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The planets are young (1) Mercury and Venus by Russell Grigg Published: 14 August 2019 (GMT+10) In May and June 2019, the BBC TV showed British audiences a five-episode series about our solar system, narrated by Professor Brian Cox and titled The Planets. It was aired in Australia by ABC-Channel 2 in July–August 2019. Our response is titled “The planets are young”. We shall discuss Cox’s claimed long ages and evolutionary origin of these planets vs recent creation for them as described in the Bible, and see which scenario fits the evidence the best. We start with the first episode,...

The researchers suggest that this type of world may a result of large “hot Jupiter” exoplanets migrating toward their host star. Exoplanet surveys have detected several such planets, and it’s believed that they likely formed at a greater distance from their respective stars and then slowly crept inward. When that happens, it’s possible that the change in gravitational forces would prompt large moons to break free from their existing orbits and become standalone worlds of their own. Computer simulations showed that this could indeed happen, and in those cases, the researchers believe we should call them ploonets. Remarkably, our own...

uly will be a great month to view the rings of Saturn. You can see them in any telescope that magnifies to at least 20 power, but the larger the aperture and the sharper the image, the more detail you can make out. Tonight (July 9), Saturn is at opposition, when it lies on the opposite side of the sky from the sun. This is also when the planet's apparent size is greatest and it puts on an all-night performance with greatest gleam, shining at magnitude +0.1. Compared to the 21 brightest stars, Saturn would rank seventh, just a shade...

A tiny, old star just 12 light-years away might host two temperate, rocky planets, astronomers announced today. If they’re confirmed, both of the newly spotted worlds are nearly identical to Earth in mass, and both planets are in orbits that could allow liquid water to trickle and puddle on their surfaces. Scientists estimate that the stellar host, known as Teegarden’s star, is at least eight billion years old, or nearly twice the sun’s age. That means any planets orbiting it are presumably as ancient, so life as we know it has had more than enough time to evolve. And for...

The larger planets such as Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus remarkably put off more energy than they absorb from our sun. If they were actually in the billions of years of age, should they not have become frozen and expired an incalculable length of time ago. Scientists in this field have come up with many reasons as to the how that these celestial entities kept their heat as far as their theories; however, their noses are firmly planted in a major wall that repels everything they've come up with. Volcanism observed on Jupiter's Io and the geyers with Saturn's Enceladus command...

Many scientists firmly believe that our universe and Solar System are billions of years old. However, massive data recorded by 50 years' worth of unmanned probes traversing space shows without a doubt that the planets with their moons and comets are actually very young. Our sun powers through its nuclear fuel, and as such it slowly changes constitution. Famed solar astronomer John A. Eddy was quoted, and others in his field believe billions of years ago the sun was dimmer and thus the Earth became a frozen ball. But Mr. Eddy has also recognized that all our information about the...

Scientists using the huge telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano have discovered the world's most obvious space joke. "Uranus smells like farts" is an actual, and correct, headline making the rounds ...

Stargazers, get your binoculars ready: a string of bright planets, called a "Planet Parade," will grace the night's sky this week, and the show is expected to last several days. It's just the start of what will be a breathtaking month. A "worm moon" rose on March 1, and another full moon, known as a "blue moon," will pop up on March 31. But this may be the most stunning show yet. A rare parade of planets, including Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Mercury and Venus along with the bright star Antares, will light the sky starting March 7, though they won't...

You know jet streams as fast-flowing air currents in the atmosphere that can help predict temperature and help planes fly faster. According to data sent back by a trio of ESA satellites called Swarm, though, there's also a jet stream deep beneath our planet's surface, and it's made of molten iron. A team of European scientists have discovered the jet stream in the Earth's outer core that's located 1,900 miles underneath its crust. It moves at 25 miles per year, three times faster than the speed of the other layers in the outer core and a thousand times faster than...

Jupiter and Venus will pair up in the sky on Monday morning, shining brightly together shortly before sunrise. The two planets will appear so close together that they may look like they are just one bright star rather than two planets. This is the closest these two planets will appear all year, an astronomical event known as a conjunction. Venus and Jupiter may appear very close to each other in the morning sky, but they are actually more than 400 million miles away from each other. Venus and Jupiter will rise together about one hour before sunrise in the eastern...

In the hostile environment of the ‘galactic bulge’ at the heart of our galaxy, scientists have spotted a planet so big it might not actually be a planet. A large international team of researchers found the object when looking at data acquired by NASA’s Spitzer infra-red space telescope, which was first launched in 2003. Using a technique called micro-lensing, which measures distortions in light when a star passes in front of another, scientists were able to discover the mysterious object is 22,000 light years away from Earth, and orbits its parent star roughly every three years. Dubbed OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb, the object...

Unusual composition of star suggests it swallowed planets that came too closeIt was a star with a hefty appetite. Astronomers say the sun-like star about 320 light-years from Earth may have eaten several of its planets, leading them to give it the nickname Kronos, after the Greek god who ate his sons. The star — with the official name of HD 240430 — is believed to be part of a wide binary star system, two stars that share a central point of orbit. Because the stars travel together in space, astronomers refer to them as co-moving stars. While the stars...

Sorry for the Vanity, but I was on an Astronomy Ping List and haven't seen any pictures in a good, long while. Is it still active?

With scalding surface temperatures of a hellish 4,327°C, researchers have discovered the hottest planet ever found. The planet, named KELT-9b, is 650 light years away, and so close to its host star its orbit takes just a day and a half. Researchers hope their findings will shed light on how planetary systems form around hot, massive stars.

Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought. “We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these...

Solar system could have over 100 planets with new criteria Posted on March 19, 2017 by Kathy Fey Solar System A new classification system for what may be considered a planet would result in over 100 planets occupying our solar system. 178 SHARES ShareTweetGoogleReddit Our solar system could contain over 100 planets if a new classification system is approved. Tech Times explains that the definition of a planet was last changed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006 when the new criteria famously demoted Pluto from the rank of a planet to dwarf planet and Kuiper Belt Object. Space...

The International Astronomical Union currently defines a planet as: "a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." A newly suggested definition takes a different approach:

Planet-hunters are always on the lookout for worlds that look like Earth—rocky planets that are not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to flow on the surface. Now scientists have hit the jackpot, discovering seven Earth-size exoplanets orbiting a single star just 39 light-years away. The star, named TRAPPIST-1, was thought to be home to three exoplanets. But with the help of a variety of observatories—including the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (a.k.a. TRAPPIST, the star's namesake), the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope—researchers found four more planets in the system. The...

The hunt for potentially habitable planets outside of our solar system is one of the most exciting frontiers of science, and you can become a part of it without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home. This week, MIT and Carnegie Science Institute released a huge dataset containing close to 61,000 measurements of over 1600 stars. These measurements contain data that could potentially identify thousands of new exoplanets, many of which might be Earth-like in their nature. Unfortunately, the MIT and Carnegie Institute team simply doesn’t have the capacity to trawl through all of this information,...

By 2025 Elon Musk believes SpaceX can get us to Mars – a journey of about 500 million kilometres, needing a speed of over 100,000 km/h. By comparison travelling to the stars within a human lifetime via the known laws of physics requires energies millions of times more potent than that budget-price trip to Mars. In our energy hungry modern world the prospect seems fanciful, yet we are surrounded by energies and forces of comparable scale. By taming those forces we will be able to launch forth towards the stars, save our civilization and extend the reach of our biosphere....