600 light years away, in the constellation of Auriga, there is a star in some ways similar to our Sun. It’s a shade hotter (by about 800° C), more massive, and older. Oddly, it appears to be laced with heavy elements: more oxygen, aluminum, and so on, than might be expected. A puzzle.
The, last year, it was discovered that this star had a planet orbiting it. A project called WASP – Wide Area Search for Planets, a UK telescope system that searches for exoplanets — noticed that the star underwent periodic dips in its light. This indicates that a planet circles the star, and when the planet gets between the star and us, it blocks a tiny fraction of the starlight.
The planet is a weirdo, for many reasons… but it won’t be weird for too much longer. That’s because the star is eating it.
What WASP 12b may look like.
OK, first, the planet. Called WASP 12b, it was instantly pegged as an oddball. The orbit is only 1.1 days long! Compare that to our own 365 day orbit, or even Mercury’s 88 days to circle the Sun. This incredibly short orbital period means this planet is practically touching the surface of its star as it sweeps around at over 220 km/sec (130 miles/sec)! That also means it must be very hot; models indicate that the temperature at its cloud tops would be in excess of 2200°C (4000° F).
Not only that, but other numbers were odd, too. WASP 12b was found to be a bit more massive and bigger than Jupiter; about 1.8 times its size and 1.4 times its mass. That’s too big! Models indicate that planets this massive have a funny state of matter in them; they are so compressible that if you add mass, the planet doesn’t really get bigger, it just gets denser. In other words, you could double Jupiter’s mass and its size wouldn’t increase appreciably, but since the mass goes up, so would its density.
But WASP 12b isn’t like that. In fact, it has a lower density than Jupiter, and is a lot bigger! Something must be going on… and when you see a lot of weird things all sitting in one place, it makes sense to assume they’re connected. In this case it’s true: that planet is frakking hot, and that’s at the heart of this mess. Heating a planet that much would not exactly be conducive to its well-being. When you heat a gas it expands, which would explain WASP 12b’s big size. It’s puffy! But being all bloated that close to a star turns out to be bad for your health.
Astronomers used Hubble to observe the planet in the ultraviolet and found clear signs of all sorts of heavy elements, including sodium, tin, aluminum, magnesium, and manganese, as well as, weirdly, ytterbium*. Moreover, they could tell from the data that these elements existed in a cloud surrounding the planet, like an extended atmosphere going outward for hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
That’s a long way from the planet. Any atom of, say, manganese that far from the planet would be caught in a tug-of-war between the gravity of the planet and the star… and the star would win. The gravity of the star is drawing material off the planet in a vast stream, or, in other words, the planet is getting slowly eaten by its star. If astronomers ever get around to giving this planet an actual name, I suggest Sarlacc†.
This explains the peculiar high abundance of heavy metals in the star I mentioned at the beginning of this post; they come from the planet! But not for long. Given the mass of the planet and the density of the stream, it looks like it has roughly ten million years left. At that point, supper’s over: there won’t be anything left for the star to eat. In reality it’s hard to say exactly what will happen; there may be a rocky/metal core to the planet that will survive. But even that is so close to the star that it will be a molten blob of goo. The way orbits work, the way the dance of gravity plays out over time, the planet itself may actually be drawn inexorably closer to its star. Remember, too, the star is old, and will soon start to expand into a red giant. So the planet is falling and the star is rising; eventually the too will meet and the planet will meet a fiery death.
All in all, it sucks to be WASP 12b.
But it’s cool to be an astronomer! Only 15 years ago we had no idea that there were other planets orbiting Sunlike stars, and now we know of over 400, and a lot of them are really, really bizarro. When I was a kid I watched Star Trek and read a lot of science fiction, and I remember thinking that the planets in them were too weird; there was no way anything like them could actually exist.
Ha! The Universe, as usual, is smarter and more clever than we are. There’s a lot of strange out there, and the more we look, the more we find.
* Admit it: you didn’t even know that was an element.
Tag: photo
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Star: om nom nom! Planet: Aieee!
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Was DNA-based Life Spread Virally Through the Universe?
Life originated in a nebular cloud, over 10 billion years ago, but may have had multiple origins in multiple locations, including in galaxies older than the Milky Way according to Rudolf Schild of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Rhawn Joseph of the Brain Research Laboratory. Multiple origins, they believe, could account for the different domains of life: archae, bacteria, eukaryotes.
