Billions of Births

Merry Christmas to all! This post on a festive day serves to greet you and to celebrate Life throughout the far reaches of space. The photo says it best. From the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), recent star births within the Orion Nebula, makes way for proplyds or Protoplanetary Discs--signalling the birth of planets..and with it, the potential for life.

Links:
APOD December 22, 2009

Additions to Exoplanets in Binary Star Systems

I was in the process of writing a post about true binary systems with exoplanets when I was alerted to a very interesting article. It seems that we have new additions to the list of exoplanets that belong to a binary system or multiple star system.
High-resolution imaging of 14 exoplanet hosts stars revealed stellar companions to three of the targets (WASP-2, TrES-2, and TrES-4), the latter two of which have not been known to be multiple before. This means that TrES-2 and TrES-4 will join the list of exoplanets orbiting a host star that is part of a multiple or binary star system. We know that Tau Boo b is a member of this list.
This new findings has resulted in new parameter values for the three exoplanet host stars. Also this new knowledge about exoplanetary binary hosts could contribute to the evolving study of planet formation. The presence of a binary companion could very well influence the planet formation process as well as the predominant migration mechanism.
The amazing thing about binary star systems is that any planet in that system will have two suns.
Let the glorious scene of an amazing sunrise or sunset come to your mind. The sunset of a single sun is already breath-taking. What more of two suns?




ONE DAY - Björk

One day : it will happen
One day : it will all come true
One day : when you're ready
One day : when you're up to it

The atmosphere will get lighter
and two suns ready to shine just for YOU
I can feel it!

One day : it will happen
One day : it will all make sense
One day : you will blossom
One day : when you're ready

A Glimpse of Science Behind Spore

I was surprised to come across a program from the creators of Spore: ParticleMan simulates gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud. It's system was used to study such gravitational dynamics as orbits, nebula formation, star formation and particle streams from sources like pulsars and black holes.
My experience with the ParticleMan was clean. I saw the formation of stars and planets through the process of accretion - dusts and gas "coagulating" to form larger bodies. I also saw clues of binary star formations and interactions. Often, stars dance around tugging each other in circular orbits until some disturbances from planetesimals (or larger bodies) cause one of them to be hurled out of the Solar System at high speed (as is the fate of some unfortunate planetesimals that get in their way). Sometimes, though they merge together forming a bigger blob of mass.
What I can gleam from observing the simulation provided by ParticleMan is that proto-planets seem to battle it out for survival in the early stages of a Solar System's formation. In the chaotic melee, smaller clumps of rocks either get hurled out or get swallowed by bigger, more massive objects. The survivor planets are the ones that now occupy the stable orbits of a Solar System in equilibrium.
After a few minutes of observing, I was impressed with the light-weight program, considering the fact that it was just one of their many prototypes in the early stages of exploring the game's directions.
Stating the lack of science behind the game in my previous post about the Spore Creature Creator might have been premature, as there could be so much more to see in the actual Spore game to be launched in the next few months. I could be blown away when it finally goes out.
If game-makers deal with these kinds of Science, Gaming could be a great ally in teaching a great deal about the actual universe we live in.

Planet Hunters (Documentary)

A documentary about the search for extrasolar planets and about the people who dedicated their lives to hunt for exoplanets.

Flood of Marvelous new Exoplanets to begin this Fall 2008

What a nice acronym for a project that will bring us marvelous new worlds to thinker with. This coming fall, astronomers will start a massive search for new planets by observing about 11,000 nearby stars over 6 years. This number dwarfs the roughly 3,000 stars that astronomers have searched to date for the presence of planets. Scientists estimate that the NASA-funded project, called MARVELS (Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey), will find at least 150 new planets—perhaps many more.
MARVELS will do much more than just catalogue a few hundred more planets. By surveying the Jupiter-like planets around such a large number of stars, MARVELS aims to give astronomers the data they need to test competing theories for how planetary systems form and evolve.
To look at so many stars, MARVELS will use a telescope that can separately image 60 stars at a time, and this number will eventually be increased to 120 stars. The telescope, which will be housed at the Apache Point Observatory in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, has a 2.5 meter primary mirror and a wide field of view that covers 7 square degrees of the sky—an area that would appear 35 times larger than the Moon.
The MARVELS approach hinges upon the pattern that whenever a large jupiter-like planet is present, smaller terrestrial planets may also be there. The set of data that MARVELS will discover will definitely help in sorting out which stars are potential targets for further research. Plus, it will be a big boon to verify theories of planetary formation.
And if everything proceeds as planned, it will verify the forecast made on this blog last February that a deluge of exoplanets will be discovered in 2008.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey III
Mission Hopes to Find New Planets by the Dozen

Dust Bunnies and Planets

Dust bunnies are probably the best metaphor when trying to understand how planets form. (Although stars form much in the same way, its rare and difficult to see.)
It's simply a property of matter to coalesce or aggregate, specially when in a vortex with a proper mix of chaos. Astrophysicists have recently captured images of a "dust bunny" in the process of becoming a planet. The star is AB Aurigae, and here is the link for more details about the evidence. The team who captured this image used the technique caled coronagraphy, which blocks out the brightest light emitted by the star to permit dimmer objects nearby to be seen. Another technique is polarimetry, which filters out the starlight with incredible precision.

Water and Organic Molecules on AA Tauri

Great news today. Water and some organic molecules has been detected on AA Tauri's protoplanetary disk.
AA Tauri is a star 450 lightyears from earth. Protoplanetary disks are dust, rocks and clouds around a star that are raw materials for planet-formation. The particular disk where the organic molecules were detected are within 3 Astronomical Units (AU) from AA Tauri. Spitzer Space Telescope’s spectrograph captured data from the disk which very much resembles the signature of organic molecules and water on Earth.
What does this mean? There's a big chance that the planet that will form from such water-abundant and organic-rich materials will be conducive to life.

Links:
Centauri-Dreams
Science Mag Abstract
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Naval Research Laboratory

Use of Computer Simulations for Exoplanetology

Recent advances in computing power has provided us an even greater tool for study. Half of a mouse's brain has been simulated on neuronal details. In another development, part of a human brain has also been modelled, making me want to get tons of computers to simulate my brain, too. But now, hearing about the star-formation simulations made on Alpha Centauri B is wonderful news for exoplanetology. The findings of the simulation is that terrestrial planets are likely to have formed around the star Alpha Centauri B and to be orbiting in the Habitable Zone (HZ) where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. The icing on the lake ('pun' intended) is that such planets could be observed using a dedicated telescope.
To study planet formation around Alpha Centauri B, the team ran repeated computer simulations, evolving the system for the equivalent of 200 million years each time. Because of variations in the initial conditions, each simulation led to the formation of a different planetary system. In every case, however, a system of multiple planets evolved with at least one planet about the size of Earth. In many cases, the simulated planets had orbits lying within the habitable zone of the star. This makes Alpha Centauri B an excellent candidate for finding terrestrial planets.