For my science Wednesday, I return to outer space. It is more and more appearing that just about every star out there has a surrounding solar system, meaning planets, or, relative to us, extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. In fact, Forbes, speculated that for every star, there are from 100 to 100,000 planets. Most of these are rogue planets in the spaces between stars. The ones astrobiologists are interested in for possible life must, of course, have a close-by star to provide energy.
Any photos of them? Actually one was announced in April of this year, using the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, together with the Hubble Telescope. Well, maybe not quite, as this a globe about 9 times the mass of Jupiter at an early stage of planet formation. It was located circling star AB Aurigae located 508 light years away.
If that counts as one, then now two, as the James Webb Space Telescope just reported imaging another.
Exoplanet 65426 b has no chance for life, as it is a gas giant nine times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits a star 385 light years from us. But what a coincidence...both extrasolar planets being of that exact size. Maybe it's the same and only one. I'll later clear this up.
These are but two of 5,157 exoplanets currently confirmed as of 1 September 2022, a number that will materially increase, as 7000 are awaiting confirmation. Well, actually, as there are 200 sextillion stars in our universe, or 200 trillion billion said another way, if you multiply by that Forbes factor of 100 to 100,000, you get...a very large number of extrasolar planets.
On June 14 China's giant Sky Eye telescope was reported to have picked up signs of an extraterrestrial civilization. However, the announcement was soon removed from the website of the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's science and technology ministry.
Some history of Sky Eye:
- Also known as FAST (Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope), saw first light in 2016.
- China has a reputation building things very quickly, but took more than twenty years after initial planning.
The government spent $270 million in poverty relief funds and loans to relocate people living in the local construction site, while the telescope cost $180 million to build.- On the other hand, the James Webb Space Telescope took around a third of century and cost $10 billion.
- With a diameter of 1600 feet, FAST is the largest filled aperture disk telescope. That 1000 feet Puerto Rico Arecibo telescope, which collapsed and will be decommissioned, was shown in the beginning of the movie Contact.
So what did China detect? Probably signals from terrestrials, likely narrow-band radio signals. Well, that was embarrassing.
I close with a graphic showing how small Planet Earth is compared to the largest stars.
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