Astronomy and Planetary Science Thread

Until a planet is found any speculation is valid as long as they meet the conditions.
According to orbital mechanics and multi-body interaction Planet 9 is supposed to be 5-10 Earth masses. Any number of objects in that "same" "orbit" range is possible as long as the sum of masses is the same. Anymore and there would be an imbalance causing rejections etc. So there could be multiple or a single large planetary system with multiple moons.
 
SwRI study supports theory that asteroids Bennu and Ryugu are part of the Polana family

A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) review of data collected from near-Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu supports the hypothesis that they were originally part of the Polana collisional family in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The study compared spectroscopy data from Polana with spacecraft and laboratory data from Bennu and Ryugu samples, discovering similarities in their near-infrared spectrum sufficient to support the theory that they originate from the same parent asteroid.
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www.swri.org

SwRI study supports theory that asteroids Bennu and Ryugu are part of the Polana family | Southwest Research Institute

Spectral data of main belt asteroid Polana matches returned samples of near-Earth asteroids
www.swri.org www.swri.org
 
FighterJock said:
Planet Y might be be like Europa and be covered in ice as it is so far away from the Sun. Though it is an interesting discovery none the less, and might prove that the Solar System may have had many more Earth like planets in the past.
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It's suggested that both Nine and Y formed much closer to the Sun and were flung into the outer realms in the chaotic early stages of the solar system's formation because materials are too sparse out in the Kuiper Belt and beyond to form full-sized planets. Nine is thought to be a mini-Neptune (more that than a super-earth) but whatever Y could be, it's far too soon to guess with any confidence. How close to the sun it might have formed will determine its composition.

A super-Europa might be the case but without the kind of tidal heating that Europa is subjected to, the ice shell might go all the way to the rock with water only around hot spots rather than making a single global ocean. I think Y might have much more volatiles than Mars, which lost its water over time close to the sun while Y would have been far away.

On the other hand, Y might be a super-Titan if it formed a bit further out than the terrestrial planets.

Possibly in a few years, or my lifetime I hope, telescopes might capture a few pixels from Nine or Y, and with them, a spectrum. Fingers crossed!
 
Flyaway said:
Forget Planet X! Beyond Neptune, There Might Be An Earth-Sized Planet Y



…



www.iflscience.com

Forget Planet X! Beyond Neptune, There Might Be An Earth-Sized Planet Y

A warp in the outer Solar System could be explained by a new, unseen planet.
www.iflscience.com www.iflscience.com

Related paper:

Measuring the Mean Plane of the Distant Kuiper Belt

In the absence of any unseen planetary-mass bodies in the outer solar system, the mean plane of the distant Kuiper belt should be the same as the plane orthogonal to the angular momentum vector of the solar system -- the invariable plane. Here, we measure the mean plane of the non-resonant...
arxiv.org arxiv.org
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An Earth-sized planet should be easily detected by its infrared signature, even if it was anchored in an orbit steeply inclined to the plane of the solar system. Such a large body must have some heat inside it because of gravitational pressure.
 
Or otherwise Planet Y may not have cooled down internally yet and so you may be correct about being able to detect it though IR telescopes Justo Miranda. It all depends on just how thick the crust is so that we can detect the heat in the first place, yet another method could be to send a New Horizons style probe out to where Planet Y may be and get close up images of it.
 
WASP-76b, the planet where it rains molten iron:


WASP-76b: The Planet Where It Rains Molten Iron
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Ever wondered what extreme weather on another planet looks like? Meet WASP-76b, an ultra-hot Jupiter located 640 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. This gas giant is almost twice the size of Jupiter, orbits its star in just 1.8 days, and experiences temperatures over 2,400°C (4,350°F) — hot enough to vaporize metals.​
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On the day side, metals like iron evaporate into the atmosphere, then supersonic winds whip them to the night side, where they condense and fall as molten iron rain. Its tidally locked orbit and blazing star make WASP-76b one of the most extreme and fascinating planets ever discovered.​
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#wasp76b #exoplanets #spaceweatherhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKGyLzEgmzNbb1Eyct1XZNw/join
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00:00 Intro
00:05 Discovery & Basics
00:52 Extreme Environment
02:02 What Makes it Special
02:59 Outro
Click to expand...
 
Exactly Justo Miranda, WASP-76b could be THE closest place to Hell that there is in the Galaxy yet found in recent times. Who would have thought that we would have detected a planet like WASP-76b in our lifetimes.
 
