Astronomy and Planetary Science Thread

Here's a video about the smallest gas-dwarf found:


How small can gas engulfed planets get? Well, a large part of that depends on what counts as a gas dwarf. However despite the problem with the definition, this video covers examples of planets that definitely do lean into the territory of being gas dwarfs, such as the Kepler-138 system and HD 110067 system. Still both of those systems among all other mini neptunes found, has planets that likely mostly have water vapor gas instead of hydrogen and helium, so the final exoplanet talked about LHS 1140 b is used as an example of not a planet that is a gas dwarf, but one that potentially has plenty of hydrogen and helium exactly due to the size, mass and likely temperatures present there, and yet no other example of a mini neptune in that temperature range is found so far.
 
Perfect for PROFAC :)

News from space
 
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Anton Petrov has a video out about more new discoveries concerning that amazing, tough little critter, the Tardigrade:


0:00 Tardigrade updates!
2:08 Incredible video of a tardigrade rodeo
3:20 Gene that protects them from radiation and desiccation
4:30 What if we put these into human cells?
6:10 3 mechanisms that protect tardigrades from radiation
8:25 Microplastic resistance and a cool experiment
11:00 Conclusions
 
Here's a video about a recently discovered trans-Plutonian object called (Rather amusingly*) "Gongong":


What if I told you there’s a mysterious planet in our Solar System, way beyond Neptune, that’s smaller than our Moon but has a moon of its own? Imagine a world so far away it takes 554 Earth years to complete just one orbit around the Sun. That’s Gonggong, a dwarf planet that breaks all the rules. If you thought Pluto was icy, wait until you see Gonggong—one of the coldest places in the Solar System, which, to scientists' amazement, is actually red! Most people are still in the dark about the true wonders of this fascinating planet. So, join us as we uncover the mysteries of the intriguing Gonggong dwarf planet.
Dwarf planets are among the most intriguing objects in our solar system, and they are even more interesting because they make us question our understanding of what makes a planet. Unlike the familiar planets like Earth or Mars, dwarf planets occupy the outer reaches of our Solar System, often residing in regions filled with icy bodies and debris. Pluto is often the first dwarf planet that comes to mind, but our Solar System is home to other fascinating worlds. Think of Pluto as the more famous cousin who made headlines, but there are several less-known, and some unofficial dwarf planets that are quiet, mysterious relative who lives in the outskirts of the Solar System. One such fascinating world is Gonggong. Unlike Pluto, which takes about 248 years to orbit the Sun, Gonggong's orbit stretches over 554 Earth years. Although it's smaller than Earth's Moon, Gonggong has its own moon, Xiangliu, and an icy surface that makes it one of the coldest places in the solar system. But the story of Gonggong gets more intriguing and mysterious when we consider its unique surface composition, appearance, and strange location in the Kuiper Belt. Keep watching as we explore this fascinating world and why it's not usually mentioned alongside the five IAU-recognized dwarf planets.
Credits: Ron Miller, Mark A. Garlick / MarkGarlick.com ,Elon Musk/SpaceX/ Flickr--
00:00 Intro
0:56 Gongong
2:25 important context
7:40 What Is Xiangliu? And What Role Does it Play?
9:32 Quaoar’s moon, Weywot
10:50 What’s Next For The Exploration Of Gonggong And Other Kuiper Belt Objects?
--
#insanecuriosity #gonggong #dwarfplanet
* Why not just call the planet, "JarJar"?
 
Scientists uncover a magnetic misunderstanding about Uranus


Related paper:

 
A distant planet seems to have a sulphur-rich atmosphere, hinting at alien volcanoes

Our team has now provided tentative evidence for a sulphur-rich atmosphere on a world that’s 1.5 times the size of Earth and located 35 light years away. If confirmed, it would be the smallest known exoplanet with an atmosphere. The potential presence of the gases sulphur dioxide (SO₂) and hydrogen sulphide (H₂S) in this atmosphere hint at a molten or volcanic surface.


