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Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.
A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.
The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.
"I would have to say this is one of the strangest planets we know about," said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the discovery.
What's going on
WASP-17 likely had a close encounter with a larger planet, and the gravitational interaction acted like a slingshot to put WASP-17 on its odd course, the astronomers figure.
Originally posted by Hellmutt
This is interesting. Supports the idea of a rogue "planet of the crossing" (causing this newly discovered one to orbit backwards). However, I doubt it created our moon and it never crashed into Earth. Btw, our moon is older than our Earth, so how we got to have our moon is a big mystery. Our moon and the Earth was never part of the same planet. And it's can't have been captured into such a perfect orbit and everything. I recommend reading the chapter "Who parked the moon?" from the ATS book by Jim Marrs.
edit to add:
Above Top Secret: Uncover the Mysteries of the Digital Age
[edit on 13 Aug 2009 by Hellmutt]
Originally posted by Republican08
reply to post by michaelhernsin
Sorry if OT, but I thought what caused our moon was Mars, colliding into earth in it's earliest formation of our solar system?
Btw, our moon is older than our Earth, so how we got to have our moon is a big mystery.
Originally posted by Mogget
Btw, our moon is older than our Earth, so how we got to have our moon is a big mystery.
Where did you read that? The Moon was formed when a Mars sized planetary body (in other words, not Mars itself) slammed into Earth approximately 4.4 billion years ago. Therefore, the Moon is slightly younger than Earth.
[edit on 13-8-2009 by Mogget]
Originally posted by Louther
...As for the original post awesome find. Although I don't think the planet could exist like that for very long. To completely reverse your orbit you need to first come to a complete stop. So it probably lost a lot of its energy and is now slowly spiraling to its death. (note I have no proof, its just a guess on my part)