FighterJock said:
Exactly Justo Miranda, WASP-76b could be THE closest place to Hell that there is in the Galaxy yet found in recent times. Who would have thought that we would have detected a planet like WASP-76b in our lifetimes.
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I was surprised by the phenomenon of hot Jupiter’s, their existence meant that in their spiral fall towards the star they had swept away all the other inner rocky worlds that could have supported life, first they kill the little ones and then they commit suicide, and they are not an exception but something usual. I thought I had an open mind but everything I read about astronomy is beyond me.

Is anything known about the gravitational mechanism that causes these worlds to begin their migration into the system?
 
Look at Jupiter for example. Jupiter went through periods of migration early on in the Solar Systems history so it could have had many more Earthlike planets before they were kicked out and I think that Planet Y could have been the last and latest example of this situation.
 
FighterJock said:
Look at Jupiter for example. Jupiter went through periods of migration early on in the Solar Systems history so it could have had many more Earthlike planets before they were kicked out and I think that Planet Y could have been the last and latest example of this situation.
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I understand: an entanglement of orbits, without collision, in which one of the planets is ejected to the outside and another loses orbital speed and falls towards the star.
 
FighterJock said:
Exactly Justo Miranda, WASP-76b could be THE closest place to Hell that there is in the Galaxy yet found in recent times. Who would have thought that we would have detected a planet like WASP-76b in our lifetimes.
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Given that there's iron-rain present that must mean the interior of WASP-76b is so hot that its' core is at the very least partially liquified and being dredged up to the "Surface" by powerful convection currents.
 
NMaude said:
Given that there's iron-rain present that must mean the interior of WASP-76b is so hot that its' core is at the very least partially liquified and being dredged up to the "Surface" by powerful convection currents.
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The same phenomenon has been observed on Venus because it lacks the Earth's plate tectonics system.
 
Justo Miranda said:
The same phenomenon has been observed on Venus because it lacks the Earth's plate tectonics system.
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I'm not sure you can equate the two as IMO they're two very different things, Jupiter for example is definitively known now (Courtesy of the Juno space-probe) to have a solid core (despite being about four times hotter than the surface of the Sun due to the stupendous pressures there). But with WASP-76b being so close to its' parent star that its' core is clearly considerably hotter than Jupiter's core due to tidal-stresses and solar-heating its' core is clearly partially (If not entirely) liquified and so is being dredged to the "Surface" by powerful convection currents.

Talking about gas-giants Anton Petrov has released a new video concerning the discovery of a new moon orbiting Uranus and the solution of a major mystery:


Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about Uranus and its new moon S/2025 U1
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/2025_U_1https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...n.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/2025_U_1&v=GBFyU_rSJlg
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...ey.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL115660&v=GBFyU_rSJlg
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2403981121&v=GBFyU_rSJlg
https://www.stsci.edu/contents/news-r...
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...ews-releases/2025/news-2025-018&v=GBFyU_rSJlg

Uranus videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZFdYXvVcdo
• Exciting and Unexpected Discoveries From U...

• Major Discoveries From Uranus: Strange Ano...

• More Moons Found Around Uranus and Neptune... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIKbnYgdYe8
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0:00 Uranus updates
0:45 New moon S/2025 U1
3:10 Heat mystery finally solved
5:35 Magnetic field and how it's formed (probably)
7:50 Moon darkening and weird dust
10:30 Conclusions and possible missions?
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#uranus #solarsystem #nasa
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NMaude said:
I'm not sure you can equate the two as IMO they're two very different things, Jupiter for example is definitively known now (Courtesy of the Juno space-probe) to have a solid core (despite being about four times hotter than the surface of the Sun due to the stupendous pressures there). But with WASP-76b being so close to its' parent star that its' core is clearly considerably hotter than Jupiter's core due to tidal-stresses and solar-heating its' core is clearly partially (If not entirely) liquified and so is being dredged to the "Surface" by powerful convection currents.

Talking about gas-giants Anton Petrov has released a new video concerning the discovery of a new moon orbiting Uranus and the solution of a major mystery:

Click to expand...
I think the scientific term is "convection cells," something like the lava plumes that originate from Earth's volcanoes.
 
