Astronomers find 9 new planets and upset the theory of planetary formation

www.eurekalert.org...

Quote from source:
Santa Barbara, California - - The discovery of nine new planets challenges the reigning theory of the formation of planets, according to new observations by astronomers. Two of the astronomers involved in the discoveries are based at the UC Santa Barbara-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based in Goleta, Calif., near UCSB.

Unlike the planets in our solar system, two of the newly discovered planets are orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star. This, along with a recent study of other exoplanets, upsets the primary theory of how planets are formed. There is a preponderance of these planets with their orbital spin going opposite to that of their parent star. They are called exoplanets because they are located outside of our solar system.

These and other related discoveries are being presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this week. This is the first public mention of the new planets and the research will be described in upcoming scientific journal articles.

"Planet evolution theorists now have to explain how so many planets came to be orbiting like this," said Tim Lister, a project scientist at LCOGT. Lister leads a major part of the observational campaigns along with Rachel Street of LCOGT, Andrew Cameron of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and Didier Queloz, of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

Data from LCOGT was instrumental in confirming the new planet discoveries. By adding these nine new "transiting" planets, the number of known transiting planets has grown from 71 to 80. A transit occurs when a celestial body passes in front of its host star and blocks some of the star's light. This type of eclipse causes a small drop in the apparent brightness of the star and enables the planet's mass, diameter, density, and temperature to be deduced.

I thought I would share this because anything that goes against the science that we know right now is great in my book.

I am so for these because they can only expand our knowledge of the universe and help us understand it's formation better. The fact that these planets are orbiting the wrong way cannot be written off as a comet or a protoplanet, it is just orbiting the wrong way.

Interesting to say the least.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

That's a great find. Certainly tells us that astronomers will find gainful employment for years to come.

I love it, just imagine what new paradigm shifts we`ll see in the coming years!

reply to post by hippomchippo


Hopefully we see a whole paradigm shift coming up. Science is changing more and more everyday that something great will come out of all this understanding. I love advances in science, it's what makes me tick.

Pred...

reply to post by stereologist


Hopefully they will have a lot of work to do regardless. There is a lot of planets and stars out there and we seem to be able to see more and more as time goes by. There is lots of objects out there to be studied and hopefully help us with our fields of research.

Pred...

Very exciting times we live in indeed!
I can't wait to see what comes of this.
Thanks for sharing man!

Maybe that solar system is just angled differently. Looking at a clock front on, its normal clockwise. look at it from the back (Clock face is transparent, hands are not) it would look reversed.

Could it be that simple? Maybe that solar system is flipped in a diff direction. Scientists CAN'T think all solar systems are perfectly level with ours... right? all facing the same direction?


If it IS new.. wow. So much that science has yet to find.. can't wait to see what they figure out next--and what old ideas are shattered.

[edit on 4/18/2010 by Pharyax]

reply to post by Pharyax


You can actually determine the rotation orientations of the objects involved and see that things do not match up. I think it's really cool that this is possible from such a great distance.

Originally posted by Pharyax
Maybe that solar system is just angled differently. Looking at a clock front on, its normal clockwise. look at it from the back (Clock face is transparent, hands are not) it would look reversed.

Could it be that simple? Maybe that solar system is flipped in a diff direction. Scientists CAN'T think all solar systems are perfectly level with ours... right? all facing the same direction?


If it IS new.. wow. So much that science has yet to find.. can't wait to see what they figure out next--and what old ideas are shattered.

[edit on 4/18/2010 by Pharyax]

Doesn't work, because even if that was the case you'd still have the planets orbiting relative to the star's rotation. This is basically planets orbiting opposite of the star, therefore not being being affected by its gravity. One would think the star's gravity would prevent them from orbiting "backwards".

Weird.

[edit on 18-4-2010 by Judohawk]

reply to post by Pharyax


No, it's not that simple. Our Sun spins in the same direction that all of the planets in our solar system orbit around it. These planets they are discovering seem to be orbiting in a direction opposite to the direction that their host star spins, which doesn't make sense according to the current theory of how solar systems form. The current model is that a solar system forms around a new star as a disc of dust and gases born out of the same primordial material as the host star. It's kind of the left-overs of what didn't quite get sucked into the original star.

Most of the material/mass that makes up a solar system is contained within the star at the center, so it's original rotation should determine how everything else orbits it from it's ancient proto-planetary disc. All the planets are just crumbs, leftovers and should (we thought) spin in the same direction as the star. Our yearly orbit of the Sun that we've been doing for 5 billion years, now, is all just the result of leftover energy from the formation of the sun, the whole thing (sun, dust and planets) spinning like a giant top. How planets could be going in the exact opposite direction of their own sun is a huge mystery.

We've already observed proto-planetary discs forming around other new stars, so we know we are at least partially right about the process. But these planets suggest there's something we still don't know about the process. Maybe these are captured objects? Or maybe they are the result of some primordial interaction with another proto-planetary disc? I'm just throwing out a couple of my own thoughts there, but they are really just guesses. This is an amazing discovery.

[edit on 4/18/2010 by LifeInDeath]

[edit on 4/18/2010 by LifeInDeath]

Well my last post is kinda weird. A planet will still be affected by gravity since it keeps its orbit. I was thinking that the rotation of the sun affected the orbit of the planets.