Free-floating planets are not bound to any stars, they have been removed from their original home systems.. The new research describes the smallest rogue planet ever discovered, in an astronomical achievement that took Einstein-inspired technology to new heights.
Disease planets, also known as free-floating planets, are not gravitationally tethered to any of the stars, meaning they are literally cared for by interstellar space. It’s kind of weird that these things exist, but rogue planets can be exceptionally common. Research Claimed earlier this year that the galaxy could contain millions of them.
Once the free-floating planets are found, their next journey begins Thrown out of their birthplace by powerful gravitational imagination. And in fact, our own solar system is lost Such as Planet, while Jupiter hovered over the newly formed planet Some 4b in ths depth of spaceBillion years ago. Most rogue planets are not expected to be particularly large, with planetary theories suggesting a weight between 0.3 and 1 The masses of the earth, though they may Included Excludes the size of Jupiter.
Innew Research Published last week in The Astrophysical Journal, A team of astronomers led by Polish reports on the smallest rogue planet ever discovered. His work Good with jibes Idea That most rogue planets are relatively small. As new studies show, the mass of newly discovered thugs is somewhere between 0.3 Earth masses and 2.0 Earth masses (by comparison, Mars is just the end 0.1 Earth mass). But data collected by the Gaia collaboration suggests that it is close to a small number, so it is probably a “sub-earth-mass object” as described by the researchers.
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Free-floating planets can be abundant, but they are notoriously difficult to find. Usually, exoplanets appear when they pass by Host star From our point of view, there is a temporary decrease in luminosity (this is known as the transport method of detection). Should it happen again in a few days, months or years, scientists know they are dealing with an exoplanet bound to its host star. This does not apply to rogue planets, scientists need to rely on another method, predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
It’s called gravitational lensing, and, Like the mode of transport, It involves the connection of two stellar objects from our point of view. But instead of a faint star, the attachment bends the light, creating a temporary ring around the front object.
“If a large object (a star or a planet) passes between an Earth-based observer and a distant source star, its gravitational source can reduce light and focus,” said Prazemak Moroz, lead author of the new study and post. Doctoral California Institute of Technology Scholar, Explained In the statement of the University of Warsaw. “The opportunities for observing microlensing are extremely thin because the three object objects – the source, the lens and the observer – must be almost perfectly aligned. If we observe only one source star, we would have to wait about a million years. To see if the source is microlensed. “
Moroz and his colleagues are members of OGLE (ical optical gravitational lensing experiment), and they used 4.4 feet (1.3-)M) Warso Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The OGLE team is adept at using this technology, having previously discovered many rogue planets. To enhance the peculiarity of the investigation, the team pointed their binoculars at the bulge of the Milky Way’s star-gad galaxy, which led to the discovery of a microlensing event, named OGEL-2016-BLG-1928.
In addition to the gravitational light ring, astronomers considered another important factor: the duration of the lensing event. Really large scale objects can be created Microlensing events that last for days, while some rogue planets can produce events that last for a few hours. These criteria are important because the duration can be used to estimate the set of lensing object objects.
Because OGLE-2016-BLG-1928 lasted Just 42 minutes, that probably means we’re dealing with a relatively low mass object. Of the estimated size of the object somewhere between Mars and Earth, the authors say it is about three times the size of Mars. aT 42 minutes, that is According to a study with researchers, “the shortest-lived microlens ever discovered.” Adding: “The properties of OGLE-2016-BLG-1928 put it on the edge of the current dish’s current limit to detect short-term microlensing events and highlight the challenges that will be used by future surveys for very short-term applications.”
It is possible that this exoplanet actually does Orbit A star, but scientists Couldn’t find it. Or at least, they couldn’t find the star Within 8 AU of the budget Being 1 au Average distance from The sun from the earth. Andrej Udalsky, chief investigator of the OGLE project, said the new paper shows that “low-mass free-floating planets can be detected and characterized using ground-based telescopes.”
Sadly, all this we know about this little lost Planet. Other information, Such as its chemical composition or temperature, cannot be known at this time due to astronomical limitations. Hopefully we will learn those details In the future, as we continue to examine these interesting objects and objects.
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