A star tried to eat a blackhole and it went boom, from Anton Petrov:


Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about an exploding star that tried to swallow a black hole (SN 2023zkd)
Links:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10...https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...le/10.3847/1538-4357/adea38/pdf&v=7KAurwygjgc
#blackhole #supernova #astronomy
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0:00 New type of a supernova - SN2023zkd
0:49 Supernova can be very different in their origin
1:30 How this was found
2:30 Why this was so strange
5:05 So what this probably is
6:20 Why did it get bright again?
8:40 Implications and conclusions
9:35 Summary of the events
11:00 What's next?
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A fireball meteor spotted over southwestern Japan on Aug. 19 was the most powerful recorded in the region since data collection began in 1988, according to NASA.

The fireball occurred over the Pacific Ocean, about 80 kilometers southeast of the Osumi Peninsula in Kagoshima Prefecture, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.

The meteor is estimated to have released enough energy to equal 1.6 kilotons of TNT—about one-tenth the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The energy released was much less than the 441 kilotons from the 17-meter asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.

Still, Japan’s recent meteorological event marks a significant milestone in regional records.

The meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 75,600 kph, according to Daichi Fujii, curator at the Hiratsuka City Museum in Kanagawa Prefecture.

Witnesses across the main island of Kyushu reported seeing a bright flash and those in Kagoshima heard a sonic boom.
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A recent study has some results concerning Ceres' ability in the past have been released, from Anton Petrov:


Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about new discoveries about Ceres
Links:
https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1...https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.adt3283&v=lxF7IbatJXw
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/na...https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...ng-energy-to-fuel-habitability/&v=lxF7IbatJXw
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...ey.com/doi/10.1029/2024AV001362&v=lxF7IbatJXw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(...)
https://www.mps.mpg.de/dwarf-planet-c...https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...res-origin-in-the-asteroid-belt&v=lxF7IbatJXw
#ceres #astronomy #asteroid
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0:00 Ceres updates
0:40 History of its discovery
1:45 Strange first findings - briney water and cryovolcanism
3:45 Strange bright objects and exosphere
4:50 Organic molecules and their origins
8:50 New study - chance of habitability
11:15 Why this matters for astrobiology
12:50 Future missions and conclusions
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View: https://youtu.be/ZTX64qW_LK0


The problem with Polaris, the North Star.
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For centuries, we've relied on the North Star to guide us across the Earth. A static, bright beacon in the northern sky, Polaris serves as a reliable method of navigation… or does it? This star proves far more challenging to study than it initially appears. From its distance, to its secret companions, we’re unravelling the mysteries of Polaris - mysteries that only grow stranger the closer we look.

▀▀▀▀▀▀

0:00 The Problem with Polaris
1:04 Finding the North Star
2:08 Triple Star System
4:36 Cepheids: Standard Candles
6:34 Polaris Aa Is Weird
11:54 Are Our Models Wrong?
16:06 The Age Paradox
18:18 Polaris Won't Be the North Star Forever
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The Wow signal has been reanalysed. Software error has been ruled out, as has human origin, it was definitely astrophysical in origin.

Data from 1977 were hard to parse, given the lack of modern computer systems, but volunteers from the Big Ear Observatory in Delaware, Ohio, where the original signal was collected, preserved the records after the observatory was shut down in 1998 and turned into a golf course. Using modern computing technology, the volunteers ran over 75,000 pages of original data through an optical character recognition routine, with visual help from human validators, allowing in-depth computational analysis of the original signal for the first time.

This more detailed analysis led to slight changes in three of the signal's main characteristics. It narrowed the part of the sky the signal could have emanated from, with a corresponding increase in the statistical certainty of its location by two thirds. Its frequency was also tweaked slightly, but importantly, from 1420.4556 MHz to 1420.726 MHz. While that might not seem like much, the source would have to be spinning rapidly faster to create that much of a frequency difference.

