astronomy
Alien Planet Found Spiraling to its Doom around an Aging Star
An artist’s concept of the Kepler-1658 system. Kepler-1658b, orbiting with a period of just 3.8 days, was the first exoplanet candidate discovered by Kepler.
An artist’s concept of the Kepler-1658 system. Kepler-1658b, orbiting with a period of just 3.8 days, was the first exoplanet candidate discovered by Kepler.
« Alien Planet Found Spiraling to its Doom around an Aging Star
An artist’s concept of the Kepler-1658 system. Kepler-1658b, orbiting with a period of just 3.8 days, was the first exoplanet candidate discovered by Kepler.
Newswise — Cambridge, Mass. – For the first time, astronomers have spotted an exoplanet whose orbit is decaying around an evolved, or older, host star. The stricken world appears destined to spiral closer and closer to its maturing star until collision and ultimate obliteration.
The discovery offers new insights into the long-winded process of planetary orbital decay by providing the first look at a system at this late stage of evolution.
Death-by-star is a fate thought to await many worlds and could be the Earth’s ultimate adios billions of years from now as our Sun grows older.
“We’ve previously detected evidence for exoplanets inspiraling toward their stars, but we have never before seen such a planet around an evolved star,” says Shreyas Vissapragada, a 51 Pegasi b Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and lead author of a new study describing the results. “Theory predicts that evolved stars are very effective at sapping energy from their planets’ orbits, and now we can test those theories with observations.”
The findings were published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The ill-fated exoplanet is designated Kepler-1658b. As its name indicates, astronomers discovered the exoplanet with the Kepler space telescope, a pioneering planet-hunting mission that launched in 2009. Oddly enough, the world was the very first new exoplanet candidate Kepler ever observed. Yet it took nearly a decade to confirm the planet’s existence, at which time the object entered Kepler’s catalogue officially as the 1658th entry.
Kepler-1658b is a so-called hot Jupiter, the nickname given to exoplanets on par with Jupiter’s mass and size but in scorchingly ultra-close orbits about their host stars. For Kepler-1658b, that distance is merely an eighth of the space between our Sun and its tightest orbiting planet, Mercury. For hot Jupiters and other planets like Kepler-1658b that are already very close to their stars, orbital decay looks certain to culminate in destruction.
Measuring the orbital decay of exoplanets has challenged researchers because the process is very slow and gradual. In the case of Kepler-1658b, according to the new study, its orbital period is decreasing at the miniscule rate of about 131 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) per year, with a shorter orbit indicating the planet has moved closer to its star.
Detecting this decline required multiple years of careful observation. The watch started with Kepler and then was picked up by the Palomar Observatory’s Hale Telescope in Southern California and finally the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Telescope, or TESS, which launched in 2018. All three instruments captured transits, the term for when an exoplanet crosses the face of its star and causes a very slight dimming of the star’s brightness. Over the past 13 years, the interval between Kepler-1658b’s transits has slightly but steadily decreased.
The root cause of the orbital decay experienced by Kepler-1658b is tides — the same phenomenon responsible for the daily rise and fall in Earth’s oceans. Tides are generated by gravitational interactions between two orbiting bodies, such as between our world and the Moon or Kepler-1658b and its star. The bodies’ gravities distort each other’s shapes, and as the bodies respond to these changes, energy is released. Depending on the distances between, sizes, and rotation rates of the bodies involved, these tidal interactions can result in bodies pushing each other away — the case for the Earth and the slowly outward-spiraling Moon — or inward, as with Kepler-1658b toward its star.
There is still a lot researchers do not understand about these dynamics, particularly in star-planet scenarios. Accordingly, further study of the Kepler-1658 system should prove instructive.
The star has evolved to the point in its stellar life cycle where it has started to expand, just as our Sun is expected to, and has entered into what astronomers call a subgiant phase. The internal structure of evolved stars should more readily lead to dissipation of tidal energy taken from hosted planets’ orbits compared to unevolved stars like our Sun. This accelerates the orbital decay process, making it easier to study on human timescales.
