News (Page 869)

Maybe Mars and Earth Didn’t Form Close to Each Other In recent years, astronomers have been looking to refine our understanding of how the Solar System formed. On the one hand, you have the traditional Nebular Hypothesis which argues that the Sun, the planets, and all other objects in the Solar System formed from nebulous material billions of years ago. However, astronomers traditionally assumed that the planets formed in their current orbits, which has since come to be questioned. This has come to be challenged by theories like the Grand Tack model. This theory states that Jupiter migrated from its original orbit after it formed,Read More →

Red Dwarf Star, Planet Orbiting at Right Angles. Mayhem. When we think of other planetary systems, we tend to think that they will operate by the same basic rules as our own. In the Solar System, the planets orbit close to the equatorial plane of the Sun – meaning around its equator. The Sun’s rotational axis, the direction of its poles based to its rotation, is also the same as most of the planets’ (the exception being Uranus, which rotates on its side). But if the study of extra-solar planets has taught us anything, it is that the Universe is full of possibilities. Consider theRead More →

Updates on ‘Oumuamau. Maybe it’s a Comet, Actually. Oh, and no Word From Aliens. On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar object, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka. ‘Oumuamua). After originally hypothesizing that it was a comet, observations performed by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other astronomers indicated that it was likely a strange-looking asteroid measuring about 400 meters (1312 ft) long. Since that time, multiple surveys have been conducted to determine the true nature of this asteroid, which have included studies of its composition to Breakthrough Listen‘s proposal to listenRead More →

Kilonova Neutron Star Collision Probably Left Behind a Black Hole In February of 2016, scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first-ever detection of gravitational waves. A little over a century after they were first predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, we finally had proof that this phenomenon existed. In August of 2017, another major breakthrough occurred when LIGO detected waves that were believed to be caused by a neutron star merger. Shortly thereafter, scientists at LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope were able to determine where in the sky the neutron star merger occurred. While many studiesRead More →

Astronomers Find Another Solar System with 8 Planets. Uh, Pluto, About that Deplaneting… With every passing year, more and more extra-solar planets are discovered. To make matters more interesting, improvements in methodology and technology are allowing for the discovery of more planets within individual systems. Consider the recent announcement of a seven-planet system around the red dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1. At the time, this discovery established the record for most exoplanets orbiting a single star. Well move over TRAPPIST-1! Thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope and machine learning, a team from Google AI and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics (CfA) recently discovered an eighthRead More →