A Circumtriple planetary system? Maybe.

 Our solar system contains a single star, our sun. But about half the stars in the sky exist in binary star systems in which two stars orbit each other. In the “Star Wars” movies, Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine orbited the two suns of such a binary star system, what astronomers refer to as a circumbinary orbit. Astronomers worked out the orbital dynamics of such a system decades ago and have found multiple examples of circumbinary orbits.

Although astronomers have discovered thousands of triple star systems, no circumtriple planetary orbit was known before now. Recently, astronomers studying the young triple star system GW Orionis detected a gap in the dust ring surrounding the stars. Such a gap is considered evidence for the existence of a planet.

The research team, led by Jeremy Smallwood, lead author and a recent Ph.D. graduate in astronomy from UNLV, studied multiple possible scenarios for how such a gap might have formed. The three stars can create gravitational torque on the dust ring, causing gaps. A similar situation occurs in the rings of Saturn where gravitational interactions with it dozens of moons cause warps and gaps in the ring structure.

After analyzing all possible scenarios, the team announced that the most likely explanation for the gap is the presence of one or more massive, Jupiter-like planets, whose gravity cleared out the dust. The group found no evidence of smaller, Earth-like planets in the young triple star system.

Artist's of a planet in a triple star system like GW Orionis, Credit NASA

According to Smallwood, current theory says that gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn, should be the first planets to form in a star system. Smaller, rocky planets like Earth and Mars should form later. "It's really exciting because it makes the theory of planet formation really robust," said Smallwood. "It could mean that planet formation is much more active than we thought."

GW Orionis may not be through forming planets. Who knows? Perhaps a one-up of a Tatooine-like planet may still form in its dusty disk.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted with permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

When the Sky Falls, Duck! Newest Book Release.

 My new book is now available from my publisher's Author Page at http://www.4rvpublishing.com/wayne-harris-wyrick.html. 

This is from the introduction:

            "Chicken Little was right.

"Sometimes, the sky really falls.

"Or, at least, strange stuff falls out of the sky. Much of what reaches the surface of our planet from above may be harmless, ordinary, and expected. Most of it actually comes from the surface of the planet, lifted up by way of the wind or the sun’s heat. And as the old saying says, “What goes up, must come down.” All of what falls during various types of weather comes from the surface of our planet. These materials regularly fall from the sky. Rain, hail, sleet, and snow occur every year all over Earth and we hardly ever think about it.

"But some of what comes down was never on Earth before. This stuff comes from space. It might be in the form of dust, huge rocks, frozen ice balls, or various forms of radiation. While much of that stuff won’t hurt us, some downright deadly stuff also falls from the sky."

                                            The full cover, front and back.

Read about lots of strange stuff that falls from the sky. Some of it you won't believe. The book describes everything from common weather-related stuff like rain, sleet, hail, etc. to animals, golf balls, coins, sugar crystals, and stuff that falls regularly all the way from space. 

You'll never look at the sky the same way again. 

Order it now. Hardback $20.99, paperback $13.99.

 

 

Travelling to Mars? Pick the right flight time.

     NASA sent men to the Moon nine times, with astronauts landing and walking on the lunar surface six times. As of this writing, 49 spacecraft have been launched towards Mars by the U. S and other countries. Twenty-five of those, over half, were total or partial failures. Of the others, some simply passed by, snapping pictures along the way. Some went into orbit, and several sent a lander down to the surface to further study the planet in closer detail. No humans have made the trip to Mars, but NASA and some private space launch companies have plans to do so.

Traveling to Mars is hard. Any one of hundreds of systems could fail. One particularly grave risk exists for humans flying to Mars, even if all the systems work perfectly. Space is full of deadly cosmic radiation. An astronaut flying in an unprotected or poorly protected spacecraft is unlikely to survive the trip.

                                                                        Mars, credit NASA

An international team of space scientists conducted a study to answer two questions: Would cosmic radiation pose too grave a threat to human life on a round trip to Mars? And, could the decision of when to launch such a mission help protect astronauts?

