blog post 05

Posted on April 17, 2022 by graceward02
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A Place for Pluto by Stef Wade

In 2006, Pluto was taken off the list of planets, leaving our Solar System with just 8 planets. This demotion occurred 76 years after Pluto was initially added to the list of planets. This decision by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined what objects could be classified as a planet. An object needs to be round, orbiting the Sun, and not have neighboring planetary objects/debris that follow its orbit.

After Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, there was public uproar. To this day, there is still debate about whether Pluto is a planet. Many unofficial polls indicate that the public largely thinks about Pluto as the ninth planet in our Solar System. Some scientists agree, citing that there was already a working definition of a planet: any geologically active bodies in space. They believe that the new definition defined by the IAU opposes the working definition scientists have been using for centuries. According to planetary physicist Philip Metzger, this would mean our Solar System would likely hold over 150 planets.

What do you think? Should Pluto be a planet again?

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Are Wormholes Possible?

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jschorr21
wormhole(Science News)

What is a wormhole? A wormhole is a theoretical bridge joining two points in space-time that would create shortcuts for extremely long journeys throughout the universe. Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen back in 1935 came up with the idea and concluded that due to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, wormholes could exist. He concluded that the same way large objects make dimples in the fabric of spacetime, a large enough “dimple” could break through and create a wormhole. So the laws of physics support the fact that wormholes COULD exist, but it doesn’t mean they actually do. One theory for why we haven’t seen them is that they hide behind black holes. This theory claims that a wormhole would have a black hole at each end. There are definitely problems with the wormhole theory as we really don’t know enough about it. This could definitely change at some point as we are constantly gaining new information about the universe. For example, no one thought black holes were possible until ~70 years ago.

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Fun Facts about Pluto

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jschorr21
Pluto
  • Pluto was discovered by the Lowell Observatory in 1930
  • From then until 2006, it was considered a planet, now it is considered a ‘dwarf planet’
  • During these 76 years, it only completed 1/3 of its orbit
  • Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl
  • Pluto is the name of the Roman god governing the underworld
  • Pluto is only slightly larger than Eris, the second-largest dwarf planet
  • Although most think of Pluto as further than Neptune, it is sometimes closer to the Sun due to its high orbital eccentricity/inclination
  • Pluto only has an atmosphere some of the time: when it is closer to the sun and the surface ice can evaporate
  • Pluto contains more water than earth. This is due to the water ice that covers the planet
  • There is a huge liquid water ocean under Pluto’s surface
  • Pluto is ‘volcanically active in its own way. They call it “cryovolcanism”.
  • Glaciers carve valleys into Pluto’s surface consistantly
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The Artemis Moon Rocket (Post 6)

Posted on April 17, 2022 by ccatanese1
Source: Space

NASA has continued ground tests this week for the Artemis I mega moon rocket. The rocket encountered a hydrogen leak on Thursday so it seems like there is still some improvements that must be made until the rocket is ready to be launched. The Artemis mission manager said that all of the problems that the rocket has had are “procedural and lessons learned“. This mission is particularly important for the history and the future of space travel as it is meant to land the first person of color as well as the first woman on the moon by 2025. The Artemis I mega moon rocket could also teach humans a lot about the moon and the reasons behind the differences between the craters on the near side and the far side of the moon.

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The Great Dark Spot

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Karan Bhardwaj

Jupiter’s ‘Great Red Spot’ is extremely famous, and it is very easily distinguishable when viewing Jupiter. However, there also exists another Great Spot, this time on Neptune: The Great Dark Spot.

Neptune’s Great Dark Spot. Taken at a distance of 2.8 million km.

It is similar to the Great Red Spot as it is a result of a anticyclonic storm, however the storms on Neptune do not last as long. The clouds are formed of frozen methane, a stark contrast from crystals of ice present on Earth. At the edges of the storm, winds can move up to 1300 mph, the fastest recorded winds in the solar system. Neptune’s atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium at the highest altitudes, and at lower altitudes, carbon-having molecules such as ethane and carbon dioxide appear. The planet’s thermosphere is unusually warm at 750 K, which may be a cause for the extremely fast winds seen on Neptune.

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Planet 9 (Post 5)

Posted on April 17, 2022 by ccatanese1
Source: scienceABC

The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut shaped group of ice, rock, comets, and dwarf planets, beyond Neptune. There have been discussion recently about whether there is a ninth planet within the Kuiper Belt. These discussions began back in 1846 after the discovery of Neptune, but they became more focused when it was discovered that the axis of the Sun as well as some smaller bodies within our Solar System appeared to be influenced by an undiscovered force. There is a debate as to whether these influences are a result of one large object or simply a large cluster within the Kuiper Belt. While there is not a clear solution to the possible existence of Planet 9, more studies on the Kuiper Belt can lead to new information regarding our Solar System and its formation.

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C/2014 UN2071: Largest Discovered Comet

Posted on April 17, 2022 by evang914
Hubble Telescope image and computer model of C/2014 UN2071, via Smithsonian Magazine

Scientists in the past week have confirmed the size of the largest comet ever discovered. It is measured to stretch over 80 miles wide (wider than the state of Rhode Island) and weigh 500 trillion tons- 100,000x more than the typical comet.

