Kepler-16b – The Existence of Tatooine

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jordanekstein

Kepler-16b was discovered when looking for exoplanets using the transit method from the Kepler mission of 2011. While looking at this data two stars were discovered to be in orbiting each other due to the dip in brightness of the system when they eclipsed. What was strange was even when they were not eclipsing each other the brightness of the system still dipped at irregular intervals, which indicated that they were at different points in their orbital periods when this happened and strongly suggested the existence of a third body. This ultimately led to the discovery that this exoplanet, Kepler-16b, was orbiting both stars and was the first discovery of a circumbinary orbit. Similar to the depiction to the planet Tatooine, home of Skywalker in Star Wars, but thought to be cold and gaseous without the ability to be inhabited. Additionally, it is thought to be about the size of Saturn and made up of half rock and half gas. Astronomers believe this discovery opens the door for a whole new opportunity to find life with a new type of system to look for.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-16b.html
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Jupiter’s Magnetosphere

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Sheila Chau

Jupiter’s magnetosphere is by far the strongest. This is because of how thick its layer of metallic hydrogen is and its high-speed rotation rate. Its strength is 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. It’s so large that it begins to avert the solar wind almost 3 million kilometers before it even reaches Jupiter. Jupiter’s magnetosphere in the sky would be larger than our full moon. Jupiter’s magnetosphere catches many more charged particles than Earth’s because it has another source of particles: Io, its volcanically active moon. This helps to create auroras on Jupiter, but these particles also generate intense radiation around Jupiter. These belts of radiation can be damaging to spacecraft.

Jupiter’s Magnetic Field
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Jovian Layers

Posted on April 17, 2022 by solarelizabeth
Jupiter’s Layers!

The formation of our solar system helps explain the composition of the Jovian planets. Past the frost line, hydrogen compounds condensed into ices. The four jovian planets started as icy planetismals, but Jupiter and Saturn captured much more hydrogen and helium gas than Uranus and Neptune during solar system formation. This is probably because Jupiter and Saturn are closer to the sun, so the gases were less spread out at this distance and easier to capture. The planets capturing more of this gas became more compressed. Jupiter is very compressed, with extremely high internal pressure. 

Jupiter’s interior layers are gaseous hydrogen, liquid hydrogen, metallic hydrogen, and then the core. The layers are named after the phase of hydrogen, which varies with temperature and pressure, but it is important to note that the layers also have helium in them. Saturn’s layers are similar to Jupiter’s except Saturn has a much thinner layer of metallic hydrogen because of its lower internal pressure. Saturn is less compressed because of its lower mass and gravity. Uranus and Neptune just have layers of gaseous hydrogen around their cores because their internal pressure is not high enough for liquid or metallic hydrogen to exist. However, the four jovian planets have cores of similar masses and compositions but different sizes because Jupiter and Saturn are more compressed. 

It’s interesting how distance from the sun during solar system formation can have such an impact on the type and amount of material planetismals accrete. Jupiter and Neptune may be quite different, but they are pretty similar compared to terrestrial worlds like Earth. 

***I have hyperlinks but for some reason they don’t show up unless you move the mouse over them.

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Black Holes: A great mystery of the universe

Posted on April 17, 2022 by alexlitt

Black holes are one of the greatest mysteries of our universe. However, using just a few concepts that we have learned in class, we can understand the basic constructs of black holes. A black hole is the result of a single point in space containing extreme mass (this point is called a singularity). Similar to how we observe planets and stars exert gravitational force on nearby objects, a black hole singularity exerts a very strong gravitational force. Additionally, we know that celestial bodies all have unique escape velocities that depend on the bodies force of gravity (which is proportional to M/(R^2)). Escape velocity is the speed which an object must reach in order to escape from a gravitationally bound orbit. Because a black hole singularity is a point of immense mass, it has an extremely high escape velocity at nearby locations in space. What we call a “black hole” is really the spherical area of space in which the escape velocity from the black hole singularity is greater than the speed of light. This means that inside the black hole, no light (or any other particle) can escape. Because no light can escape this sphere of space, the region of space looks completely black to any outside observer. This is why it is called a “black hole.”

Black Hole Visualization

Despite the relatively simple physics that describe the construct of a black hole, there are many aspects of black holes that are still mysteries to even the greatest physicists/astronomers.

  1. We know that “smaller” black holes are formed from the collapse of massive stars (at least 20 times as massive as the Sun). However, it is still unclear what forms the supermassive black holes that exist at the center of every large galaxy in our universe. These supermassive black holes are essential to our universe; yet their origins are quite a mystery.
  2. The physics behind black hole singularities and the points in space very close to black hole singularities are not clear. These singularities seem to be points at which space-time just collapses, but what physical properties govern that collapse, and what this means for the nature of our universe is not known.
  3. If supermassive black holes are at the center of large galaxies and galaxies often orbit in galaxy groups or clusters, might there be “super-super massive black holes” at the center of some large galaxy clusters?
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Blog 6: Planet Nine

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Charles Littleton
Planet Nine Concept from Earth Sky

Planet Nine is a hypothetical planet on the edge of the solar system. Its gravity would explain the weird orbit of objects beyond Neptune. It is predicted to be 5 times the size of Earth. It is assumed to be about 400- AU

The Scientists who created this hypothesis believe that the star formed much closer and was ejected by Saturn or Jupiter. It likely would have become a Gas Giant but it was flung away from the rest of the solar system.