The study concluded that spacecraft ferrying humans to Mars can carry sufficient shielding to protect the astronauts from lower levels of radiation. But for maximum survivability, the timing of the launch is critical.

The cosmic radiation of concern comes from two sources. Our sun emits cosmic rays in the form of the solar wind, radiation that shielding can protect astronauts from. More lethal is the radiation from galaxies, supernovas, and all the other inhabitants of space beyond our solar system. While these outside cosmic rays are deadlier, they can generally be deflected by the sun’s magnetic field. That protective envelope is strongest during solar maximum when the sun has more and larger sunspots.

                                                        Cosmic ray sources, credit NASA

The study suggests that such a roundtrip flight to Mars in a well-shielded craft must take no longer than four years, limiting the exposure to cosmic rays, and must occur during solar maximum when the sun’s activity can help protect the astronauts. The scientists involved in the study conclude, “We estimate that a potential mission to Mars should not exceed approximately 4 years, limiting exposure to cosmic radiation. This study shows that while space radiation imposes strict limitations and presents technological difficulties for the human mission to Mars, such a mission is still viable.”

It’s not too late to sign up for a trip to the Red Planet.

 

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

How to Collect Your Own Stardust

 

How would you like to collect some extraterrestrial dust? Scientists estimate that thousands of tons of meteorite dust fall to Earth every day. Passage through our atmosphere reduces most meteoroids to fine particles of dust. That dust then gently falls to the ground or rain washes it out of the sky. That’s your ticket to capturing some meteorite dust.

Many meteorites contain a high proportion of nickel and iron, both of which possess magnetic properties. That property of meteorite dust provides a quick and cheap way to separate it from the far more common terrestrial dust.

Fill a large bowl partly full of water. Use a glass, aluminum, or plastic bowl, not a steel one. Make sure a magnet won’t stick to your bowl. Place it on something that puts it up and away from ground level. This helps reduce the amount of Earth dust that’s kicked up by cars and wind. You need to put it out in the open where it can collect any rain. If you’re doing this during the warmest days of summer, you need to check it pretty regularly. Keep water in the bowl so the dust doesn’t dry out and blow away. You can also collect runoff water from your roof gutter’s downspout.

After several weeks, or after rain, retrieve your bowl. Get a second bowl or container. This doesn’t need to be as large as the first one. If you get rain within a few days after a meteor shower, your chances of capturing meteorite dust increase. You can check the dates of meteor showers at http://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/.  

Meteor Shower, credit NASA/JPL

Wrap a magnet in a plastic bag, and run it over the bottom of the collection bowl. Make sure you pass it over any sediment that you see in the bowl, or, better still, very slightly stir up the sediment.

Micrometeorites in rainwater

Anything that sticks to the magnet is most likely a bit of a meteorite, your own shooting star dust. Now put the plastic-wrapped magnet into the second bowl. Carefully pull the magnet out of the plastic bag. Meteorite dust makes up much of what falls off. You may only get a few sand-grain-sized or smaller pieces. Considering that the bodies orbiting in the Asteroid Belt and comets, the prime sources of meteorite dust on Earth, were created by the same material that made our sun and all the planets at the very beginning of our solar system’s formation, the age of the fragments you collect exceeds four billion years!

The Original Star-Crossed Lovers

 Look at the circular star chart and notice the three bright stars, Vega, Altair, and Deneb that sit in the center of the sky. Together, these three stars make up the Summer Triangle. You really can’t miss them. Vega is the third brightest star visible from Oklahoma. Altair is the ninth brightest we can see, and Deneb is the fifteenth.

Star map for September, The map shows the sky at 11:00 early in the month, 10:00 in the middle of the month, and 9:00 at the end of the month. Map produced using Night Vision star mapping software.

Two factors determine the brightness of a star in our sky: how much light it emits, the star’s luminosity, and the star’s distance. We rate luminosity compared to our sun’s light output. Altair is 17 light-years away and is 10.6 times brighter than our sun. By comparison, the closest star to us beyond the sun is 4.2 light-years away. Vega sits 25 light-years distant and puts out 50 times more light than our sun. Deneb is one of the most distant stars visible to the naked eye at 1467 light-years and shines an incredible 196,000 times brighter than our sun. If Deneb were as close to us as Vega, it would far outshine anything in our sky other than the full Moon and the sun!

