Posted on 04/21/2020 1:12:45 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The first planet to be discovered outside our solar system isn't a planet at all, and may be a giant dust cloud created by the collision of two icy asteroids, a study finds.
Twelve years ago, astronomers spotted what they thought was a Saturn-like planet in the Fomalhaut star system 25 light years from Earth, and called it Fomalhaut b.
But now researchers from the University of Arizona claim the visible and infrared images of the 'planet' captured by the Hubble Space Telescope were actually of a cosmic collision.
The team studied the images in more detail and found they show the aftermath of two 125-mile-wide icy comets crashing into each other.
The comets left an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles that was photographed by the Hubble space telescope shortly after the collision.
Such an event is estimated to happen about once every 200,000 years - and sheds fresh light on the way planets evolve, the US team said...
The collision is thought to have occurred about 11 billion miles away from the star Fomalhaut in the constellation Piscis Austrinus.
Fomalhaut is much hotter than our Sun, 15 times as bright, and is blazing through hydrogen at such a furious rate that it will burn out in only one billion years...
Taking into account all available data, Gaspar and Rieke think the collision occurred not too long before the first observations taken in 2004.
The debris can't be seen by Hubble anymore as the dust cloud is made up of minute particles a 50th of the diameter of a human hair.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Two comets...
One a dancer...
The other a dasher...
They were just trying to get away from the Vogon poetry.
After a millenia or two of that, an interspace bypass no doubt starts so sound like a good idea.
I don’t see how you can have a giant dust cloud out there in space. Space is practically a vacuum, and vacuums are pretty good at dealing with dust.
Vogons? Disgusting vile creatures. Banned from Betelgeuse.
The more we learn, the more we learn that we don’t know.
One of my favorites. And a lot of his theorizing (ca. 1950) has been proven true by subsequent explorations.
They weren’t even comets — they were giant Roombas, guided by two enormous cats.
Whoever named the constellations was not a cat-lover. Out of 88 constellations, there are only 3 felines: Leo, Leo Minor, and Lynx. But there are plenty of birds, fish, even reptiles and even a fly. And of course bears and dogs.
Piece of lint on the big lens....
Those early astronomers got mad because the cat kept rubbing on one leg of the tripod..
If some alien had a telescope near the impact, there could be a piece of lens on the big lint!
It was SG-1 and Amanda Carter or Rodney McKay that destroyed a solar system.
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