The planet would be hard to find because there is very little light.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine#Origin

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blog post 06

Posted on April 17, 2022 by graceward02
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Black Hole Image Makes History

In 2019, researchers captured the first image of a black hole. They were able to do this by having all the major radio telescopes on Earth act together to simulate a radio telescope that was the size of Earth. Before this, we could only see indirect evidence of the existence of black holes. This particular black hole, at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, has the mass of 6.5 billion suns. This huge mass is due to the black hole’s gravity that pulls in all surrounding objects. This extremely strong gravity occurs because of how dense the black hole is, with matter being condensed into a relatively small area. Black holes usually form as a consequence of star death and are thought to be at the center of most large galaxies. Because of this, black holes help scientists study galaxies.

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Hot Jupiters: Migration and Orbital Changes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jordanekstein

Hot Jupiters are gas giants that have orbital periods that are very close to their stars; often less than 10 days. Usually this means they are less than 0.1AU away from their stars which is one tenth the distance between earth and the sun. While scientists originally did not think giant planets could exist this close to a star since finding exoplanets Hot Jupiters have been found in large numbers. This is, in part, due to the fact that they are the easiest type of exoplanet to find with radial velocity (doppler) and the transit method. Scientists are still puzzled by the fact that Hot Jupiters exist as they are to massive to form at the origin of the system as the building blocks needed for it would not be enough at this distance. Some believe this is due to the fact the orbits of Hot Jupiters are excited to a very high eccentricity which causes them to approach the stars so closely that the orbital energy becomes tidally dissipated which shrinks and circulates their orbital pattern over time. Either way, it does seem as though our solar system exists as the anomalies without these Hot Jupiters.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/investigating-the-mystery-of-migrating-hot-jupiters
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blog post 05

Posted on April 17, 2022 by graceward02
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A Place for Pluto by Stef Wade

In 2006, Pluto was taken off the list of planets, leaving our Solar System with just 8 planets. This demotion occurred 76 years after Pluto was initially added to the list of planets. This decision by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined what objects could be classified as a planet. An object needs to be round, orbiting the Sun, and not have neighboring planetary objects/debris that follow its orbit.

After Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, there was public uproar. To this day, there is still debate about whether Pluto is a planet. Many unofficial polls indicate that the public largely thinks about Pluto as the ninth planet in our Solar System. Some scientists agree, citing that there was already a working definition of a planet: any geologically active bodies in space. They believe that the new definition defined by the IAU opposes the working definition scientists have been using for centuries. According to planetary physicist Philip Metzger, this would mean our Solar System would likely hold over 150 planets.

What do you think? Should Pluto be a planet again?

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Are Wormholes Possible?

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jschorr21
wormhole(Science News)

What is a wormhole? A wormhole is a theoretical bridge joining two points in space-time that would create shortcuts for extremely long journeys throughout the universe. Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen back in 1935 came up with the idea and concluded that due to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, wormholes could exist. He concluded that the same way large objects make dimples in the fabric of spacetime, a large enough “dimple” could break through and create a wormhole. So the laws of physics support the fact that wormholes COULD exist, but it doesn’t mean they actually do. One theory for why we haven’t seen them is that they hide behind black holes. This theory claims that a wormhole would have a black hole at each end. There are definitely problems with the wormhole theory as we really don’t know enough about it. This could definitely change at some point as we are constantly gaining new information about the universe. For example, no one thought black holes were possible until ~70 years ago.

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Fun Facts about Pluto

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jschorr21
Pluto
  • Pluto was discovered by the Lowell Observatory in 1930
  • From then until 2006, it was considered a planet, now it is considered a ‘dwarf planet’
  • During these 76 years, it only completed 1/3 of its orbit
  • Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl
  • Pluto is the name of the Roman god governing the underworld
  • Pluto is only slightly larger than Eris, the second-largest dwarf planet
  • Although most think of Pluto as further than Neptune, it is sometimes closer to the Sun due to its high orbital eccentricity/inclination
  • Pluto only has an atmosphere some of the time: when it is closer to the sun and the surface ice can evaporate
  • Pluto contains more water than earth. This is due to the water ice that covers the planet
  • There is a huge liquid water ocean under Pluto’s surface
  • Pluto is ‘volcanically active in its own way. They call it “cryovolcanism”.
  • Glaciers carve valleys into Pluto’s surface consistantly
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