The comet was originally discovered back in 2014 when it was still 3 billion miles from the sun. It was suspected the comet was atypically large given its brightness at that distance. Images of the comet were taken by the Hubble Telescope earlier this year, and the scientists were able to use a computer model to make the determination of its size by removing the coma (the dust/ice cloud a comet gives off) from the solid nucleus. As a comet gets closer to the sun, the increased heat causes the coma to expand.

The comet is currently traveling in our general direction at 22,000 mph and is expected to reach its closest approach in 2031, although it will still be 1 billion miles away. However, astronomers are hoping that observing the comet will give them a better clue about the types of objects that exist in the Oort Cloud, where the comet originated from. Although we know of their existence, objects from the Oort Cloud have yet to be directly observed. Despite this being the largest comet discovered to date, astronomers believe more objects of similar size exist out there.

Source: Phys Org

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New Horizons Still Bringing New Discoveries

Posted on April 17, 2022 by evang914
Image analysis highlighting areas where volcanic activity is believed to have occurred, via NYT

It’s been nearly 7 years now since the New Horizons spacecraft made its fly-by of Pluto, and even though it now finds itself in the remote parts of the Kuiper Belt (over 50 AU from the sun!), the photos it took of Pluto are still helping scientists today uncover new mysteries about the icy planet.

A few weeks ago, researchers from the Southwest Research Institute (the same institute where Dr. Stern works) published a paper in the Nature Communications journal stating they believe they have found evidence of recently erupted ice lava near two of Pluto’s mountains long suspected of being ice volcanos: Wright Mons and Picard Mons. They now believe the two mountains were formed from a small colony of cryovolcanic domes. The researchers came to the conclusion that they were looking at ice lava deposits after differentiating the irregular, undulating surface of water ice from other surface areas of Pluto shaped by erosion.

The confirmation of recently erupted ice volcanos provides further proof for the existence of recent and possibly current geologic activity within Pluto and the internal heat source that would be required for volcanism to take place. Icy lava also requires there to be liquid beneath the surface of pluto within an astronomically recent time period, also providing scientists greater support for there being a liquid ocean of water beneath the surface of the planet.

Although it is suspected the volcanos have been active sometime in the past 200 million years, scientists are unsure if they are still active today. The discovery shows, though, how researchers are still using data sent from the New Horizons spacecraft to better understand the planet.

Source: New York Times

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Blog #6: Enceladus’s Tiger Stripes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

The Cassini Spacecraft revealed dramatic geysers spewing from Enceladus’s tiger stripes, horizontal, nearly parallel fissures near the moon’s south pole, in 2006. It was believed that these may have been caused by “cryo-volcanism” (icy volcanos!), but new research suggests that it may be caused by the changes in the eccentricity of Enceladus’s orbit over 100 Myr timescales.

NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini

During each orbit of Saturn, the icy “crust” of Enceladus goes through periods of thickening and thinning, which occurs at the bottom of the global ice shelf in a process similar to the way a lake freezes from top to bottom.

This expansion of ice can increase the amount of pressure exerted on the sub-crustal ocean, the increasing pressure also stresses the ice, which can lead to the fissures that allow the liquid water to travel through the 20-30 km barrier to the surface. This pressure would be enough to cause the ‘tiger stripes,’ but not enough to facilitate the geysers we have observed.

A study from 2016 proposed that the water that makes it into the stress induced fractures in the ice would immediately boil when exposed to the vacuum of space, producing the geysers. A study published in February of this year agrees that this is a viable process on Enceladus, but perhaps not on Europa, a similar icy planet experiencing similar icy eruptions.

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Blog #5: AR Aur b (protoplanet formation caught in action!)

Posted on April 17, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

As we have been able to look farther outside of our neighborhood of the solar system, our understanding of extrasolar planets and the formation of other planetary systems has had to undergo questions and testing to ensure that our hypothesis is reasonable. The surprising orbits of some extrasolar planets has caused some such questioning, such as “Is it possible for jovian planets to form very close to a star?” (Textbook, pg 392). Studying what data we can collect from the formation of other planetary systems is important to solidifying our ideas of the universe and solar system evolution.

We believe that our jovian planets formed through accretion in the gaseous protoplanetary disk, first acquiring icy/rocky cores of a certain mass and then gathering surrounding gas (mainly hydrogen and helium with some differences between planets) to become the “gas giants” that we observe today. This process is feasible for planets that orbit relatively close to their host star, but what about for giant planets with a wider orbit? These farther out planets would not have time to accrete a sufficiently massive core.

The disk instability model is a model proposed to explain the formation of planets with masses of ∼1 M☉ to ∼2 M☉ with orbital distances of 20-120 AU. This theory suggests that areas of the protoplanetary disk may become cooler and denser than other areas, leading to gravitational instability that allows a gaseous planet to form. Up until now there hasn’t been much convincing evidence for the model.

A team of scientists studying the star AB Aurigae found a protoplanet about 9 times as massive as Jupiter orbiting at 93 AU! They named this planet AB Aur b. It can be seen in the picture below as the lower bright blob orbiting the star, which has been blocked out so that the light does not disrupt in observing the orbits of the protoplanetary disk.

AB Aur b in the planetary disk, Thayne Currie/Subaru Telescope

This discovery presents some evidence for the unstable disk theory. Other theories for how these wide orbit, massive planets form may be planetary migration as described in our textbook.

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