Planet Nine: The New Pluto?

Given that it has a mass of 10 times that of planet Earth, could “Planet Nine” be the “new Pluto”?

By: Ringo Bones 

Back in January 20, 2016 researchers led by resident astronomers of the California Institute of Technology – Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin – unveiled the evidence of the existence of a newly discovered planet which was shown to be up to 10 times more massive than our own planet Earth. Currently tentatively named “Planet Nine”, the Caltech astronomers Brown and Batygin used mathematical modeling and computer simulations to describe the newly discovered planet’s mass and probable location in our Solar System even though the newly discovered Planet Nine is yet to be observed directly. 

The researchers claim that a huge planet 10 times the mass of Earth probably exists in the frozen Kuiper Belt region of our Solar System. The planet has not yet been located or photographed directly but its presence could explain the high eccentricity of the orbits of Trans Neptunian Objects / Kuiper Belt Objects in which the now dwarf planet Pluto is a member since 2006. At its inferred location, the tentatively named “Planet Nine” could probably take between 10,000 to 20,000 years to complete one orbit around the Sun. By way of comparison, planet Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and takes 164.8 years to complete one orbit around the Sun while the planet Uranus is 14.5 times the mass of Earth and takes 84 years to complete one orbit around the Sun. 

The evidence for the claim that “Planet Nine” exists is that six of the most distant Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have orbits that line up in a way that would only happen if the gravity of a massive unknown planet were pulling on them. The researchers predicted that Planet Nine’s gravity would cause another Kuiper Belt Objects to be forced into orbits perpendicular to Planet Nine’s orbit. Some astronomers upon hearing of the discovery even suggested that Planet Nine could be responsible for sending comets originating in the Kuiper Belt to be flung towards the inner Solar System that might have triggered cometary impact mass extinction events during the planet Earth’s distant past. But at present, there’s still insufficient data to make Planet Nine a bona fide planet that could truly replace Pluto as our Solar System’s ninth planet. 

Ancient Globular Star Clusters: Most Likely Home of Advanced Extraterrestrial Life?

Given that they’ve been around when our universe was still a few billion years old, are ancient globular star clusters the most likely part of our Milky Way galaxy to harbor advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Even though the hypothesis has probably been worked out by a few science fiction authors during the last two centuries, it was in a recent press conference during the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society back in January 6, 2016 that Dr. Rosanne DiStefano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics presented her team’s latest research findings indicating that we may one day find intelligent space-faring civilizations occupying star clusters at the edges of our own Milky Way galaxy. According to DiStefano, lead author of the study published from a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory states that: “A globular cluster might be the first place in which intelligent life is identified in our galaxy.” 

These ancient globular star clusters are spherical in shape and can contain anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of individual stars. In fact, the oldest stars in the Milky Way galaxy can be found in these areas with a ripe old age of about 10-billion years old. By way of comparison, current data shows that the age of our universe is about 13.8-billion years and scientists believe that some stars in these ancient globular star clusters may have been already around since the birth of our galaxy. The data that determined the age of these ancient globular star clusters have previously played an essential role in helping astronomers pinpoint the center of the Milky Way and aid in determining the exact age of the universe. 

The main factor that determines the possibility of carbon-based Earth-like life-forms occurring in a typical star system is its Goldilocks or habitable zone. This refers to a “just right” distance between a planet and its parent star which directly affects the average temperature and the planet’s ability to allow water in its liquid state to exist. Brighter more energetically burning stars produce a larger potential habitable zone than their smaller, fainter counterparts but brighter, larger, more energetically burning stars have a much shorter lifespan and the largest of them seldom last for more than 150-million years. 

Habitable planets that could exist in these ancient globular star clusters would have to be huddled near dim red dwarf stars and this is critical because smaller orbits help protect these planets from the violent forces found in such a crowded galactic neighborhood – forces that could eventually push a small world out into cold interstellar space. DiStefano claims that once these planets do form, they can survive for long periods of time, even longer than the current age of the universe. 