Potentially the most interesting update to the signal was a new estimate of its flux density (i.e. its strength). In the language of radio astronomy, the new value is 250 Janskys (which are 10-26 watts per m2 per Hz), whereas previous estimates put it somewhere between 54 and 212 Janskys, so the signal was actually notably higher than original estimated.
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…

That means the signal was likely astronomical in origin, though the most likely explanation still isn't extraterrestrials. The most likely culprit is a HI cloud—clouds of neutral atomic hydrogen floating in space that have been known to produce narrow-band signals that look similar to the "Wow!" signal, but never on anything approaching the power levels seen that one time in 1977.
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phys.org

The 'Wow!' signal gets an update: It was even stronger than we thought

The "Wow!" signal has been etched with a red marker in the memory of advocates for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) since its unveiling in 1977. To this day, it remains one of the most enigmatic radio frequency signals ever found. Now a new paper from a wide collection of...
phys.org phys.org

Related paper:

Arecibo Wow! II: Revised Properties of the Wow! Signal from Archival Ohio SETI Data

The Wow! Signal, detected in 1977 by the Ohio State University SETI project, remains one of the most intriguing unexplained radio transients. The most recent significant revision of its properties took place in the late 1990s; however, further advances were limited by readily available data from...
arxiv.org arxiv.org
 
Good to see that they have finally saw sense and said that the Wow signal was not human origin, I had always had thoughts about the origin of the Wow signal being extraterrestrial in origin anyway from when I had first read about it.
 
Back to our 'Local Bubble', spawned by a bunch of super-nova explosions...

IIRC, Sol-system entered the region about five (5) million years ago.

I'd suggest this offers yet-another solution to 'Where Are They ??' paradox.

Like residents fleeing the inexorable advance of huge wild-fire, any self-respecting ETs will have long since packed their bags and moved away before property values combust. I doubt their tech would play well with the 'fire-wall' and probable 'Super-Carrington' disturbances...

FWIW, the much reduced density within 'Bubble' means a 'Bussard Ramjet' or similar reliant on 'average' interstellar environment would probably be starved...
 
An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers at University of Galway, has made the unexpected discovery of a new planet.

Detected at an early stage of formation around a young analog of our own Sun, the planet is estimated to be about 5 million years-old and most likely a gas giant of similar size to Jupiter.

The study, which was led by Leiden University, University of Galway and University of Arizona, has been published in the international journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The ground-breaking discovery was made using one of the world’s most advanced observatories - the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
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Nik said:
FWIW, the much reduced density within 'Bubble' means a 'Bussard Ramjet' or similar reliant on 'average' interstellar environment would probably be starved...
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True--though that would likely be a better brake. Maybe less debris for starships to hit.

The deal with a golf course getting that property has me steamed. Let the duffers go play somewhere else.

Solar findings

New telescope design?

Astronomy stories

Looking for ET

The Hand
www.thenews.com.pk

NASA snaps gigantic ‘Hand of God’ extending across space

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has unveiled stunning pictures of “Hand of God” stretching across 150 light-years of space that is created by one of the galaxy’s...
www.thenews.com.pk www.thenews.com.pk
 
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NASA’s New SPHEREx Mission Observes Interstellar Comet

August 25, 2025

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 7 to Aug. 15. The SPHEREx team has been analyzing insights from this data, and a research note is available online. The agency’s SPHEREx is one of NASA’s space telescopes observing this comet, together providing more information about its size, physical properties, and chemical makeup. For example, NASA’s Webb and Hubble space telescopes also recently observed the comet. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency’s ongoing mission to find, track, and better understand solar system objects.

science.nasa.gov

NASA’s New SPHEREx Mission Observes Interstellar Comet - NASA Science

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 7 to
science.nasa.gov science.nasa.gov

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Observes Interstellar Comet

August 25, 2025

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 6, with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The research team has been analyzing insights from Webb’s data, and a preprint is available online. Webb is one of NASA’s space telescopes observing this comet, together providing more information about its size, physical properties, and chemical makeup. For example, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the recently launched SPHEREx mission have also observed the comet. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency’s ongoing mission to find, track, and better understand solar system objects.

science.nasa.gov

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Observes Interstellar Comet - NASA Science

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 6, with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The research team has been
science.nasa.gov science.nasa.gov
 
JWST detection of a carbon dioxide dominated gas coma surrounding interstellar object 3I/ATLAS

Preprint of our article submitted to ApJ Letters on 2025-08-25, describing the first results from our JWST NIRSpec campaign for 3I/ATLAS, at an inbound heliocentric distance of 3.32 au.
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JWST detection of a carbon dioxide dominated gas coma surrounding interstellar object 3I/ATLAS

Preprint of our article submitted to ApJ Letters on 2025-08-25, describing the first results from our JWST NIRSpec campaign for 3I/ATLAS, at an inbound heliocentric distance of 3.32 au.
zenodo.org zenodo.org

SPHEREx Discovery of Strong Water Ice Absorption and an Extended Carbon Dioxide Coma in 3I/ATLAS

 
www.esa.int

Webb investigates complex heart of a cosmic butterfly

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed new details in the core of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302. From the dense, dusty torus that surrounds the star hidden at the centre of the nebula to its outflowing jets, the Webb observations reveal many new discoveries that paint a...
www.esa.int
 
LIGO Scientific Collaboration Bluesky [Aug 25]

Results from the first part of our fourth LIGO KAGRA observing run are out today!