Vega and Altair are the main characters in the Japanese Star Festival known as Tanabata. Look at the enhanced star chart showing the center of the sky, and note that Vega and Altair sit on opposite sides of the Milky Way, the great heavenly river in the sky. Vega represents Princess Orihime, a weaver who made beautiful cloth by the sky river. Her father is the God of the Heavens. Because she was so despondent at never finding love, Orihime’s father introduced her to Hikoboshi, a cow herder who lived on the other side of the Milky Way, marked by the star Altair. Their attraction instantly grew great, and they married soon after.

This star map with enhanced Milky Way was produced with SkyGazer star mapping software.

The Sky God soon became frustrated as Orihime stopped weaving her beautiful cloth, and the cows wandered all over the sky because Hikoboshi spent all his time with his beloved wife. To set the heavens right again, Orihime's father forbade the lovers from seeing each other. Orihime begged her father to reconsider. Out of love for his daughter, he allowed the two to spend one day a year together, on the 7^th day of the 7^th month, when Japanese lovers celebrate Tanabata.

But, the river of the sky proved to be too deep. Orihime cried until a flock of magpies formed a bridge for her to cross. They do this every year unless it rains on that day, in which case Orihime and Hikobosi must wait another year to be together. In Japan, young couples pray for nice weather on Tanabata so Orihime and her husband can unite for that one day. The festival is celebrated on July 7^th, but the stars are highest in our sky in September.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.oklahoman.com.

 

The Psychology of Being Watched

 

Ever walk into a room and get that feeling that you are being watched?  If so, do you behave differently?  Are you less likely to, say, throw litter on the ground?  According to Sander van der Linden, a doctor of Experimental Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, you will be a better person when you feel you are being watched.

Van der Linden performed a detailed study on what he calls gaze detection, a “dedicated neural architecture for detecting facial features, including the presence of eyes which served as an important evolutionary tool in ancestral environments, e.g. for detecting lurking enemies.”  According to van der Linden, we are all hard-wired to detect faces and in particular eyes and reading the intent in others eyes.  We had to know if they were the eyes of a friend or a stranger, perhaps even a dangerous enemy.

In modern society, gaze detection manifests as a sort of social referee so that when others are watching us, it has a positive effect on our decision making: we make choices that are better for society as a whole even if it is less desirable or more troublesome for us personally.  Van der Linden’s research specifically studied what people would do with trash in a cafeteria when someone was and wasn’t watching.  Older studies, done in the 1970s showed that people who are being watched are three times more likely to properly dispose of their trash, as opposed to leaving it at the table or on the floor, when they are being watched compared to not being watched.  Studies also showed that it didn’t matter that someone was physically watching; a poster of people with wide-open eyes on the wall had the same effect.  When people perceived a pair of eyes on them, whether real eyes or photographs of them or just figures that resemble eyes, they behaved differently then when they didn’t feel as if they were being watched.

Van der Linden’s studies proved that the same gaze detection behavior could be extended to images that simply looked like a pair of eyes.  In his words, “it doesn’t take a fellow human being to make us feel ‘as if the world were watching,’ not even another living organism. All it takes is an image of a pair of human eyes.” 

 

And it is not an effect that we have conscious control over.  We can’t overcome the behavioral change simply because we are aware of the effect.  It is a hard-wired set of behaviors, providing an evolutionary advantage.  “This makes sense,” van der Linden states “because there is great evolutionary value in being able to quickly assess whether any predators are on the prowl; neural activation of the gaze detection system is fast and automatic. Yet this also means that it’s possible to “trick” the system and this is exactly what the new experiment has shown: objects that merely resemble human eyes are sufficient to trigger human gaze detection and subsequently alter social behavior.”

