Astronomy

NASA astronauts can vote from space, but why can't they endorse political candidates? As it turns out, U.S. federal law specifically prohibits them from doing so.

While you can get good discounts during both shopping events, we take a look at which is better between Black Friday and the Christmas sales.

Matthew McConaughey narrates four new cinematic teaser trailers for out-of-this-world alien creatures in upcoming sci-fi role playing game "Exodus."

What created this huge space bubble?

Several downballot races in the 2024 presidential election will carry implications for climate policy far beyond state lines

Experts predict that the number of cancer cases around the world will skyrocket, resulting in millions more fatalities by 2050

Experts predict that the number of cancer cases around the world will skyrocket, resulting in millions more fatalities by 2050

Our ancestors probably used a wide range of plant-based tools that have since been lost to history. Now we're finally getting a glimpse of this Botanic Age

Our ancestors probably used a wide range of plant-based tools that have since been lost to history. Now we're finally getting a glimpse of this Botanic Age

"This is incredibly exciting, as up to now we have not had a tool for detecting plastics in coastal environments from space."

Torrential rainfall causing deadly flash floods has hit southern and eastern Spain in regions including the Costa del Sol, where the city of Malaga is located, and Valencia in the east. As these areas struggle to cope with the aftermath, satellite technology has played a crucial role in assessing the damages of the affected areas.

The article is being updated as new satellite images become available.

One thing we’ve learned in recent decades is that exoplanets are surprisingly common. So far, we’ve confirmed nearly 6,000 planets, and we have evidence for thousands more. Most of these planets were discovered using the transit method. though we there are other methods as well. Many stars are known to have multiple planets, such as the TRAPPIST-1 system with seven Earth-sized worlds. But even within known planetary systems there could be planets we’ve overlooked. Perhaps their orbit doesn’t pass in front of the star from our vantage point, or the evidence of their presence is buried in data noise. How might we find them? A recent paper on the arXiv has an interesting approach.

Rather than combing through the observational data trying to extract more planets from the noise, the authors suggest that we look at the orbital dynamics of known systems to see if planets might be possible between the planets we know. Established systems are millions or billions of years old, so their planetary orbits must be stable on those timescales. If the planets of a system are “closely packed,” then adding new planets to the mix would cause the system to go all akilter. If the system is “loosely packed,” then we could add hypothetical planets between the others, and the system would still be dynamically stable.

The seven planetary systems considered. Credit: Horner, et al

To show how this would work, the authors consider seven planetary systems discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) known to have two planets. Since it isn’t likely that a system has only two planets, there is a good chance they have others. The team then ran thousands of simulations of these systems with hypothetical planets, calculating if they could remain stable over millions of years. They found that for two of the systems, extra planets (other than planets much more distant than the known ones) could be ruled out on dynamical grounds. Extra planets would almost certainly destabilize the systems. But five of the systems could remain stable with more planets. That doesn’t mean those systems have more planets, only that they could.

One of the things this work shows is that most of the currently known exoplanetary systems likely have yet-undiscovered worlds. This approach could also help us sort systems to determine which ones might deserve a further look. We are still in the early stages of discovery, and we are gathering data with incredible speed. We need tools like this so we aren’t overwhelmed by piles of new data.

Reference: Horner, Jonathan, et al. “The Search for the Inbetweeners: How packed are TESS planetary systems?” arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.00245 (2024).

The post How Many Additional Exoplanets are in Known Systems? appeared first on Universe Today.

The neutron star 4U 1820-30 is one of the fastest spinning bodies in the universe, spinning at 716 times a second and erupting like an atomic bomb, NASA's NICER telescope has found.

The British Heart Foundation’s Reflections of Research competition showcases beautiful images captured by researchers studying heart and circulatory disease

The British Heart Foundation’s Reflections of Research competition showcases beautiful images captured by researchers studying heart and circulatory disease

One day, doctors might be able to 3D print copies of your organs in order to test a variety of drugs, thanks to a new technique that uses light and sound for rapid printing

One day, doctors might be able to 3D print copies of your organs in order to test a variety of drugs, thanks to a new technique that uses light and sound for rapid printing

A joint Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project to learn more about the dusty disk around the bright star Vega has found a surprising lack of planets.

China's Einstein Probe, an X-ray telescope in Earth orbit, has already made several discoveries during its initial commissioning phase.

Fibres in wet wipes and clothes often make their way into soil - and natural versions could be more damaging than synthetic ones