Youngest Planet Confirmed; Photos Show It Grew Up Fast
39 replies, posted
[release][img]http://s.ngeo.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/214/cache/exoplanet-motion-tracked_21470_600x450.jpg[/img]
[i]Artist's conception[/i]
They're not the most aww-inspiring baby pictures, but new telescope images prove the youngest known planet outside our solar system does in fact exist—and that planets can grow up fast—a new study says.
Probably only a few million years young, Beta Pictoris b is already fully formed, despite standard models that say such a planet should take ten million years to reach "adulthood," researchers say. The planet breaks the record once held by the planet BD 20 1790b, which clocked in at 35 million years old.
The new planet is also nearer to its parent star than any other known planet outside our solar system—about as close as Saturn is to our sun.
Located about 63.4 light-years from Earth, that star, named simply Beta Pictoris, is similar to our own star. And like Beta Pictoris b, Beta Pictoris is relatively young—about 12 million years old, compared with the sun's 4.5 billion years.
[tab]The planet Beta Pictoris b (white) is shown orbiting its host star in 2003 and 2009.[/tab][img]http://s.ngeo.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/214/cache/exoplanet-motion-imaged-detail_21471_200x150.jpg[/img]
Previous pictures—including Hubble Space Telescope images released in 2006—had revealed that an orbiting disk of dusty debris, likely created by the collisions of young asteroids and planets, surrounds Beta Pictoris.
A gap in the disk, which resulted in a ring around the star, had suggested that a Jupiter-like "gas giant" planet was sweeping through. But the existence of the planet wasn't confirmed until the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope captured the new pictures in 2009.
Crucially, The 2009 images show the young planet at a different point in its orbit than in a cryptic 2003 picture of the same star system (see above right). As such, the images seem to prove that the 2003 picture did in fact capture a planet and not, say, a background star.
The infrared pictures make clear that Beta Pictoris b, which is about nine times more massive than Jupiter, is not only a real exoplanet—a planet outside our solar system—but a fully formed one (see an interactive graphic showing the known exoplanets and how they're found).
"It's the first time we have direct proof of the time scale to form a planet—the first proof to say a planet can form rapidly," said study leader Anne-Marie Lagrange of the Astrophysics Laboratory of Grenoble in France.
She's not convinced, though, that all rings around stars are proof of planets. By gravitationally yanking out masses of debris from a disk, a flyby from a nearby star could also create rings, she said.
Separating planet-neighboring rings from the other types of rings should get easier after 2012, when the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescopes—more sensitive than current arrays—are scheduled to go online in Chile.
When it comes to planet hunting, Lagrange added, the pace of technology has been impressive.
"We are just now starting to be able to make direct images of exoplanets," she said. "We get very different information now, and in a few years' time we may even be able to look inside the atmospheres of these planets."[/release]
[b]SOURCE:[/b] [url]http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100610-youngest-planet-exoplanet-space-science/[/url]
I'll be ecstatic when they find more earth-like planets orbiting other stars. So far it's just been gas giants afaik
Even though it's such a tiny picture, that is still fucking awesome.
Space = best.
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;22515977]I'll be ecstatic when they find more earth-like planets orbiting other stars. So far it's just been gas giants afaik[/QUOTE]
I :wtc:'d at your avatar.
aww, they grow up so fast.
Oh man I fucking love space threads.
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;22515977]I'll be ecstatic when they find more earth-like planets orbiting other stars. So far it's just been gas giants afaik[/QUOTE]
[url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060607-planets.html]Beta Pictoris (the star) may be spawning terrestrial planets, and a large amount of carbon currently surrounds Beta Pictoris, so yeah.[/url]
Close to Saturn's orbit, and the closest orbit of all known exoplanets?
I knew it was bullshit when some science book told me there were gas giants out there with orbits tighter than Mercury :saddowns:
[QUOTE=Triumph Forks;22516319]Close to Saturn's orbit, and the closest orbit of all known exoplanets?
I knew it was bullshit when some science book told me there were gas giants out there with orbits tighter than Mercury :saddowns:[/QUOTE]
No, there are exoplanets with orbits tighter than mercury's.
[url]http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/20/star-om-nom-nom-planet-aieee/[/url]
I can't wait until they're able to look into the atmospheres of these planets. Now we need to get our shit going so we can spread humanity to other systems.
[QUOTE=Pr0vologne;22516705]I can't wait until they're able to look into the atmospheres of these planets. Now we need to get our shit going so we can spread humanity to other systems.[/QUOTE]
I don't think we'd be able to move onto other star systems for centuries to come, though it's fully possible that we may inhabit everything in the solar system one day. We don't know any way to go faster than light, and the closest stars are 4 lightyears away, and we don't even know if there's planets there.
[QUOTE=Pr0vologne;22516705]I can't wait until they're able to look into the atmospheres of these planets. Now we need to get our shit going so we can spread humanity to other systems.[/QUOTE]
We are centuries away from that.
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;22516672]No, there are exoplanets with orbits tighter than mercury's.
[url]http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/20/star-om-nom-nom-planet-aieee/[/url][/QUOTE]
Well damn, looks like I'm the fool here
[QUOTE=Dylan Clayton;22516852]We are centuries away from that.[/QUOTE]
the same could've been said of getting to the moon in 1969
look into antimatter propulsion, it's somewhat promising if we ever make a large amount of accelerators
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;22515977]I'll be ecstatic when they find more earth-like planets orbiting other stars. So far it's just been gas giants afaik[/QUOTE]
They're hard to see. We can't even see gas giants, we find most distant planets by calculating the trajectory changes of the star.
Aww...
What a cute little baby planet. :3:
[QUOTE=ASmellyOgre;22521105]Aww...
What a cute little baby planet. :3:[/QUOTE]
You say that now, but when its a post-pubescent planet...
I want to see astronomers doing baby talk noises!
Super-young planet orbiting a super-young star.
:raise:
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;22524011]Super-young planet orbiting a super-young star.
:raise:[/QUOTE]
Astro-jailbait?
Cool, young baby planet. Still unable to explain how the hell Uranus and Neptune were able to form. Well...it could shed some light. Doubt it.
[QUOTE=Pr0vologne;22516705]I can't wait until they're able to look into the atmospheres of these planets. Now we need to get our shit going so we can spread humanity to other systems.[/QUOTE]
Actually, they can. What they do is shoot the light given off from the planet through a prism, to create a rainbow. The rainbow actually will have some colors missing, to represent what chemicals/gasses are in the atmosphere of the planet. It's pretty cool.
The closest astronomers have come to finding a candidate for another terrestrial planet is Gliese 581 d, which is about twice the mass of Earth. It's sitting roughly within its star's Goldilocks zone, so who knows?
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;22515977][IMG]http://www.facepunch.com/image.php?u=21604&dateline=1276199032&type=thumb[/IMG] [/QUOTE]
holy shit your avatar is awesome :unsmith:
my, how they grow up so fast :unsmith:
:unsmith:
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