JWST Sees Newly Forming Planets Swimming in Water

This artist’s concept portrays the star PDS 70 and its inner protoplanetary disk. New measurements by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected water vapor at distances of less than 100 million miles from the star – the region where rocky, terrestrial planets may be forming. This is the first detection of water in the terrestrial region of a disk already known to host two or more protoplanets, one of which is shown at upper right. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

One big question about Earth’s formation is, where did all the water come from? New data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows newly forming planets in a system 370 light-years away are surrounded by water vapor in their orbits. Although astronomers have detected water vapor in protoplanetary disks before, this is the first time it’s been seen where the planets are forming.

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One in Ten Stars Ate a Jupiter (Or Bigger)

This illustration shows a Jupiter-mass exoplanet getting perilously close to its star. Eventually, the star will engulf the planet, something that happens in many stars' lives as they leave the main sequence. Image Credit: C. Carreau / ESA.

In space, cataclysmic events happen to stars all the time. Some explode as supernovae, some get torn apart by black holes, and some suffer other fates. But when it comes to planets, stars turn the tables. Then it’s the stars who get to inflict destruction.

Expanding red giant stars consume and destroy planets that get too close, and a new study takes a deeper look at the process of stellar engulfment.

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Astronomers Watch a Star Gulp Down One of its Planets

A distant Sun-like star will leave the main sequence behind, ending its life of fusion. Then it'll expand into a red giant, totally destroying its four planets. Image Credit: fsgregs Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

A star like our Sun only shines the way it does because of its intrinsic balance. Stars are massive, and the inward gravitational pressure from all that mass acts to contain the outward thermal pressure from all the fusion inside the star. They are in equilibrium, or on the main sequence if you like, and the result is a spherical mass of plasma that holds its shape and emits radiation with relative stability for billions of years. Like our Sun.

But eventually, stars teeter over the edge and lose their balance. Stars like our Sun will expand, take on a malevolent red hue, and begin to destroy anything that comes within their grasp.

Like a planet.

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A Rogue Earth and Neptune Might Have Been Found in Older Data

An artist's illustration of a rogue planet, dark and mysterious. Image Credit: NASA

Scientists have found what appear to be rogue planets hidden in old survey data. Their results are starting to define the poorly-understood rogue planet population. In the near future, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will conduct a search for more free-floating planets, and the team of researchers developed some methods that will aid that search.

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A White Dwarf is Surrounded by Torn-up Pieces of its Inner Planets and its Kuiper Belt

This illustration shows a white dwarf star siphoning off debris from shattered objects in a planetary system. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

What will happen to our Sun?

In several billion years, it’ll cease fusion, shrivel into a white dwarf, and emanate only remnant heat. There it’ll sit, dormant and comatose.

But the Sun anchors the entire Solar System. What will happen to Earth? To the rest of the planets? To the rest of the objects in the Solar System?

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Compare Sand Dunes Across the Solar System, From Venus to Pluto

"Furrowed" dunes around Mars South Pole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

One of the most interesting things we can learn from studying the planets and bodies of our Solar System is how much they have in common. Mars has polar ice caps and features that formed in the presence of water. Venus is similar to Earth in size, mass, and composition and may have once been covered in oceans. And countless icy bodies in the Solar System experience volcanism and have active plate tectonics, except with ice and water instead of hot silicate magma. Another thing they have in common, which may surprise you, is sand dunes!

According to a new study by researchers from Monash University and the University of Pennsylvania, multiple planets in our Solar System have sand dunes on their surfaces – just in different forms! These features further indicate that the mechanisms for dune formation are ubiquitous throughout the Solar System. These findings could lead to new methods for assessing the surface conditions of planets and moons and could have significant implications for future robotic and crewed missions to study them up-close.

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Civilizations Don’t Even Need Space Ships to Migrate From Star System to Star System

This artist’s impression shows an example of a rogue planet with the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex visible in the background. Rogue planets have masses comparable to those of the planets in our Solar System but do not orbit a star, instead roaming freely on their own.

In about 5 billion years, the Sun will leave the main sequence and become a red giant. It’ll expand and transform into a glowering, malevolent ball and consume and destroy Mercury, Venus, Earth, and probably Mars. Can humanity survive the Sun’s red giant phase? Extraterrestrial Civilizations (ETCs) may have already faced this existential threat.

Could they have survived it by migrating to another star system without the use of spaceships?

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The Younger the Planet, the More Likely it is to be Habitable

This artist’s impression shows an example of a rogue planet with the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex visible in the background. Rogue planets have masses comparable to those of the planets in our Solar System but do not orbit a star, instead roaming freely on their own.

We’ve discovered thousands of exoplanets and are likely to find many thousands more of them. While the wide variety of planets we’ve found are scientifically interesting in their own right, what lurks behind all these discoveries is the search for a world that could harbour life.

But to sort the potentially habitable worlds from all the others, we need a way to filter through all of the exoplanets we keep discovering. We know that rocky worlds like Earth are the best places to look for habitable conditions, but according to a new study, age matters. We should pay special attention to young rocky worlds.

Why? Because youthful terrestrial planets have an internal heat source that’s critical for life.

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Marsquakes are Caused by Shifting Magma

Mars' interior as revealed by the NASA/DLR InSight lander. Image Credit: Cottar, Koelemeijer, Winterbourne, NASA

Before the InSight Lander arrived on Mars, scientists could only estimate what the planet’s internal structure might be. Its size, mass, and moment of inertia were their main clues. Meteorites, orbiters, and in-situ sampling by rovers provided other clues.

But when InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) arrived on Mars in November 2018 and deployed its seismometer, better data started streaming in.

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Astronomers See the Wreckage Where Planets Crashed Into Each Other in a Distant Star System

This illustration depicts the result of a collision between two large asteroid-sized bodies. NASA's Spitzer saw a debris cloud block the star HD 166191, giving scientists details about the smashup that occurred. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Our Solar System was born in chaos. Collisions shaped and built the Earth and the other planets, and even delivered the building blocks of life. Without things smashing into each other, we might not be here.

Thankfully, most of the collisions are in the past, and now our Solar System is a relatively calm place. But frequent collisions still occur in other younger solar systems, and astronomers can see the aftermath.

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