Planets

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares38 Views

    There Might Be More Than One Way to Make a Planet

    by

    Astronomers have found evidence of a process that supports an alternative, more rapid approach to planetary formation, more top down than bottom up.When it comes to making a planet, astronomers have long subscribed to what Cassandra Hall, an astronomer at the University of Georgia’s Center for Simulational Physics, refers to as the “bottom up” approach: The gas and dust swirling around a young star slowly clumps together over millions of years, and its gravity shapes it into a rounded object.But a discovery by Dr. Hall and her colleagues, published in the journal Nature this month, suggests that the picture might be more complex.In a star system 508 light-years from Earth, the researchers found conditions that support an alternative “top down” approach to planet formation, in which the fertile material circling a young star rapidly collapses into a planet. The mechanism, known as gravitational instability, could explain the existence of mysterious, massive worlds known to follow wide orbits around relatively young stars.“There’s never been real, hard evidence of it happening before,” Dr. Hall wrote in an email. “We found it!”The cosmic matter stirring around an infant star is ripe with planet-forming potential. The matter is known as a protoplanetary disk, and its rotation is generally driven by the gravity of its host star. But if that disk gets large enough, it can be influenced by its own gravity, causing the young star system to become unstable. Regions of higher density in the disk emerge in the form of spiral arms, similar to the shape of spinning clouds in a hurricane.“The star would be like the eye of the storm,” said Jess Speedie, a graduate student at the University of Victoria in Canada who led the study under the supervision of Ruobing Dong, an astrophysicist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Voyager 1, After Major Malfunction, Is Back From the Brink, NASA Says

      by

      The farthest man-made object in space had been feared lost forever after a computer problem in November effectively rendered the 46-year-old probe useless.Several months after a grave computer problem seemed to spell the end for Voyager 1, which for nearly a half century had provided data on the outer planets and the far reaches of the solar system, NASA announced on Thursday that it had restored the spacecraft to working order.“The spacecraft has resumed gathering information about interstellar space,” NASA said in its announcement about Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object in space.Since the problem surfaced in November, engineers had been working to diagnose and resolve the issue, a tedious and lengthy process complicated by the fact that it takes almost two days to send and receive information from Voyager 1, which was the first man-made object ever to enter interstellar space and is currently more than 15 billion miles from Earth.The space community had been holding its breath since last year as the prospect of fixing the aging probe appeared as dire as ever.In February, Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager mission project manager, said the problem, which hindered Voyager 1’s ability to send coherent engineering and science data back to Earth, was “the most serious issue” the probe had faced since she began leading the mission in 2010.Voyager 1 and its twin probe, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 on a mission to explore the outer planets. NASA capitalized on a rare alignment in the solar system that enabled the probes to visit the four of the outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — by using the gravity of each to swing to the next.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Why Are We Obsessed With Saturn’s Return? Here’s What Astrology Says.

      by

      In the last month, the planet has figured in new releases by SZA, Kacey Musgraves and Ariana Grande. But for the astrologically inclined, what does a “Saturn return” signify?In two months, Alejandra Herrera will hit a milestone dreaded by many in their late 20s: her 30th birthday. While she has mixed feelings about “adulting,” she at least feels grounded about the whole ordeal — she is, after all, an earth sign.“I’ve been feeling like this whole new rebirth lately,” Ms. Herrera, a Taurus from East Los Angeles, said. “As an ex-people pleaser, I just feel like my 30s are going be, like, a new beginning, where I’ll finally focus on myself.”The last few years were turbulent for Ms. Herrera, marked by a mix of depression and exhaustion that she says arose from her job as an assistant manager at a vegan Mexican restaurant, which she recently quit.“I feel like I have grown so much,” she said, “and I do feel like I’m in that Saturn return because I turned it all around.”Ms. Herrera isn’t alone in looking to the heavens for answers: For a celestial body 887 million miles from the sun, Saturn sure is hot right now. Just last month, the planet supplied the title of SZA’s latest single and was name-checked in the opening lyric (“My Saturn has returned”) of a newly released Kacey Musgraves song. And on Friday, Ariana Grande released an album featuring a track called “Saturn Returns Interlude.”So what is one’s Saturn return? Depending on your openness to celestial fiddle-faddle, it’s a highly personal astrological phenomenon that matters either a whole lot or very, very little. According to the popular astrology app Co-Star, a person’s Saturn return “occurs when the planet Saturn comes back to the same position in the sky that it was at the time of your birth.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More