Some of these globular star clusters are packed to the brim and astronomers have estimated that some contain up to a million stars that span a combined distance of up to 100 light-years. To give you an idea of how dense that is, our Sun’s nearest neighboring star is close to 4 light-years away. 

The main idea drawn by this research includes the high probability of the formation of potentially habitable worlds in a globular cluster due to the sheer volume of stars and that these worlds could survive for billions of years. This is important because complex life takes time to evolve and to develop the kind of intelligence needed to build and maintain a civilization – especially a space-faring one. 

Wolf 1061c: The Closest Exoplanet To Earth To Harbor Life?

At around 14 light-years from our planet, will the exoplanet – as in a planet outside of our Solar System - that can harbor life similar to one found here on Earth? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Star Trek fans may be wondering if the planet is related to Wolf 359 – that Federation colonized planet that was invaded by the Borg – but when the discovery was announced back in December 17, 2015 following a study based on 10 years of archival spectrum taken of the star Wolf 1061 using the HARPS Spectrograph attached to the ESO 3.6 meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile. The discovery was made by a team of astronomers from the University of New South Wales of Australia. 

Wolf 1061c or WL1061c is an exoplanet – that is a planet that lies outside of our Solar System – orbiting the red dwarf star Wolf 1061 in the Ophiuchus constellation about 13.8 light years from Earth. Wolf 1061c is the second planet in order from its parent star in a triple planetary system and has an orbital period of 17.9 days. Wolf 1061c is classified as a super-Earth type exoplanet as its mass is 4.3 times that of Earth and an estimated surface gravity of 1.6 times that found on the surface of the Earth. In astronomical terms, the Wolf 1061 system is relatively close to planet Earth’s Solar System at 13.8 light years away. This makes it the closest known potentially habitable planet to Earth, yielding interests from astronomers the world over. 

Wolf 1061c’s orbital distance of 0.084 AU (astronomical units) – assuming mild eccentricity – lies at the inner edge of its parent star’s habitable zone, which extends from approximately 0.073 to 0.190 AU. For comparison, the habitable zone of our Sun is approximately at 0.5 to 3.0 AU if you account for our Sun’s greater energy emission. Because it is so close to its parent star, planet Wolf 1061c is likely to be tidally locked – meaning one side of the planet permanently faces its parent star and the other side permanently faces away. Although this scenario could result in extreme temperature differences on the planet, the terminator line that separates the illuminated side and the dark side could potentially be habitable for life-forms similar to that that exists here on Earth, as the temperature there could be suitable for liquid water to exist. Additionally, a much larger portion of the planet could also be habitable if Wolf 1061c has a thick enough atmosphere to facilitate heat transfer away from the side permanently facing its parent star.     

2015 – 100th Anniversary of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

With UNESCO marking 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies, will the centenary of Einstein’s presentation of General Relativity inspire advances of current physics and cosmology?

By: Ringo Bones 

Back in November 1915, Albert Einstein presented to the world his “Theory of General Relativity” as a way to resolve another contradiction of physics not covered by his “Theory of Special Relativity” ten years before. According to Isaac Newton, gravity travelled instantly through the universe. But according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, nothing can go faster than light (but there’s an intriguingly convincing work by Thomas Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory back in the mid 1970s proving otherwise that you can also check out). To overcome these incompatible views, Einstein introduced another, even grander theory in which space and time are not empty but are instead like a fabric that can be curved and stretched. This new picture – in which gravity originates from the bending of sheets of space-time – revolutionized cosmology and gave us the most compelling theory of creation, the Big Bang. 

Einstein’s Special Relativity was incomplete because it made no mention of acceleration or gravity. Einstein then made the next key observation: Motion under gravity and motion in an accelerated frame are indistinguishable. Since a light beam will bend in a rocket that is accelerating, a light beam must also bend under gravity. 