Related paper:

 
Anton Petrov has a video out about Vega's solar-system and apparently it's very strange:


0:00 One of the brightest stars, Vega
0:45 Contact and discoveries on Vega
1:25 How this compares to the Sun
2:00 Initial discoveries on Vega and Fomalhaut
3:20 Previous assumptions
4:35 Fomalhaut discoveries
5:50 New observations from JWST
7:48 New mystery of missing planets
8:45 Additional differences with the solar system
10:00 Additional discoveries and conclusions
 
Here's a video about Haumea, one of the weirder KBOs:


It should be common knowledge by now that the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies that extends well beyond the orbit of Neptune, is home to some of the strangest objects in our solar system. Within this region are trillions of comets, asteroids, and large planetoids such as Pluto, Eris, and Makemake—a veritable planetary zoo, in short. But one of its strangest oddities of all is probably that represented by what was once known as 2003 EL61, an object capable of summing up in itself some truly unique features.
This distant outpost of the solar system travels in orbit with an average distance from the Sun of about 43 AU, or 6.45 billion km, going from a perihelion of 34.6 AU to an aphelion of 51.6 AU, and taking a whopping 183 years to complete an entire revolution. A decidedly eccentric orbit, but one that nonetheless places EL61 in the category of so-called classical KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects), which differ from scattered objects—a category to which the more famous Eris belongs, i.e., those KBOs with highly elliptical and highly inclined orbits, probably thrown into their present orbits through gravitational interactions with giant planets.
 
Was ‘Snowball Earth’ a global event? New study delivers the best proof yet

Geologists have uncovered strong evidence from Colorado that massive glaciers covered Earth down to the equator hundreds of millions of years ago, transforming the planet into an icicle floating in space.

The study, led by CU Boulder, is a coup for proponents of a long-standing theory known as Snowball Earth. It posits that from about 720 to 635 million years ago, and for reasons that are still unclear, a runaway chain of events radically altered the planet’s climate. Temperatures plummeted, and ice sheets that may have been several miles thick crept over every inch of Earth’s surface.

“This study presents the first physical evidence that Snowball Earth reached the heart of continents at the equator,” said Liam Courtney-Davies, lead author of the new study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geological Sciences at CU Boulder.


Related paper:

 
Gravity without mass ?
if Richard Lieu theory is correct, it would be groundbreaking in physics !
No dark Matter, but negative and positive matter

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suq_XW7kLbo

Source
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:48 Gravity and Dark Matter – Traditional View vs. Lieu’s Theory
03:17 Mechanisms of Gravitational Effects
06:01 Broader Implications, Relevant Theories, and Related Discoveries
07:49 Outro
08:06 Enjoy
 
An interesting find Michel Van and quite mind blowing as well, I was always a staunch supporter of Dark Matter but this whole new theory finds me at odds with the extablished thinking.
 
NSF NOIRLab Astronomers Discover the Fastest-Feeding Black Hole in the Early Universe

Observations from JWST and Chandra reveal a low-mass supermassive black hole that appears to be consuming matter at over 40 times the theoretical limit


Related paper:

 
Video about a new paper suggesting Trappist-1E may have an atmosphere after all:

View: https://youtu.be/EegNfVwEBoY?si=TN9oAAnrIZgAodKk

She states that’s she’s heard on the grapevine that the star decided to flare when they were taking observations of 1E, so the data will either take a very long time to interpret or is unusable and the relevant teams will have to reapply for JWST observing time.
 
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Issue with Trappist-1 system is it age of 7 billions years
If its planets have same Geological development like Earth
They are long death in term of Geological activity like vulcanism.
i guess that other planets in system have thin co2 atmosphere like Mars...
 
Astrum has a new video out about the 100,000 year trip a photon takes from the core of the Sun to the surface of its' photosphere:


We peel back the layers of the Sun and discover where light comes from.
 
Daisy, daisy...

Drake equation update?

