PV Gap

Floyd Said:

Can someone tell me about the new Solar System that has been spotted by scientists recently.?

We Answered:

A team of European astronomers said on Wednesday that they had found one of the closest analogues yet to our solar system: three planets and an asteroid belt circling a pale Sun-like star about 42 light-years away in the constellation Puppis.

The two innermost of the new Puppis planets, each about 10 times the mass of Earth, are probably rocky like our own home, but they circle too tightly about their star to be habitable.

The third planet, about 18 times the mass of Earth, circles at a distance of about 60 million miles, within the star's so-called habitable zone, where the temperatures would allow the existence of liquid water, the authors said.

The planet is still too big to be considered Earth-like, and is probably shrouded in hydrogen like Neptune or Uranus, and so is an unlikely environment for life.

"Nevertheless," Christophe Lovis, of the University of Geneva and lead author of the group, wrote in an e-mail message, "this discovery opens the way to the detection of even smaller planets in the near future".

The discovery, to be published in the Nature, continues a pattern of planet hunters leapfrogging one another to make discoveries that are increasingly alluring and suggestive of a life-friendly cosmos. Like most others, they've been discovered orbiting other stars.

Javier Said:

What does in mean that 32 new planets found outside our solar system?

We Answered:

You might like to think this, but these planets are HUGE. There is NO way they would be able to find planets as small as ours from these distances. Astronomers only can find these HUGE planets because they shake their parent-stars enough as they rotate around them for them here on earth to notice the movement of the planet's sun. *shug* They don't have life on them because they are SO close to their suns too. This proximity also is what allows them to shake their suns so violently to allow the astronomers to see their suns moving.

Until these "discoveries" we only could "guess" that there were other worlds out there. Now, that they have this evidence, they still are "guessing," however.

Why are there no terrestrial planets in OUR solar system that are the same size as these newly discovered giants? Sure, we have BIG planets, but ALL of them are gas giants. *shrug*

Salvador Said:

what are the names of the new planets discovered in our solar system?

We Answered:

There haven't been any planets discovered within our solar system...

Peace,
B

Herman Said:

Describe the steps involved in producing a new solar system w/ planets orbiting a central star?

We Answered:

It all started with a cloud of gas.

Stars form inside dense concentrations of interstellar gas and dust known as molecular clouds. These regions are extremely cold, just above absolute zero. The deep cold also causes the gas to clump. Star formation is often triggered by an external shock wave, for instance an exploding supernova. When the density reaches a certain point, the cloud collapses under their own weight.

Such clouds typically have masses around 10^4 solar masses. As the core is denser than the outer cloud, it collapses first. Quickly they fragment into clumps around half a lightyear in size and 10 to 50 solar masses in mass. These clumps then form into hundreds of protostars.

The whole process takes about 10 millions years.

High-mass stars build up in the central parts of clouds. They begin to form in the early phases of cluster formation and continue to grow at a high rate until the available gas is exhausted. Lower mass stars tend to form at later phases, when a high mass stars expel the dust around them, creating new shock waves and density pockets.

Once the density and temperature in the core of a protostar has become high enough, nuclear fusion can start. The gas cloud becomes a stable star. This is the present state of our Sun.

Around the Sun a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust is left, containing about 1% of the mass of the Sun. In the inner part of the disk it is warm enough so that molecules like water, ammonia and methane tend to stay as gases and not produce grains and clumps and so on. And because they stay in gas form the radiation pressure from the Sun and the solar wind will push them outwards.

Around the orbit of Jupiter it becomes cold enough for ice to form. The gaseous molecules can produce grains and lumps so there's a lot of this less dense material around to accrete into planets. Jupiter and Saturn grew large enough to pull in great quantities of hydrogen and helium from the solar nebula.

The inner planets accreted from grains containing heavier atoms like oxygen and aluminium and silicon as well as iron and nickel and so on.

Consequently inside the ice limit at 5 AU only small, dense planets have formed, while outside there is matter enough to form the gas giants.

At this stage we have a dozen of proto-planets and quite a lot of comet-like, icy, small stuff. The proto-planets swept space clean with their gravitation fields and the comets rained on them. This also helped in making their orbits more circular.

But it was still a period with big collisions. For instance there are clear indications that the Moon was formed after a collision of the proto-Earth with another big object.

Nowadays, what is left over are zones like the asteroid belt, where Jupiter's perturbing gravity inhibited the formation of another planet. And also the Oort cloud, the region outside the orbit of Neptune, where dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris make their long orbits.

Melvin Said:

What are the three new planets in our solar system?

We Answered:

In our solar system, Uranus and Neptune are the most recent planets discovered (although I don't think anyone would consider these "new" discoveries anymore). Pluto does not fit the current definition of planet, as determined my the International Astronomical Union.

So really, we "lost" a planet. Dwarf Planets and Plutiods are the terms currently used to define Spherical bodies that do not "dominate" their own orbit, and don't qualify as satellites. Ceres is the largest dwarf planet (it resides in the asteroid belt). Pluto, very cleverly, fits the definition of Plutiod, being out in the Kuiper Belt.

If you are referring to extra-solar planets, these are discovered every couple of months these days, and the AIU has no plans to begin giving them casual names. Osiris is probably the one you've heard about the most.

Marlene Said:

what if the solar system passed through a cloud of gas and dust that was beginning to collapse to form a new s?

We Answered:

If the solar system passed through that, the dust and rocks that were forming planets would collide with the existing planets and the Sun, and near misses would get stuck in orbit. There would likely be meteor showers on Earth if the rocks were that size, and there could be global dimming if the cloud is between the Sun and Earth. At night it might be possible to see some particles in space. If the cloud is dense enough and it passes very close to Earth without touching it, a ring could form around the planet (sort of like what's around Saturn, but nowhere near as thick).

I'm no expert on this, it's just what I think would happen.

Cindy Said:

READ ALL ABOUT IT. 12 PLANETS INSTEAD OF 9. What do you think of the new solar system?

We Answered:

I have been following this story with great interest. Its funny to think that up 'til now we haven't had a scientific definition of what a "planet" is. While it is exciting to think that there are new planets and to see astronomers update the model of the solar system to fit with the new discoveries of modern technology-- I am not sure if I like this. It seems that they are including objects that are too small. I felt that it would have been more appropriate to downgrade Pluto. I guess they compromised by calling planets that take more than 200 years to orbit the earth "plutons." Perhaps this will mean that we will be having major planets and minor planets. My concern is that as our observation techniques improve and we learn more about the solar system-- other random objects will be classified as planets and we will have dozens of planets. It seems like the criteria have to do with the size minimum size (250-500 miles depending on what it is made of) and its roundness (implying that it has significant gravity to hold itself together). The roundness is definitely an interesting criterion.

I am reading an article in the Boston Globe right now saying that the number of planets may climb to over 100. Seems like too many to me. However, I do like the fact that they are also defining what a moon is and it is relative to the mass of the planet that it orbits. The moon is actually larger than Pluto and Charon (and Ceres), but since it is so much smaller than the Earth it is considered a planet. Since Pluto and its former moon, Charon, are similar in sized they are being classified as a double planet-- kind of a cool concept.

Bottom line, I don't really like it, but give me a little bit of time and I will probably warm up to it. After all I've been attached to the idea of 9 planets for almost 30 years-- it will take a little bit of time to get used to a new system.