We're pleased to share the largest catalog of gravitational-wave observations with more discoveries of black holes and neutron stars
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arXiv: GWTC-4.0: Updating the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog with Observations from the First Part of the Fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing Run

Version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0) adds new candidates detected by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observatories through the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a: 2023 May 24 15:00:00 to 2024 January 16 16:00:00 UTC) and a preceding engineering run.

In this new data, we find 128 new compact binary coalescence candidates that are identified by at least one of our search algorithms with a probability of astrophysical origin and that are not vetoed during event validation. We also provide detailed source property measurements for 86 of these that have a false alarm rate.

Based on the inferred component masses, these new candidates are consistent with signals from binary black holes and neutron star-black hole binaries (GW230518_125908 and GW230529_181500). Median inferred component masses of binary black holes in the catalog now range from (GW230627_015337) to (GW231123_135430), while GW231123_135430 was probably produced by the most massive binary observed in the catalog.

For the first time we have discovered binary black hole signals with network signal-to-noise ratio exceeding 30, GW230814_230901 and GW231226_01520, enabling high-fidelity studies of the waveforms and astrophysical properties of these systems.

Combined with the 90 candidates included in GWTC-3.0, the catalog now contains 218 candidates with and not otherwise vetoed, doubling the size of the catalog and further opening our view of the gravitational-wave Universe.
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Funny to think they haven’t even released much of Gaia’s data yet.

www.esa.int

Gaia proves our skies are filled with chains of starry gatherings

In the past decade, the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has revealed the nature, history, and behaviour of billions of stars. Our pioneering stargazer has reshaped our view of the skies around us like no other, revealing that star clusters are more connected than expected over vast distances.
www.esa.int
 
Flyaway said:
JWST detection of a carbon dioxide dominated gas coma surrounding interstellar object 3I/ATLAS



JWST detection of a carbon dioxide dominated gas coma surrounding interstellar object 3I/ATLAS

Preprint of our article submitted to ApJ Letters on 2025-08-25, describing the first results from our JWST NIRSpec campaign for 3I/ATLAS, at an inbound heliocentric distance of 3.32 au.
zenodo.org zenodo.org

SPHEREx Discovery of Strong Water Ice Absorption and an Extended Carbon Dioxide Coma in 3I/ATLAS

Click to expand...
How do scientists know that a comet is of interstellar origin and that it does not come from the Oort Cloud? Can't an object from Oort take a parabolic trajectory? What kind of trajectories do Oort objects have? Are they orbiting the Sun, or are they simply forming an unstable sphere?
 
How old is Jupiter? Meteorite 'raindrops' help scientists pin down gas giant's age

Researchers from Japan's Nagoya University and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) have determined how mysterious molten "raindrops" in meteorites formed — and used that information to date Jupiter's formation.

The raindrops are called chondrules. They're strange spherical droplets of molten rock just 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters wide, found in a specific type of meteorite called a chondrite. Until now, no one knew how their round shape formed.
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…

In addition, the model helped date Jupiter's formation more precisely, to 4.6 billion years ago.

"The model also shows that chondrule production coincides with Jupiter’s intense accumulation of nebular gas to reach its massive size," said Turrini. "As meteorite data tell us that peak chondrule formation took place 1.8 million years after the solar system began, this is also the time at which Jupiter was born."
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www.space.com

How old is Jupiter? Meteorite 'raindrops' help scientists pin down gas giant's age

Mysterious spherical droplets in meteorites aren’t just cosmic oddities. They’re evidence of planetary formation.
www.space.com www.space.com

Related paper:

www.nature.com

Chondrule formation by collisions of planetesimals containing volatiles triggered by Jupiter’s formation - Scientific Reports

Chondrules are spherical or subspherical particles of crystallized or partially crystallized liquid silicates that constitute large-volume fractions of most chondritic meteorites. Chondrules typically range $$0.1-2\,$$ mm in size and solidified with cooling rates of...
www.nature.com www.nature.com
 