The results further help in explaining an intrinsic oddity about Kepler-1658b, which appears brighter and hotter than expected. The tidal interactions shrinking the planet’s orbit may also be cranking out extra energy within the planet itself, the team says.
Vissapragada points to a similar situation with Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanic body in the Solar System. The gravitational push-and-pull from Jupiter on Io melts the planet’s innards. This molten rock then erupts out onto the moon’s famously infernal, pizza-like surface of yellow sulfurous deposits and fresh red lava.
Stacking additional observations of Kepler-1658b should shed more light on celestial body interactions. And, with TESS slated to keep scrutinizing thousands of nearby stars, Vissapragada and colleagues expect the telescope to uncover numerous other instances of exoplanets circling down the drains of their host stars.
“Now that we have evidence of inspiraling of a planet around an evolved star, we can really start to refine our models of tidal physics,” Vissapragada says. “The Kepler-1658 system can serve as a celestial laboratory in this way for years to come, and with any luck, there will soon be many more of these labs.”
Vissapragada, who recently joined the Center for Astrophysics a few months ago and is now being mentored by Mercedes López-Morales, looks forward to the science of exoplanets continuing to dramatically advance.
“Shreyas has been a welcome addition to our team working on characterizing the evolution of exoplanets and their atmospheres,” says López-Morales, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics.
“I can’t wait to see what all of us end up discovering together,” adds Vissapragada.
Source: Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
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Space and Tech
NEOWISE, the NASA mission that cataloged objects around Earth for over a decade, has come to an end
Toshi Hirabayashi, Georgia Institute of Technology and Yaeji Kim, University of Maryland
The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects – some of which could strike the Earth – ended its mission and burned on reentering the atmosphere after over a decade.
On a clear night, the sky is full of bright objects – from stars, large planets and galaxies to tiny asteroids flying near Earth. These asteroids are commonly known as near-Earth objects, and they come in a wide variety of sizes. Some are tens of kilometers across or larger, while others are only tens of meters or smaller.
On occasion, near-Earth objects smash into Earth at a high speed – roughly 10 miles per second (16 kilometers per second) or faster. That’s about 15 times as fast as a rifle’s muzzle speed. An impact at that speed can easily damage the planet’s surface and anything on it.
Impacts from large near-Earth objects are generally rare over a typical human lifetime. But they’re more frequent on a geological timescale of millions to billions of years. The best example may be a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid that crashed into Earth, killed the dinosaurs and created Chicxulub crater about 65 million years ago.
Smaller impacts are very common on Earth, as there are more small near-Earth objects. An international community effort called planetary defense protects humans from these space intruders by cataloging and monitoring as many near-Earth objects as possible, including those closely approaching Earth. Researchers call the near-Earth objects that could collide with the surface potentially hazardous objects.
NASA began its NEOWISE mission in December 2013. This mission’s primary focus was to use the space telescope from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to closely detect and characterize near-Earth objects such as asteroids and comets.
NEOWISE contributed to planetary defense efforts with its research to catalog near-Earth objects. Over the past decade, it helped planetary defenders like us and our colleagues study near-Earth objects.
Detecting near-Earth objects
NEOWISE was a game-changing mission, as it revolutionized how to survey near-Earth objects.
The NEOWISE mission continued to use the spacecraft from NASA’s WISE mission, which ran from late 2009 to 2011 and conducted an all-sky infrared survey to detect not only near-Earth objects but also distant objects such as galaxies.
The spacecraft orbited Earth from north to south, passing over the poles, and it was in a Sun-synchronous orbit, where it could see the Sun in the same direction over time. This position allowed it to scan all of the sky efficiently.
The spacecraft could survey astronomical and planetary objects by detecting the signatures they emitted in the mid-infrared range.
Humans’ eyes can sense visible light, which is electromagnetic radiation between 400 and 700 nanometers. When we look at stars in the sky with the naked eye, we see their visible light components.
However, mid-infrared light contains waves between 3 and 30 micrometers and is invisible to human eyes.
When heated, an object stores that heat as thermal energy. Unless the object is thermally insulated, it releases that energy continuously as electromagnetic energy, in the mid-infrared range.
