What Astronomers Found Around a Nearby Star Raises Big Questions

Bright Side

Astronomers recently made an exciting discovery around a nearby star that’s raising some intriguing questions. They found signs of a massive planet or something with unusual characteristics orbiting the star, and it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. This finding has scientists scratching their heads because it challenges what we thought we knew about how planets and stars interact. The object seems to have an odd orbit, and its size and behavior don’t quite fit the usual patterns we’ve observed in other stars. Some experts wonder if this could be evidence of something new and unexplored in the universe. As more data is gathered, it might unlock some big mysteries about how solar systems form and evolve.  Credit: Clark dome: By Pretzelpaws, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clark_dome.jpg Fomalhaut b orbit animated: By Jason Wang (Caltech)/Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley), CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ , https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fomalhaut_b_orbit_animated_(2004-2012).webm TrEs-2b / NASA Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Telegram: https://t.me/bright_side_official   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00Back in 2008, astronomers found a mysterious something orbiting a star called Fomalhaut.

00:07The star is very bright and sits about 25 light-years away from us.

00:12Trillions of miles, sure, but pretty close in space terms.

00:16It's in the constellation Southern Fish, the one that looks like a single fish floating

00:20in the southern night sky.

00:22It's a small and relatively dim constellation, but Fomalhaut is what makes it so special.

00:28In Arabic, this means mouth of the fish, and you might guess where that name comes

00:33from.

00:34It's the brightest star in the constellation.

00:37If you're in the southern hemisphere, you can easily spot Fomalhaut with the naked eye.

00:42For people in the northern hemisphere, it's visible in the fall, low on the southern horizon.

00:47But this constellation has a beautiful story.

00:51The myth says that this fish is the one that saved the deity Dersedo, who had fallen into

00:55a lake.

00:56So it became the symbol of rescue and protection.

01:00The fish in Pisces is said to be the offspring of the Southern Fish, forming a kind of family.

01:07At the same time, Fomalhaut is sometimes called the Lonely Star because it's one of the brightest

01:12stars and it's part of the sky, but it doesn't have many bright neighbors.

01:16Hey, I can relate to that.

01:19Just kidding.

01:20Fomalhaut is also a young star.

01:23It's only about 440 million years old.

01:26That sounds like a lot, but our Sun, in comparison, is 4.6 billion years old.

01:32And finally, it's surrounded by a giant ring of dust and gas.

01:36This is called a debris disk.

01:39It's like a dust cloud that serves as the birthplace of planets.

01:42It's like the Kuiper Belt in our own solar system, where Pluto lives, but on a much grander

01:47scale.

01:49But then, astronomers noticed something odd about this disk.

01:53It wasn't evenly shaped.

01:55This means that there's something that influences gravity nearby.

01:59A planet, perhaps?

02:01And when they took pictures of the disk, they found a faint glowing dot inside it.

02:06That was our mysterious gravity center, Fomalhaut b, or, how they named it later, Dagon.

02:13They immediately thought it was a planet.

02:15In 2008, it was a huge deal because scientists captured an actual image of it using the Hubble

02:21Space Telescope.

02:23Now that's a super rare thing, especially for objects outside our solar system.

02:28Not to mention such tiny things as planets.

02:30And the photos were fascinating.

02:33At first, everyone was excited about the new world.

02:36Scientists thought that Dagon was a massive planet, something maybe like Jupiter, a gas

02:41giant.

02:42They even guessed that it had an oval-shaped orbit, which means that it would take about

02:471,700 years to go around its star just once.

02:51That's one of the craziest orbits we've ever seen.

02:55But as they kept studying Dagon, they noticed that things don't add up.

03:00For starters, they couldn't find it in infrared light.

03:03Planets that big usually give off heat.

03:06And telescopes like Spitzer, which look for heat signals, found nothing.

03:11Weird, right?

03:12Also, the planet was moving too strangely.

03:15Its orbit didn't match what you'd expect if it were shaping the dust ring.

03:20So scientists started thinking, maybe it's not a planet at all.

03:24And as the doubts creeped in, the hype calmed down.

03:28In 2020, they noticed another strange thing about Dagon.

03:33It was getting dimmer and spreading out.

03:35And well, planets don't usually do that.

03:38Like clouds of dust do.

03:40This led to a new idea.

03:42What if Dagon isn't a planet, but the result of a massive collision?

03:47Imagine two big chunks of ice or rock smashing into each other at incredible speeds.

03:52That's what they think happened here, a giant space crash that led to lots of debris.