Benford's Shipstar
 
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JWST has detected emissions from a "Strange space volcano", from Anton Petrov:


0:00 29p, a giant space volcano
2:00 Why it's mysterious and what it's done recently
2:55 Facts about 29p
4:15 Mysteries and unexplained questions
5:08 Recent eruptions that surprised everyone and recent observations
6:00 What these observations mean and how it's explained
7:50 Why it's important
8:40 Conclusions
 
Here's a video about Kepler-70b which survived being engulfed by Kepler-70 when it went through its' red-giant phase:


Embark on an extraordinary journey through time and space, venturing from Earth to one of the most extreme worlds in the galaxy: Kepler-70b. Together, we’ll travel faster than the speed of light, leaving our solar system behind to explore the vast reaches of interstellar space. Our destination? A scorched remnant of a once-mighty gas giant, transformed into a charred, unrecognizable husk after being consumed by its own star. What secrets and wonders await us on this mysterious exoplanet? Let’s uncover them together!

This gives new meaning to the term "Cthonian planet", I have no doubt that the new planet (It was originally a gas-giant) will have a LOT of metals in it.
 
First a space tunnel—now a hell planet…


 
The Mystery of Star that disappear
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIP1HqFcZOk

0:00 Mystery of vanishing stars
1:50 Aliens?
2:45 What else could it be?
3:30 First intriguing evidence
6:10 Typical supernova scenarios
6:50 Why this is unusual
8:40 Main explanation
9:50 Conclusions

This explain why large mass stars just disappear with out trace...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg3G7DnoYzo

0:00 Mystery of missing stars
1:00 Dyson spheres?
1:40 Potential explanation: black holes
2:10 Previous observations of failed supernovae but JWST disagrees
3:25 New Andromeda observations
4:50 What this suggests and potential explanation
7:10 Additional discoveries and what's next
8:00 Conclusions
Source:
 
Anton Petrov has a video about a newly discovered relativistic effect on fluids:


Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about a discovery of a new relativistic effect that affects fluids at speed of light
Links:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.18434
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...ttps://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.18434&v=VKmUNli0Kwg
0:00 Theory of relativity
1:20 Well known effects near the speed of light - Lorentz factor
2:20 Time dilation
4:00 Chemistry and relativity - why gold is gold
5:45 New discovery with regard to viscosity and fluids
7:10 Fluid thickening and why it matters
9:30 Conclusions
 
He describes how findings on viscosity could play a role in fusion plasmas.

Tornado researchers have studied something called vortex breakdown.

A Minnesota tornado in 1986 was filmed as a breakdown bubble was about to come into contact with the surface. This is often the point where some tornadoes become multiple vortex.

But in 1986, the bubble was not quite down--and the result was a single, violent suction vortex that was very narrow--no magnetic fields needed.

I have often wondered if vortex breakdown might also play a role in fusion plasma containment or propulsion.

Space news this week
 
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Scientists could be wrong about dark energy. But they’re right about gravity, a new study suggests.

Dark energy, the mysterious phenomenon that causes the expansion of the cosmos to accelerate, is widely thought to have had a constant density throughout the history of the universe. But dark energy may instead be waning, researchers from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, collaboration report November 19 in a batch of papers posted to the project’s website and arXiv.org.

 
If Dark energy is waning then the rate of the Universe's expansion will be slowing down so maybe the Big Whimper can be avoided.
 
That is exactly what I was thinking NMaude. I have had a theory that Dark Energy is just a second period of Cosmic Inflation that will eventually stop and then Gravity will take over and collapse the Universe into the Big Crunch, But that is over a course of Billions of years so no reason to worry yet.
 
Newly Discovered Transiting Exoplanet Is The Youngest Ever Found At Under 3 Million Years Old

In this context, the discovery of IRAS 04125+2902 b is a big step forward. IRAS 04125+2902 is a modestly-sized star, with a mass about 70 percent of the Sun’s but more significantly it is just 3.3 million years old, having formed out of the Taurus Molecular Cloud.



