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Strange 'twin' new worlds found
BBC News ^ | 3 August 2006

Posted on 08/03/2006 11:04:45 PM PDT by my_pointy_head_is_sharp

Strange 'twin' new worlds found

A pair of strange new worlds that blur the boundaries between planets and stars have been discovered beyond our Solar System.

A few dozen such objects have been identified in recent years but this is the first set of "twins".

Dubbed "planemos", they circle each other rather than orbiting a star.

Their existence challenges current theories about the formation of planets and stars, astronomers report in the journal Science.

"This is a truly remarkable pair of twins - each having only about 1% the mass of our Sun," said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the Science paper.

"Its mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery."

'Double planet'

The pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos", which are not bound to stars.

They appear to have been forged from a contracting gas cloud, in a similar way to stars, but are much too cool to be true stars.

And while they have similar masses to many of the giant planets discovered beyond our Solar System (the largest weighs in at 14 times the mass of Jupiter and the other is about seven times more massive), they are not thought to be true planets either.

"We are resisting the temptation to call it a 'double planet' because this pair probably didn't form the way that planets in our Solar System did," said co-researcher Valentin Ivanov of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Santiago, Chile.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Unclassified
KEYWORDS: astronomy; planemos; science; twins
***"Their existence challenges current theories about the formation of planets and stars"***

Gotta love THAT.

1 posted on 08/03/2006 11:04:46 PM PDT by my_pointy_head_is_sharp
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To: my_pointy_head_is_sharp

2 posted on 08/03/2006 11:08:04 PM PDT by dk88 (Live loud)
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To: dk88

Luke's homeworld was a binary star system, wasn't it?


3 posted on 08/03/2006 11:13:10 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: KevinDavis

ping


4 posted on 08/03/2006 11:25:28 PM PDT by raygun (Whenever I see U.N. blue helmets I feel like laughing and puking at the same time.)
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To: my_pointy_head_is_sharp

And some people wonder what there is in the universe for us to dovote so much effort and so many resources to explore.

Ya just never know.


5 posted on 08/04/2006 5:15:33 AM PDT by DustyMoment (FloriDUH - proud inventors of pregnant/hanging chads and judicide!!)
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To: my_pointy_head_is_sharp

Now that is just cool!


6 posted on 08/04/2006 5:17:11 AM PDT by Gamecock ("Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable." Robert Farrar Capon)
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To: dk88
Movie trivia: this shot was done without special effects or tricks of any kind.


7 posted on 08/04/2006 5:21:23 AM PDT by js1138 (Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!")
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To: my_pointy_head_is_sharp

Intelligently designed.









(kidding!!!!)


8 posted on 08/04/2006 5:51:13 AM PDT by MonroeDNA (Look for the Union label--on the tunnel ceiling as it smashes your car!)
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To: js1138
Artist's view (European Southern Observatory)
The planemo twins: Two peculiar planet-like worlds

9 posted on 08/04/2006 12:59:56 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
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