03:57That's how it got officially removed from the list of exoplanets.

04:02But then, in 2023, the new James Webb Space Telescope, which is even more powerful than

04:08Hubble, decided to take a closer look at Dagon.

04:12And when scientists looked at the data, they jumped back into the previous debates.

04:17Wait, it might be the planet after all!

04:20All this scientific back and forth led to Dagon getting dubbed the zombie planet.

04:26But after a while, astronomers finally found the middle ground.

04:30Dagon really turned out to be a dust cloud that's slowly disappearing.

04:35But there could still be hidden planets in the system.

04:38There's another ring of dust closer to the star that might be shaped by an unseen planet.

04:44There are many mysterious weird planets out there.

04:48TRACE-2b orbits a star 750 light-years away from Earth, much farther out than our Dagon.

04:54It's in a region of the sky that's been heavily studied by planet hunters.

04:59It was first discovered in 2006 by the Transatlantic Exoplanet Survey, an observatory with a bunch

05:06of cool telescopes that are used to find planets.

05:10They use a witty method for it.

05:12They observe the stars, and when they see unexpected dips in brightness, that means

05:17that something must be passing in front of the star, making it a wee bit darker.

05:22This is called the transit method of the planet discovery.

05:26When TRACE-2b was spotted that way, scientists took a closer look and confirmed it.

05:32It had a certain gravity pull that caused its star to wobble.

05:36But that also means that the planet should be gigantic, probably a gas giant like Jupiter

05:41or Saturn.

05:43But unlike Jupiter, TRACE-2b is much closer to its star.

05:48This makes it a special type of a planet called hot Jupiter.

05:51That's what we call gas giants that orbit so close to their stars that their atmospheres

05:57are scorched to extreme temperatures.

05:59Imagine if Jupiter was not only horrifyingly massive, but also almost burning.

06:05This planet is tidally locked to its star.

06:08This means that it always faces the Sun with one side, just like we can only see one side

06:13of our Moon.

06:14Its day side is blisteringly hot, but even the cooler night side has temperatures around

06:202,900 degrees Fahrenheit.

06:24But there was something very eerie about this new world.

06:28What really made it stand out was its albedo, a measure of how much light the planet reflects.

06:35Most planets, like Jupiter or even Earth, reflect a good amount of light thanks to clouds,

06:40ice, and other stuff.

06:41This is what allows us to see those planets, after all.

06:45But TRACE-2b is almost completely black.

06:49For some reason, it reflects less than 1% of the light that hits it.

06:53It's darker than coal or fresh asphalt.

06:57So why is that?

06:59After some thought, astronomers think it might be because of its atmosphere.

07:04Jupiter has bright, reflective clouds of a gas called ammonia.

07:07But TRACE-2b probably doesn't have those, since it's so close to its star, they'd

07:13burn up and get stripped away.

07:15So its atmosphere might be made up of chemicals like sodium, potassium, or titanium oxide.

07:22All of this stuff absorbs a lot of light, and if you look directly at that planet, you'd

07:27see it almost as a black hole.

07:31What's even more horrifying is that if you were floating in it, since it doesn't have

07:34a solid surface, these elements could make the sky above look like an endless void, even

07:40if it's daytime.

07:41Though you'd probably still see its star, even it would be completely surrounded by

07:46blackness, like light at the end of a tunnel.

07:50In that case, shouldn't it be completely invisible?

07:53Well, it kind of is.

07:55But it also emits a faint red glow, likely due to its scorching high temperature.

08:00And even though scientists have studied TRACE-2b for years, some questions remain unanswered.

08:07Why is it the darkest planet we've ever found?

08:10Is it possible that there are some unknown chemicals in its atmosphere?

08:14What hides beneath the darkness?

08:17These Jupiter-like planets are often crazy, like WASP-76b, for example.

08:22This is another gas giant located about 640 light-years away, this time in the constellation

08:29Pisces.

08:30Just like TRACE-2b, this exoplanet is tidally locked.

08:34One side has a temperature of over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the other side remains in

08:39constant darkness.

08:41But what's crazy about it is that the extreme heat on the day side vaporizes metals like

08:47iron.

08:48The planet has insanely strong winds, and they blow this molten iron to the colder side.

08:54And you guessed it, the iron gets solid under colder temperatures, and we end up with a

08:59horrifying iron rain.

09:01All this stuff sounds like science fiction, but it's real, waiting to be explored.

09:06That's it for today!

09:07So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your

09:12friends!

09:13Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

Category

Transcript

Recommended