The planet has a radius 4 percent smaller than Jupiter’s, making it 10.7 times as wide as the Earth, leaving aside questions like whether it shares Jupiter’s polar flattening. Despite being almost as big as Jupiter, its density is much lower, and it has at most 30 percent of our local giant planet’s mass. Over time it is likely to contract and end up smaller than Saturn, and maybe even Neptune.

With a period of just 8.83 days, IRAS 04125+2902 b will already be receiving plenty of heat, despite orbiting a low-mass star, and that will increase as the star moves through its life. Then again, it is likely to be already very hot from the gravitational collapse that has been the main way we have spotted very young planets previously.


Related paper:

 
Astronomers take first close-up picture of a star outside our galaxy

Located a staggering 160,000 light-years from us, the star WOH G64 was imaged thanks to the impressive sharpness offered by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO's VLTI). The new observations reveal a star puffing out gas and dust in the last stages before it becomes a supernova.



The newly imaged star, WOH G64, lies within the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the small galaxies that orbits the Milky Way. Astronomers have known about this star for decades and have appropriately dubbed it the "behemoth star." With a size roughly 2,000 times that of our sun, WOH G64 is classified as a red supergiant.


Related paper:


Related video:

View: https://youtu.be/XYdXe6oexNk?si=nH1gPkvXOrI9YYd6
 
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Newly Discovered Transiting Exoplanet Is The Youngest Ever Found At Under 3 Million Years Old








Related paper:


At 30% of Jupiter's mass makes it 96 Earth-masses in size (Saturn is 95 Earth-masses) so when it's finished contracting it's going to be a Saturn sized gas-giant.

Edit: I just stumbled across this six year old video by Anton Petrov back when his YT channel was called "What da Math" about Kepler-138 the smallest known gas-dwarf:

 
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2 MILLION mph galaxy smash-up seen in unprecedented detail

A massive collision of galaxies sparked by one travelling at a scarcely-believable 2 million mph (3.2 million km/h) has been seen in unprecedented detail by one of Earth's most powerful telescopes.

The dramatic impact was observed in Stephan's Quintet, a nearby galaxy group made up of five galaxies first sighted almost 150 years ago.

It sparked an immensely powerful shock akin to a "sonic boom from a jet fighter" – the likes of which are among the most striking phenomena in the Universe.

Stephan's Quintet represents "a galactic crossroad where past collisions between galaxies have left behind a complex field of debris", which has now been reawakened by the passage of the galaxy, NGC 7318b.


Related paper:

 
Anton Petrov has a video out about hypothetical srtellavores:


0:00 Stellar engine of a new type
0:35 Stellivore hypothesis?
1:10 Spider pulsars, black widows and redback spiders
4:05 Stellivore hypothesis explained and technosignatures
5:45 Explaining the process in detail
6:50 Where are they going though?
7:20 Could these be really engines?
8:10 How this could be proven
9:00 Why so many in Omega Centauri though?
9:50 Conclusions
 
Some unexplained observations from the largest known star, from Anton Petrov:


0:00 Largest star we've discovered so far - WOH G64
0:35 What is the largest star though?
2:00 WOH G64 - what is it?
3:18 Why it's strange
6:20 Possible explanation - a partner?
7:00 Most accurate observations so far and what's discovered
9:00 Explanations and conclusions
 
A video about the largest gas-giants found:


At the moment, we can't really say precisely what planet is the largest out of the ones currently found. However, there are still candidates for that place and in this video I examine some which have good potential to be the largest such as the newly formed PDS 70 b. I also go over planets for which there is plenty of uncertainty with regards to their huge size but also their existence such as HD 100546 b. This video uses the NASA exoplanet archive to arrive at a list of largest planets found however there are also some problems pointed out with that same list. Density estimates of HAT-P-67 b and Kepler-51 planets are also examined and the potential problem with such density estimates and with that problem with regards to size estimates of exoplanets. The question as to what the limits are in terms of size for gas giants is also examined.
 

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