This process, known as thermal emission, happens to near-Earth objects after the Sun heats them up. The smaller an asteroid, the fainter its thermal emission. The NEOWISE spacecraft could sense thermal emissions from near-Earth objects at a high level of sensitivity – meaning it could detect small asteroids.
But asteroids aren’t the only objects that emit heat. The spacecraft’s sensors could pick up heat emissions from other sources too – including the spacecraft itself.
To make sure heat from the spacecraft wasn’t hindering the search, the WISE/NEOWISE spacecraft was designed so that it could actively cool itself using then-state-of-the-art solid hydrogen cryogenic cooling systems.
Operation phases
Since the spacecraft’s equipment needed to be very sensitive to detect faraway objects for WISE, it used solid hydrogen, which is extremely cold, to cool itself down and avoid any noise that could mess with the instruments’ sensitivity. Eventually the coolant ran out, but not until WISE had successfully completed its science goals.
During the cryogenic phase when it was actively cooling itself, the spacecraft operated at a temperature of about -447 degrees Fahrenheit (-266 degrees Celsius), slightly higher than the universe’s temperature, which is about -454 degrees Fahrenheit (-270 degrees Celsius).
The cryogenic phase lasted from 2009 to 2011, until the spacecraft went into hibernation in 2011.
Following the hibernation period, NASA decided to reactivate the WISE spacecraft under the NEOWISE mission, with a more specialized focus on detecting near-Earth objects, which was still feasible even without the cryogenic cooling.
During this reactivation phase, the detectors didn’t need to be quite as sensitive, nor the spacecraft kept as cold as it was during the cryogenic cooling phase, since near-Earth objects are closer than WISE’s faraway targets.
The consequence of losing the active cooling was that two long-wave detectors out of the four on board became so hot that they could no longer function, limiting the craft’s capability.
Nevertheless, NEOWISE used its two operational detectors to continuously monitor both previously and newly detected near-Earth objects in detail.
NEOWISE’s legacy
As of February 2024, NEOWISE had taken more than 1.5 million infrared measurements of about 44,000 different objects in the solar system. These included about 1,600 discoveries of near-Earth objects. NEOWISE also provided detailed size estimates for more than 1,800 near-Earth objects.
Despite the mission’s contributions to science and planetary defense, it was decommissioned in August 2024. The spacecraft eventually started to fall toward Earth’s surface, until it reentered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up on Nov. 1, 2024.
NEOWISE’s contributions to hunting near-Earth objects gave scientists much deeper insights into the asteroids around Earth. It also gave scientists a better idea of what challenges they’ll need to overcome to detect faint objects.
So, did NEOWISE find all the near-Earth objects? The answer is no. Most scientists still believe that there are far more near-Earth objects out there that still need to be identified, particularly smaller ones.
To carry on NEOWISE’s legacy, NASA is planning a mission called NEO Surveyor. NEO Surveyor will be a next-generation space telescope that can study small near-Earth asteroids in more detail, mainly to contribute to NASA’s planetary defense efforts. It will identify hundreds of thousands of near-Earth objects that are as small as about 33 feet (10 meters) across. The spacecraft’s launch is scheduled for 2027.
Toshi Hirabayashi, Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Yaeji Kim, Postdoctoral Associate in Astronomy, University of Maryland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to illuminate the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
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As we gaze up at the night sky, pondering the vastness of the universe, an intriguing event is set to unfold: a football field-sized asteroid is making its way past Earth tomorrow. Named 2006 WB, this celestial traveler is estimated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to be about 310 feet across, although its size could range anywhere from 240 to 525 feet. For perspective, a football field measures approximately 360 feet in width, making this asteroid a formidable presence as it skims by our planet.
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Approaching Asteroid
At a distance of 554,000 miles—roughly twice the distance to the Moon—2006 WB will pass by us at a speed of about 4.2 km/s, or approximately 9,400 mph. This velocity is several times faster than a bullet fired from a rifle, which can travel up to around 2,700 mph. While 554,000 miles may sound distant, it is remarkably close on a solar system scale, especially when compared to our neighboring planet Venus, which can be about 24 million miles away at its closest approach.
