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Astronomers were stunned by the sudden disappearance of an exoplanet candidate, Fomalhaut b, as if it exploded out of existence. Now they think it was an explosion the whole time, rather the cloud left the massive collision of two asteroids.
What astronomers thought was a planet beyond our solar system now seems to have disappeared from view. Instead, Hubble may have witnessed a cosmic collision that only occurs once every 200,000 years: https://t.co/UQmmJz4LJo pic.twitter.com/irVpumwa4o
– Hubble (@NASAHubble) April 20, 2020
Astronomers announced the discovery of an exoplanet candidate, Fomalhaut b, in 2008. Located 25 light years away, the cosmic body was found based on data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004 and 2006.
But then, the cosmic body apparently disappeared in a fictional environment that NASA has compared to Superman’s planet Krypton. But everyone knows that Krypton exploded, which is not the case with Fomalhaut b, as scientists are still looking for a plausible explanation.
Now, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states that what Hubble observed was not a planet but rather “a dispersing dust cloud, produced by a massive collision between two planetesimals.” So researchers think that what was thought to be a planet beyond our solar system was actually dust caused by the massive collision of two asteroids.
The study’s lead author, András Gáspár, of the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, explained that such collisions are extremely rare and “we believe we were in the right place at the right time to have witnessed such an unlikely event with the space telescope NASA Hubble. “
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The study is based on observations of the body that led to its discovery. Most exoplanets are found through phenomena such as transit that depends on light sources such as the star of a planetary system. But Fomalhaut b itself was bright in visible light, something that would be unusual for such a small planet as it would not be able to reflect the light from its star. Furthermore, another strange peculiarity was that Fomalhaut b was not visible in the infrared spectrum.
These reasons led the researchers to believe that the additional brightness came from a dust cloud around the planet that could be the result of a collision. A subsequent study led to the belief that a planet never existed in the first place and that it was dust the entire time, which was even confirmed when the planet mysteriously disappeared in Hubble’s observations in 2014.
So researchers think Fomalhaut b is actually an expanding dust cloud that previously consisted of particles too small to be detected by Hubble. But now, the particles are further apart, expanding to a size greater than Earth’s orbit around the Sun so that Hubble can detect them individually.
Describing the Fomalhaut star system as the latest testing laboratory, co-author George Rieke of the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona said: “We have evidence of such collisions in other systems, but nothing of this magnitude has been observed in our system. solar. This is a model of how planets destroy each other. “
SEE ALSO: Astronomers think the Milky Way could be a catapult star to the outer halo
Image credit: ESA / NASA / M. Kornmesser
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