After reading his study, I wondered how this gaze detection phenomenon might manifest itself in a situation in which a moral choice isn’t an issue.  Could the mere fact that we unconsciously perceive that we are being watched when no action we might do makes any difference except to ourselves make us behave or believe something that we wouldn’t otherwise do so?  When we don’t have a moral choice to make, might gaze detection cause some other psychological effect?  In particular, how might it affect the perceptions of someone sitting in a room at night, especially if they already had a notion that there was paranormal activity occurring in the house?  How might gaze detection affect their behavior?

I posed this question to Dr. van der Linden: Is it possible that this feeling of being watched could, in a situation where one is frightened for whatever reason, cause the person to perceive other imagined phenomena such as hearing sounds or seeing shadows out of the corner of their eyes or just a generally “creeped” out feeling, phenomena that some might assume is caused by a ghost?  This was his response.

 

The question you posed is whether, if a ‘spooky’ environmental cue can be identified, can (gaze detection) also induce behavioural responses other than moral and social adjustments? This is in fact a very interesting research question and I don’t have a straightforward answer. I imagine it can. People often report to feel ‘uncomfortable’ when they know they are being watched, even more so of course when they believe that a deceased individual (or ghost) is watching them. Also, this may very well induce feelings of anxiety and panic.

Emotions that people report while ‘experiencing’ paranormal activity are usually instinctive emotions such as ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’ that, because of how the brain is wired, are very hard to control, in particular because these emotions originate in the oldest part of the brain, which is very well developed, and as a result often overtakes our ability to continue to reason ‘rationally.’ Recent research has in fact indicated that perceptual and sensory experiences (e.g. ‘feeling a presence’ or ‘picking up energy’) are related to the limbic system, the older part of the brain. In fact, research points to the fact that ‘extrasensory experiences’ are particularly common in individuals that have a strong sensitivity to environmental factors. In other words, people that often experience allergies, headaches, other chronic symptoms or a heightened sensitivity to light, sound, touch and smell are particularly prone to experiencing paranormal activity. Individuals with a heightened sensitivity also tend to be female (about 2/3). So people sensitive to environmental conditions react more strongly, in reason and feeling to incoming informational cues from their environment.”

 

Gaze Detection may become one of the causes of reported paranormal phenomena.  I believe that this could become a powerful tool in the paranormal investigator’s arsenal to prove to people that they are NOT being haunted by a ghost, but that rather subtle psychological behaviors are triggered by the presence of photographs, posters or drawings on the wall or even in decorative motifs.  The next time a client tells you that “people always feel a presence in this room” or report sounds or “shadows out of the corner of my eye”, look around.  If the room has lots of photos of deceased Aunt Martha, maybe it’s not her ghost, but merely her eyes that haunt the place.

A $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 Asteroid.

 

During the mid-19^th century, Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, working at an observatory in Naples, discovered nine asteroids, among his other credits. His fifth asteroid, Psyche, was only the 16^th known. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, Psyche would become one of the most unique and interesting asteroid discoveries.

Analysis of Pysche revealed it to have a radius of slightly over 70 miles, with an average density revealing it to be made of almost solid iron and other metals. Astronomers believe that it might be the metallic core of a planet that never fully developed. Scientists estimated its commercial value at $10,000 quadrillion. That's $10,000 followed by 15 zeroes.  It is one of the most valuable objects in the Asteroid Belt, assuming we could ever mine it.

Artist rendering of Asteroid Psyche, credit NASA

However, a recent analysis of Psyche hints that it may be slightly less valuable. Given Psyche’s size and mass, astronomers had estimated it to be 95% iron and other metals, giving it that high estimated value. However, a recent NASA spacecraft’s visit to another asteroid caused a team of researchers led by University of Arizona undergraduate student David Cantillo to reevaluate that estimated value. University of Arizona scientists lead the science team for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to study another asteroid, Bennu. OSIRIS-REx retrieved a sample from Bennu's surface and is now bringing it back to Earth. Bennu turned out to be a rubble pile. It’s a loose collection of rock and dust held together by gravity but not solid.

As Cantillo’s team assessed the known data on Psyche, they realized that it may also be a rubble pile, and is likely only 82.5% metallic. If true, that would drop its commercial mining value to a “mere” $8700 quadrillion.

I think I’d still stake a claim, if only international law allowed it.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 

This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.