[ad_1]
Astronomers are only beginning to understand locate interstellar objects, space debris that fled another solar system to sweep ours. But signs suggest that there should be many more identifications to come.
This is the conclusion of a new research being published when scientists encountered the second known interstellar object, a comet called Borisov, which was spotted for the first time on August 30th. The research looks at a new instrument, the Large synoptic topographic telescope (LSST), which should be fully operational in 2023. Scientists estimate that every year that this works, the LSST should be able to detect more than 100 interstellar objects larger than 2 meters.
"There should be a lot of this material floating around," Malena Rice, senior author of the new research and graduate student at Yale University, said in a statement. "A lot more data will be available soon, thanks to the new telescopes put online, we will not have to speculate."
Related, connected, related: Interstellar Comet: This is why he has so swollen scientists
Since they first discovered Oumuamua in October 2017, astronomers have suspected this detection as an index of the largest amount of interstellar objects passing through our solar system than expected. The coincidence of the new research is that both authors had just finished writing the study when interstellar comet Borisov entered the scene, according to the same statement.
This coincidence means that the research is based exclusively on observations from Oumuamua, which scientists have only been able to observe for about a week. (Borisov will remain observable for a year, offer astronomers an abundance of data.)
The new research addresses the question of how these interstellar objects begin their long journey. One of the possible origins was that Umuamua and his alleged compatriots were planetesimals, the building blocks of the planets, expelled from their natal solar system. But Rice and her co-author think this explanation is not enough.
This is based on what scientists know about other solar systems across the more than 4000 exoplanets identified to date. This is not necessarily a representative sample, as astronomers only have a handful of techniques to observe exoplanets.
But Rice and her co-author found it suspicious that most of the planets that astronomers have spotted to this day are not the kind of planets that should be able to eject planetesimals. They argue that such dynamics should be triggered by planets as gigantic as Neptune or larger and that their orbits are at least five times farther from their star than the Sun.
This is exactly the kind of world that astronomers are still struggling to identify from Earth. The researchers turned to a project called High resolution angular substructure project, who studied 20 young solar systems close enough to the Earth for the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array telescope in Chile to get a decent picture.
Some of these discs have holes that indicate where a planet in formation has cleared a strip of debris. This allows scientists to determine the size of the planets and their proximity to the star. The researchers then took three of these systems and modeled the probability that their planets could trigger planetesimals during a spectacular visit of the universe.
"This idea explains the great density of these drifting objects in interstellar space," said Gregory Laughlin, astronomer at Yale University and co-author of Rice, in the same statement. "This shows that we should find up to hundreds of objects of this type in future surveys."
And of all future observing programs, the LSST is the most intriguing when it comes to locating interstellar objects. After the gap between grateful & Oumuamua and the additional visitors to our solar system, astronomers had begun to suspect that they could not spot another interstellar object until the LSST was activated, Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, observed both 'Oumuamua and the new interstellar comet. said Space.com earlier this month.
It was just when his team had lost hope that Borisov arrived on the scene, with an incredible icy cover designating it as a clear comet, and early enough in its path for astronomers to study it. for one year. This is an incredible benefit for scientists.
"You do not look at a distant star through a telescope," Rice said in his statement. "It is a concrete material that composes the planets of other solar systems and is thrown to us. This is a totally unprecedented way to take a close look at extrasolar systems – and this area will begin to explode very soon with data. "
The search is described in an article posted at pre-print server arXiv.org September 13 and accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link