Dr. Becky has a video out about thing we don't know about exoplanets:


The things we don’t know are what drives science forward. A lack of knowledge, of not knowing the answer to a question is what pushes scientists to get more data, or design a new experiment. And in the case of astrophysics, those new experiments are often entirely new observatories, either on the ground or up in space, the design of which is driven by the gaps in our knowledge. So I love it when a paper is published summarising all the things we don’t yet know about a topic, and this month we saw that for exoplanet research. Exoplanets are planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy the Milky Way, we currently know of just under 6000 of them, some being the only planet around a star known, and some being in multiple planet systems just like the solar system. We’ve found everything from hot Jupiters close into their stars, to super-Earths that might be habitable since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1995. In this video I thought it would be fun to go quick fire through the 17 different knowledges gaps, the things we still don’t know, summarised in this paper by Stapelfeldt & Mamajek - to figure out what’s next for exoplanet science, including the search for life out there in the Universe....​
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Stapelfeldt & Mamajek (2025) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.18665https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbU1nYUxPRE1PTEdxbzNGZkYtMG52MDlJSVRqQXxBQ3Jtc0tsLXhXcDhKci1XNmlqSmNCdURCWENUQmlGUXNqVVctWk10OERGZlMtN3dGd1ZrazMyUEM5NGJoOF9Pa1dVWUZ4dGZTRF9CS1RpMHR4cEV5d2dLeTRoUTFadVhiUVNSV282amJxY1hiQk9wUWtCUVhoQQ&q=https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.18665&v=Q5o8b_ODjOY
Click to expand...
My previous video on the history of exoplanet research - • The discovery of the first exoplanet | Th...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_bJXZuREOA

My previous video on the Habitable Worlds Observatory - • Can we take a picture of an Earth-like pla...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2JIkAPcdnU

My previous video on zodiacal dust - • How fast does the Sun orbit the Milky Way?...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noT8kkdl8hE

My previous video on the closest exoplanets to Earth - • Every "closest EXOPLANET to Earth" from 19...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QGAfyrEing
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00:00 Introduction
01:30 Spectroscopic observations of the atmospheres of small exoplanets.
02:40 Modelling exoplanet atmospheres
03:20 Spectral signature retrieval
03:55 Planetary system architectures: occurrence rates for exoplanets of all sizes
04:40 Occurrence rates and uncertainties for temperate rocky planets
05:05 Yield estimation for exoplanet direct imaging missions
05:55 Intrinsic properties of known exoplanet host stars
06:30 Mitigating stellar jitter
06:55 Dynamical confirmation of exoplanet candidates
07:40 Observations and analyses of direct imaging targets
08:15 Understanding the abundance and distribution of exozodiacal dust
09:05 Measurements of accurate transiting planet radii
09:40 Properties of atoms, molecules and aerosols in exoplanet atmospheres
10:05 Exoplanet interior structure and material properties
10:30 Quantify and mitigate the impacts of stellar contamination
11:15 Complete the inventory of remotely observable exoplanet biosignatures
11:45 Understanding planet formation and disk properties
12:56 Bloopers
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Edit: It just occurred to me that the first exoplanet was discovered 30 years ago in 1995.
 
"How do scientists know that a comet is of interstellar origin and..."
Velocity. This exceeds Sol's escape velocity, showing its 'orbit' is hyperbolic, un-bound.

IIRC, even Oort object jogged by any as-yet un-spotted dwarf or minor planet would arrive much slower.
And then there's Scholz' Star. Actually a tiny red-dwarf + brown-dwarf binary...

Scholz's Star - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Seems any Oort objects the pair jogged onto 'Sol-ward' paths by that pass ~70k-years BP will not arrive for best part of two million years !!
Any of its Oort cloud out-riders would have long since swooped through. FWIW, our oceans, glaciation and subduction may have swallowed such evidence, but there seems a lack of 'big' impact craters of that recent era. Or evidence of an ice-sheet impact. Struck 'Ring of Fire' triggering 74k-year BP Toba mega-eruption ? Very implausible...
whimsy:
How old is Jupiter's 'Big Red Spot' ??
/

ps: What if a few of our 'Scholz-nudged' Oort objects came early ??
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/9fk9us/coming_of_age_kid_no_more_hunters_night
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/9fk9us/coming_of_age_kid_no_more_hunters_night/
 

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