Bizarre ‘Tatooine’ exoplanet orbits two failed stars at once

By -
By Jenna Ahart, Science. 

Excerpt: Like the fictional planet Tatooine in Star Wars, some exoplanets ...orbit binary pairs of stars, which cast their worlds in double sunrises and sunsets as they themselves orbit each other. Now, researchers report today in Science Advances that they have found an especially unusual example of such a planet: one that orbits over and under the poles of two failed stars that loom in its skies. ...only 16 exoplanets had ever been confirmed to orbit around a binary pair—and all of those planets orbit within the plane of the stars’ orbits around each other, not over the poles. ...this peculiar planet, known rather prosaically as 2M1510 (AB) b, ...orbits... brown dwarfs, failed stars that aren’t massive enough to spark on. ...In binary systems like this one, the elliptical orbit of each object in the binary will gradually shift its orientation over time, like the axis of a spinning top tracing out a circle as the top wobbles. This orbital shift typically occurs in the same direction as the object’s orbital motion. However, the brown dwarfs’ orbits were shifting in the opposite direction of the objects’ orbital motion—which could only be explained if the brown dwarfs were receiving gravitational nudges from a planet orbiting at a nearly 90° angle to the pair.... 

Popular posts from this blog

How an Ocean-Sized Lake May Have Formed on Ancient Mars

By -
By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Geological evidence on Mars indicates that 3.6 billion years ago, an intense pulse of water carved rivers and lakes across the planet, an abrupt shift from the preceding 500-million-year era of much gentler fluvial activity. Researchers have long  puzzled over  the cause. A new study by  Buhler  shows, paradoxically, that the collapse of the Martian atmosphere and entry into a  colder  climate may have melted the polar ice cap and triggered global-scale flooding. ...In total, about 4% to 40% of the water ice could have melted, an amount of water equivalent to between 20% and 200% of the  water currently found near the surface on Mars ....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-an-ocean-sized-lake-may-have-formed-on-ancient-mars . 
Read more

Young double-star system discovered near our Galaxy’s giant black hole

By -
By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: Astronomers studying the murky center of our Milky Way Galaxy have discovered something they never expected:  a pair of young stars orbiting each other near the supermassive black hole that is our Galaxy’s dark heart . The observation—reported today in Nature Communications—comes as a surprise because astrophysicists had thought the black hole’s intense gravity would either rip the stars in such a pair apart or squash them together. But the new object, dubbed D9, shows that such a “binary” can survive, at least briefly, near the black hole, and it could help explain other mysterious objects in the vicinity. ...For many years, two teams, in California and Germany, monitored the  closest of those stars . About 20 years ago, both proved the star’s eccentric, high-speed orbit could only arise if it was circling a compact object with extreme mass—a black hole. For that work, the teams’ leaders, Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institu...
Read more

Vast Oceans of Water May Be Hiding Within Uranus and Neptune

By -
By Jonathan O’Callaghan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: We might finally understand what’s going on inside Uranus and Neptune, and the answer is pretty surprising: They may each contain an ocean of water. ...The idea about the two ice giant planets — so-called because of the freezing conditions in which they formed — was put forward by Burkhard Militzer, a planetary scientist from the University of California, Berkeley, and was  published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . It could explain the strange magnetic fields of both worlds, which are unlike any other in the solar system....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/science/uranus-neptune-oceans.html .  See also UC Berkeley News A clue to what lies beneath the bland surfaces of Uranus and Neptune , By Robert Sanders. 
Read more