The first steps toward life may have been achieved when self-replicating nano-particles initially comprised of a mixture of carbon, calcium, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, sugars, and other elements and gasses were combined and radiated, forming a nucleus around which a lipid-like permeable membrane was established, and within which DNA-bases were laddered together with phosphates and sugars; a process which may have taken billions of years.
DNA-based life, they propose, may be a “cosmic imperative” such that life can only achieve life upon acquiring a DNA genome. Alternatively, the “Universal Genetic Code” may have won out over inferior codes through natural selection. When the first microbe evolved, it immediately began multiplying and spreading throughout the cosmos via panspermia carried by solar winds, Bolide impact, comets, ejection of living planets prior to supernova which are then captured by a newly forming solar system, galactic collisions and following the exchange of stars between galaxies.
Bacteria, archae, and viruses, act as intergalactic genetic messengers, acquiring genes from and transferring genes to life forms dwelling on other planets. Viruses also serve as gene depositories, storing vast numbers of genes which may be transferred to archae and bacteria depending on cellular needs. The acquisition of these genes from the denizens of other worlds, enables prokaryotes and viruses to immediately adapt to the most extreme environments, including those that might be encountered on other planets.
Whether the universe was created by a Big Bang Universe or an Eternal Infinite Universe, once life was established it began to evolve. Archae, bacteria, and viruses may have combined and mixed genes, fashioning the first multi-cellular eukaryote which continued to evolve. Initially, evolution on Earth-like planets was random and dictated by natural selection. Over time, increasingly complex and intelligent species evolved through natural selection whereas inferior competitors became extinct. However, their genes were copied by archae, bacteria, and viruses. If the first steps toward life in this galaxy began 13.6 billion years ago, then using Earth as an example, intelligent life might have evolved within this galaxy by 9 billion years ago. As life continued to spread throughout the cosmos, and as microbes and viruses were cast from world to world, genes continued to be exchanged via horizontal gene transfer and copies of genes coding for advanced and complex characteristics were acquired from and transferred to eukaryotes and highly evolved intelligent life.
Eventually descendants of these microbes, viruses, and their vast genetic libraries, fell to the new born Earth. The innumerable genes stored and maintained in the genomes of these viruses, coupled with prokaryote genes and those transferred to eurkaryotes, made it possible to biologically modify and terraform new Earth, and in so doing, some of these genes, now within the eurkaryote genome, were activated and expressed, replicating various species which had evolved on other worlds. Genes act on genes, and genes act on the environment and the altered environment activates and inhibits gene expression, thereby directly influencing the evolution of species.
On Earth, Schild and Joseph conclude, “the progression from simple cell to sentient intelligent being is due to the activation of viral, archae, and bacteria genes acquired from extra-terrestrial life and inserted into the Earthly eukaryote genome. What has been described as a random evolution is in fact the metamorphosis and replication of living creatures which long ago lived on other planets.”
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Close Flybys of Two Moons in Less Than Two Days
About a month and a half after its last double flyby, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will be turning another double play this week, visiting the geyser moon Enceladus and the hazy moon Titan. The alignment of the moons means that Cassini can catch glimpses of these two contrasting worlds within less than 48 hours, with no maneuver in between.
On the left, Saturn’s moon Enceladus is backlit by the sun, showing the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. On the right, is a composite image of Titan. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI and NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
Cassini will make its closest approach to Enceladus late at night on May 17 Pacific time, which is in the early hours of May 18 UTC. The spacecraft will pass within about 435 kilometers (270 miles) of the moon’s surface.
The main scientific goal at Enceladus will be to watch the sun play peekaboo behind the water-rich plume emanating from the moon’s south polar region. Scientists using the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph will be able to use the flickering light to measure whether there is molecular nitrogen in the plume. Ammonia has already been detected in the plume and scientists know heat can decompose ammonia into nitrogen molecules. Determining the amount of molecular nitrogen in the plume will give scientists clues about thermal processing in the moon’s interior.
The second of Cassini’s two flybys is an encounter with Titan. The closest approach will take place in the late evening May 19 Pacific time, which is in the early hours of May 20 UTC. The spacecraft will fly to within 1,400 kilometers (750 miles) of the surface.
Cassini will primarily be doing radio science during this pass to detect the subtle variations in the gravitational tug on the spacecraft by Titan, which is 25 percent larger in volume than the planet Mercury. Analyzing the data will help scientists learn whether Titan has a liquid ocean under its surface and get a better picture of its internal structure. The composite infrared spectrometer will also get its southernmost pass for thermal data to fill out its temperature map of the smoggy moon.
Cassini has made four previous double flybys and one more is planned in the years ahead.
