Grotesque, Our Sister Solar System

Astronomers have detected our "grotesque" twin: A planetary system arranged much like our own solar system, a new study says.

Dubbed GJ676A, the system has two rocky planets orbiting close to its host star, and two gas giants orbiting far away. This means the system is arranged like our system—though in GJ676A, everything is much larger.

For instance, the smallest rocky planet in GJ676A is at least four times the mass of Earth, while the largest gas giant is five times the size of Jupiter.

Other multiple-planet systems have been discovered, such as HD10180, which has been called the richest exoplanetary find ever because of the seven to nine planets orbiting its host star. (Also see "Our Solar System May Have Millions of 'Twins.'")

But HD10180's planets are all gas giants in relatively close orbits, while GJ676A has both rocky and gas planets—and its "Neptune-like" planet takes 4,000 days to make one orbit, said study leader Guillem Anglada Escudé, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gottingen in Germany.

The long orbits of GJ676A's gas giants and the short orbits of its close-in, extremely hot super Earths are what led the astronomers to dub GJ676A our solar system's twin.

"Hidden" Planets Detected Via New Technique

Anglada Escudé and team used a new data-analysis technique to detect smaller planets around the star, which had already been known to host one gas giant.

"This means that it's likely that other systems have hidden companions," he said. "We just need to apply the new techniques to find them."

(See "Light From a 'Super Earth' Seen—A First.")

The finding also may refine planetary-formation models, he added. According to one popular explanation for super Earths so close to a host star, the planets form farther out and migrate inward.

"But your planet that moves picks up all the mass with it," Anglada Escudé said.

"That didn't happen here, because you still had mass to form the gas giants. It's possible that the gas giants formed first in long-period orbits—they didn't migrate—and then a few million years later, you start forming super-Earths with the leftovers."

'Aliens Exist'

Doomsday Solar Flares 12/21/2012

Solar flares happen all the time and have been happening since the beginning of time. But what is a solar flare? A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the surface of the Sun, or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to 6 × 10²⁵ joules of energy. Solar flares are not visible from Earth. They are mainly followed by an enormous CME, which is also known as a coronal mass ejection. Solar flares, and the corresponding CME’s produce about one sixth (1/6) of the total energy output of the Sun each second, equivalent to 160,000,000,000 megatons of TNT, which is roughly 25,000 times more energy than released from the impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter. The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions and atoms through the corona of the sun into space. These clouds typically reach Earth a day or two after the event. This sends an extreme amount of radiation hurtling toward the earth.

Massive solar flares are sometimes associated with CMEs which can trigger geomagnetic storms that have been known to knock out electric power for extended periods of time. According to Matthew Stein, many hundred thousands of miles of high voltage lines would act like an antenna drawing the electro-magnetic pulse from a solar flare toward thousands of transformers on the world’s power grids. Many transformers could burn out and be difficult to replace.

In any event, the potential for our Planet to be stripped of its power grid is possible. Not to mention that all things electrical would instantly stop working. That means transportation would come to a grinding halt. Planes, trains, and automobiles would be affected, among other things. And that means planes will drop from the sky. This would also happen if a nuclear bomb were to be detonated in our atmosphere. And let’s not even think about what all that radiation does to the human body.

When normally occurring solar flares happen, our atmosphere protects us from the potential effects of the radiation. The earth’s ozone layer acts like a shield to block this harmful radiation from reaching us. These x-ray and UV rays go around us like water going around a small island in the middle of a river.

This atmosphere is created by gravity, which is created by the earth rotating on its axis. This axis is an imaginary “pole,” running between the North and South poles that our planet spins on. This spinning creates the magnetism of the earth, and in turn, gravity, which we need desperately, and cannot afford to lose.

This is why scientists are so concerned about Global warming, as the holes in the ozone layer are over the North and South poles. As these holes expand, more radiation from these flares gets inside the ozone layer, accelerating the melting of the ice caps.

Sun Region Releases Two Solar Flares June 2012

Two M-class solar flares along with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have been released by a region on the sun, titled AR 1504, a recent report has revealed.

It has been noted by NASA that the sun has discharged a blow of electrically charged particles towards the planet, which possibly points to the occurrence of a geomagnetic activity on Saturday. However, the agency says that the situation would not be concerning.

While the first flare peaked on June 13 at 9:17 AM EDT and lasted for three hours. The second one lasted for a long while, as per the report, and it peaked at 10:08 AM EDT on June 14.

Goddard’s Space Weather Center, which analyzed the flares, has told that the CME linked with the first flare was at a speed of 375 miles per second. Also, there would be a little effect on Earth because of its slow speed.

Though, on the other hand, the second CME, which was at a high speed of 800 miles per second, is likely to have an adverse effect on Mars and the Spitzer spacecraft.

Milky Way Galaxy's Head-On Crash with Andromeda

Galaxy and the Milky Way CollisionCredit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), and A. MellingerThis photo illustration depicts a view of the night sky just before the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. 

Galaxies set for collision course, Will Earth Survive?

Gas 'Bridge' Formed Millions Of Years Ago When Andromeda, Triangulum Galaxies Collided

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two galaxies near our own Milky Way may have had a close encounter billions of years ago that created a vast bridge of gas that links them together to this day, a new study finds.

Observations from the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope, a massive radio instrument in Green Bank, W.Va., indicate that hydrogen gas may be streaming between the colossal Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, and its neighboring Triangulum Galaxy, or M33.

"The properties of this gas indicate that these two galaxies may have passed close together in the distant past," Jay Lockman, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), said in a statement. "Studying what may be a gaseous link between the two can give us a new key to understanding the evolution of both galaxies."

These results were hinted at in a 2004 discovery, made by astronomers using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands, but these early observations of a gaseous link between M31 and M33 were largely contested on technical grounds, the researchers said.

The new results, however, seem to indicate that astronomers' hunch eight years ago may have been correct. The highly sensitive Green Bank Telescope has not only confirmed the existence of the gaseous bridge, but has also found six dense clumps of gas within it. [When Galaxies Collide: Photos of Galactic Crashes]

Lockman and his colleagues examined these clumps and found that they share roughly the same relative velocity with respect to Earth as they do to the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies. This indicates that they could be part of a bridge between the two neighboring structures, the researchers said.

The Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies are located approximately 2.6 and 3 million light-years from Earth, respectively. Both are members of the so-called Local Group of galaxies, which is made up of our own Milky Way and roughly 30 other galaxies.

When two galaxies pass close to one another, the encounter can cause gas from the galaxies being strewn across intergalactic space, creating a lengthy "tidal tail" between them.

"We think it's very likely that the hydrogen gas we see between M31 and M33 is the remnant of a tidal tail that originated during a close encounter, probably billions of years ago," Spencer Wolfe, of West Virginia University in Morgantown, said in a statement. "The encounter had to be long ago, because neither galaxy shows evidence of disruption today."

The researchers intend to use the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) for follow-up studies to learn more about the gas bridge, and to better understand properties of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies themselves.

"The gas we studied is very tenuous and its radio emission is extremely faint — so faint that it is beyond the reach of most radio telescopes," Lockman said. "We plan to use the advanced capabilities of the GBT to continue this work and learn more about both the gas and, hopefully, the orbital histories of the two galaxies."

The scientists presented their findings here at the 220th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held from June 10 to 14 at the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center.

By: SPACE.com Staff
Published: 06/12/2012 07:36 AM EDT on SPACE.com