What do other planetary systems look like? We have seen some where massive Jupiter-sized worlds orbit closer to their star than Mercury does to the Sun, baking them with radiation. Others have had multiple rocky planets within the Earth’s orbit distance. Some have planets similar to Earth in a variety of locations. But what about far away from the star? We never expected to find gas giants like Uranus and Neptune in the far reaches of our solar system. Are there planetary systems where planets live even farther away? Maybe there are planets that live in the empty darkness between stars,...
With the recent story of the star with a debris ring potentially being a sign of extraterrestrial life (spoiler alert, it’s not aliens), I had to talk a bit more about debris rings in general around other stars. How can they exist? When we start to look at the number of worlds and the variability of objects and stars, it would be no surprise to find strange systems where recent interactions have produced all kinds of fascinating patterns. It’s another example of finding art in nature. A group of astronomers from the university of Warwick have directly imaged a debris...
Space Junk is a growing problem. Even though there is a lot of room in low Earth orbit, it’s estimated that 3,000 tons of space debris is floating around at different altitudes and speeds, posing a significant threat to present and future orbital infrastructure. The number of objects classed as space junk doubled in 2014 to 4000 individual pieces, mostly due to collisions between objects already in space. Most of this space junk is old derelict satellites and rocket bodies and engines leftover from 50 years of space exploration. Because of the wide variety of altitudes, trajectories, and speeds, it can...
At one point in history, let’s say around 1994, astronomers were fairly confident in their understanding of the formation of planetary systems. Even though at the time we hadn’t found any planets orbiting other stars, they had long been theorized, and we figured that systems would form much like our own solar system. Rocky planets in the interior, gaseous giants further out, and a huge icy debris field at the outer edges. And then along came 51 Pegasi b. Half the mass of Jupiter, it orbits its star in only 4 days, far closer than Mercury. It was considered a...
Cassiopeia A is the expanding remainder of a massive star that exploded 340 years ago in he constellation of Cassiopeia (hence we call it Cas A for short). As the star erupted, hot radioactive material was shot out in all directions, churning up the surrounding outer debris, before the star finally tore itself apart. Simulations of supernova explosions have found it difficult to model the extreme conditions during this process, even when using the world’s best supercomputers. So what are astronomers missing? By studying recent supernovae like Cas A, astronomers can study the processes that formed these massive expanding shock waves, leading...
