team looked at the unique spectra of WDJ0914+1914, they discovered hydrogen chemical fingerprints, which is somewhat unusual. But they also picked out signs of oxygen and sulfur — elements they had never seen in a white dwarf before.
"It was one of those chance discoveries," Gänsicke said in a European Southern Observatory (ESO) press release. "We knew that there had to be something exceptional going on in this system, and [we] speculated that it may be related to some type of planetary remnant."
So, in order to get a better understanding of what was going on in the strange system, the team used the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s X-shooter instrument to conduct follow-up observations. Based on a deeper investigation, the researchers discovered that the unusual elements they thought were embedded in the white dwarf were actually coming from a disk of gas churning around the dead star.
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