Posted on 02/08/2006 3:53:01 PM PST by NormsRevenge
PASADENA – The Spitzer Space Telescope has detected evidence of two mega solar systems – giant stars enveloped by what appear to be huge disks of planet-forming dust, scientists reported Wednesday. The appearance of cloudy disks around stars are believed to represent current or future planetary systems.
Our sun is surrounded by the Kuiper Belt, a disk containing dust, comets and other bodies.
Astronomers say the latest findings were surprising because such massive stars are thought to be inhospitable to the formation of planets.
“Our data suggest that the planet-forming process may be hardier than previously believed, occurring around even the most massive stars,” Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology, said in a statement.
Results appear in the Feb. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The new stars were measured to be 30 to 70 times more massive than the sun. Because of the stars' size, scientists say the surrounding debris disks are larger versions of the Kuiper Belt and probably contain about 10 times more mass.
The new stars were found during a survey of 60 bright stars. Kastner said the new discoveries stuck out from the rest because an analysis indicated the presence of flat disks.
Last year, another team of scientists discovered what they believe was a mini solar system. The team found a dust cloud around a brown dwarf, or failed star.
www.spitzer.caltech.edu/index.shtml
Just galactic Walmarts.
Space ping candidate.
Mmm...I wonder how long Spitzer will stay off the chopping block...
Supersized Disk (Artist Concept)
This illustration compares the size of a gargantuan star and its surrounding dusty disk (top) to that of our solar system. Monstrous disks like this one were discovered around two "hypergiant" stars by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers believe these disks might contain the early "seeds" of planets, or possibly leftover debris from planets that already formed.
The hypergiant stars, called R 66 and R 126, are located about 170,000 light-years away in our Milky Way's nearest neighbor galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The stars are about 100 times wider than the sun, or big enough to encompass an orbit equivalent to Earth's. The plump stars are heavy, at 30 and 70 times the mass of the sun, respectively. They are the most massive stars known to sport disks.
The disks themselves are also bloated, with masses equal to several Jupiters. The disks begin at a distance approximately 120 times greater than that between Earth and the sun, or 120 astronomical units, and terminate at a distance of about 2,500 astronomical units.
Hypergiant stars are the puffed-up, aging descendants of the most massive class of stars, called "O" stars. The stars are so massive that their cores ultimately collapse under their own weight, triggering incredible explosions called supernovae. If any planets circled near the stars during one of these blasts, they would most likely be destroyed.
The orbital distances in this picture are plotted on a logarithmic scale. This means that a given distance shown here represents proportionally smaller actual distances as you move to the right. The sun and planets in our solar system have been scaled up in size for better viewing.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC)
...Unless they spend $600 billion transporting garbage back from the lunar base first.
A star that big and hot will probably go supernova in a few thousand years.
Where is the article about how NASA has dropped the earth-finder project?
Where is the article about how NASA has dropped the earth-finder project?
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This one?
Canceling NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1574869/posts
Right. That news was a little slow showing up on FR.
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