To show this, Einstein introduced the concept of curved space. In this interpretation, planets move around the sun not because of a gravitational pull but because the sun has warped the space around it, and the curvature of space itself due to the sun pushes the planets. Gravity does not pull you into a chair; space pushes on you, creating the feeling of weight. Space-time has been replaced by a fabric that can stretch and bend. 

General relativity can describe the extreme warping of space caused by the gravity of a massive dead star – a black hole. When we apply General Relativity to the universe as a whole, one solution naturally describes an expanding cosmos that originated in a fiery “Big Bang”. 

One of the simplest demonstrations using everyday objects to explain Einstein’s General Relativity that even the youngest school-kids can grasp is the bowling ball, marble and bedsheet set-up. Put a bowling ball on a bedsheet and shoot a marble past it. The marble will move in a curved line. A Newtonian physicist would say that the bowling ball exerts a “force” that “pulls” on the marble, making it move in a curved line. A Relativist would say that the ball curves the bedsheet and that the bedsheet “pushes” against the marble. This “simple” demonstration of Einstein’s General Relativity on how gravity shapes the cosmic space-time also explains why the 1919 solar eclipse observation that shows the sun’s gravitational well curving the path of starlight and the advancing perihelion of the planet Mercury that Newtonian physics is at a loss to explain why.  

Einstein’s General Relativity also shows that gravitational fields affect the flow of time – making them slow down which was only demonstrated unequivocably just recently – back in the mid 1990s - when atomic clocks were accurate enough to show the difference. Without correcting the effects of General Relativity, the Global Positioning System or GPS signals from the satellites to your receiving unit would have errors of several parts per billion – which is enough to make them useless. 

Recently, one of the most grandiose experiments to test the limits of Einstein’s General Relativity was the hunt for gravitational waves. Physicists can’t yet put the entire universe on a lab bench, but experimental tests of Einstein’s theories can now be carried out with subatomic precision. Perhaps the most elusive phenomena predicted by General Relativity – but has yet to be observed – are gravitational waves. In theory, a cataclysmic event such as a spiraling merger of two black holes should produce wavelike ripples in space-time that could still be detectible by the time they reach planet Earth. Two Earth-based observatories, Advanced LIGO and Advanced VIRGO at the University of Pisa in Italy, will look for disturbances as small as a hundred-millionth the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

Will There Be An Increase In Annular Solar Eclipses?

Though currently relatively rare, will there be an increase of occurrences of annular solar eclipses in the future?

By: Ringo Bones 

When it comes to total solar eclipses, annular solar eclipses offer little, if any, importance to earthbound astronomers despite of its relative rarity in occurrence. I mean when was the last time an annular solar eclipse made headline news or was used to verify an astrophysical hypothesis? And the only well-photographed annular solar eclipsed was the one that occurred over the North African desert back in December 1955. But believe it or not, annular solar eclipses could occur more frequently in the future because the Earth’s Moon is moving farther away from us. 

Ever since its formation and held in orbit, our Moon had been moving farther away from us because the tidal friction it caused is slowing down planet earth’s rotation for several billion years. Currently, the Moon is orbiting 240,000 miles or 384,400 away from us and when it was newly formed, it was actually 10 times closer and a day on Earth only lasted 2 to 3 hours. But back then, the Earth was rotating faster and the tides were more than a thousand feet high according to unearthed geological evidences. But over time, tidal friction caused by the Moon orbiting the Earth slowed the planet’s rotation to what it is today – 24 hours. 

Ever since the Apollo 11 astronauts installed that quartz retro-reflector on the Moon back in July 20, 1969 that allowed precise laser measurements of the Earth-Moon distance down to the nearest fractions of an inch or millimeter, we have known for sometime now that the Moon is moving away from us at a rate of 2 to 3 centimeters per year. And it is only a matter of time that when a total solar eclipse occurs, the Moon is now too far away from the Earth’s surface to fully cover the Sun – thus the increased frequency of annular solar eclipses.