In addition to 2006 WB, there are four other asteroids making their own close passes in the coming days. Today, two bus-sized asteroids, 2024 WF2 and 2024 WJ3, will soar past Earth at distances of 1,780,000 miles and 2,780,000 miles, respectively. Following them, the plane-sized 2009 WB105 will come within 3,600,000 miles, and on Tuesday, another bus-sized asteroid, 2024 WD3, will pass at around 1,080,000 miles.
Jay Tate, director of the United Kingdom’s Spaceguard Centre observatory, highlights that asteroids are frequently zipping past Earth, often without much public awareness. 2006 WB falls into the category of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), defined as objects that come within 30 million miles of our planet. NEOs are monitored closely, with over 34,000 identified in our solar system, and the JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) actively tracking at least 2,300 potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).
While the odds of a large asteroid impacting Earth are exceedingly low, the consequences of such an event could be catastrophic. Svetla Ben-Itzhak, an assistant professor of space and international relations at Johns Hopkins University, warns that a cosmic body of 460 feet in diameter could obliterate an entire city and wreak regional havoc. In contrast, larger objects exceeding 1 kilometer in diameter could have far-reaching global implications, potentially leading to mass extinction.
Fortunately, the asteroids currently making their approach, including 2006 WB, do not fall within the category of potentially hazardous objects due to their size and the distances they will maintain from our planet. As we continue to advance our understanding of these celestial bodies, the importance of tracking and monitoring NEOs remains paramount for the safety of humanity.
As we prepare for the close encounter with 2006 WB, let us appreciate the wonders of our universe and the ongoing efforts of scientists and astronomers dedicated to keeping watch over our cosmic neighborhood. Stay tuned for more updates as we witness the majestic dance of these asteroids in the sky above.
Related link:
https://www.newsweek.com/asteroid-near-earth-object-approaching-football-field-space-nasa-1990996
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
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In a remarkable demonstration of both the unpredictability of space and the extraordinary capabilities of modern astronomical detection, a small asteroid, designated 2024 UQ, recently made headlines after it struck Earth just hours after being identified. This event, which took place on October 22, 2024, marks the third “imminent impactor” recorded this year, highlighting the continual and often daunting reality of near-Earth objects (NEOs).
Discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii, a network of four telescopes dedicated to scanning the night sky for potential collision threats, 2024 UQ was small—measuring only about 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter. While news of an asteroid making contact with Earth can evoke concern, there was no cause for alarm in this instance. The diminutive size of the asteroid meant that it posed very little threat to anything on the ground. In fact, it burned up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean near California, leaving no trace or damage.
However, the swift timeline of events raises critical questions about the effectiveness of our current monitoring systems. The impact occurred just two hours after the initial detection, which meant that by the time data was transmitted to the impact monitoring systems operated by the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, the impact had already taken place. According to their November 2024 newsletter, the ATLAS survey had successfully obtained images identifying the asteroid on a collision trajectory, but due to its position near the edge of two adjacent observational fields, it was not recognized as a significant threat until it was too late.
This incident serves as a reminder of the complexities involved in tracking and predicting the paths of NEOs. While advancements in technology have undoubtedly improved our ability to detect these celestial objects, the circumstances surrounding 2024 UQ showcase the potential for oversights in our monitoring capabilities. Despite this event being minor in scale, it emphasizes the importance of continued investment in space surveillance systems, as well as international collaboration in tracking potential hazards lurking in the vast expanse of space.
As we look forward, this close encounter reaffirms the need for vigilance in our exploration and observation of the cosmos. Each NEO presents an opportunity for learning and growth in our understanding of near-Earth dynamics. While 2024 UQ may have come and gone without incident, it certainly sparks curiosity about what lies ahead in our ongoing quest to safeguard our planet from the skies.
Reference Links:
Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS): https://fallingstar.com/
The Danger from Asteroid Impact: https://fallingstar.com/danger.php
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.
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