[ad_1]
Artist's illustration of the exoplanet Kepler-1625b with its supposed moon, which would have the size of Neptune. The researchers say that this candidate Moon, and others, could host their own satellites.
Credit: Dan Durda
Moons may have moons, researchers say.
A new study reveals that Kepler-1625b-i, a new candidate to become a giant alien moon, could even possess one or more submunitions whose surface was habitable, as we know it. This moon is located nearly 8000 light-years from Earth.
Over the past two decades, astronomers have confirmed the existence of nearly 3,800 exoplanets, or planets around other stars. This month, scientists said they discovered what could be the first moon of an exoplanet. The moon, Kepler-1625b-i, could be Neptune's mass, much bigger than any moon in our own solar system. (Neptune is about 17 times the mass of the Earth.) [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]
The nature of Kepler-1625b-i's planet size raises the question of whether moons could have their own moons. And in another pair of recent studies, the researchers said that "submoons" or "moon-moon" may well be possible.
A research group analyzed the hypothetical sub-hypothesis orbits of about 10 km in diameter. The stability of the orbit of a submarine depends on the complex interactions of the body with the planet and the moon that it calls home; The gravitational forces of the planet and the moon can result in tidal forces that could send a submarine flying in space or crush on the planet or the moon.
Scientists have discovered that the submarines they modeled could only survive in wide orbits around large moons of at least 1,000 km wide. In other words, if Kepler-1625b-i exists, it could host a sub-area. However, scientists will likely have the technology to detect cluster munitions, said co-author of the study, Sean Raymond, an astrophysicist at the University of Bordeaux in France, at Space.com.
The researchers determined that it was unlikely that cluster munitions would last around moons small or too close to their host planet, which is the case for most moons in our solar system. However, scientists' work suggests that a handful of known moons in the Earth's solar system are capable of hosting long-lived submunitions: Saturn's Titan and Iapet, Callisto of Jupiter, and the Moon.
"I did not expect that," Raymond said. "Incidentally, researchers have proposed that Iapetus actually has a submarine responsible for its equatorial ridge, but that [it] was lost. Raymond and lead author of the study, Juna Kollmeier, at the Washington Carnegie Institution observatories in Pasadena, Calif., Detailed their findings online Oct. 8 in a study that they consider submitting to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Raymond added that "it's hard to imagine a planet hosting sub-submunitions – cluster munitions – because everything is getting closer and the tides are even stronger." only tiny sub-submunitions could exist ".
Curiously, the host star of Kepler-1625b-i has a mass similar to that of the sun, and the Moon's host planet orbits around this star at about the same distance as the Earth. This suggests that the exoplanet and the exomoon may have, at one time, been located in the habitable zone of their star, the area around the star being hot enough to allow masses of liquid water to survive without evaporating nor freezing. There is life almost everywhere there is water on the Earth. Extraterrestrial hunting is therefore often focused on habitable areas.
Kepler-1625b-i and its companion planet are both gaseous giants and therefore can not harbor the masses of water necessary for life as we know it to survive. However, if Kepler-1625b-i "had its own moon – a" moon-moon "- similar to that of the Earth, it could have been potentially a habitable world," wrote Duncan Forgan of the University of St Andrews in Scotland in the results of a recent study that was submitted to the journal The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Specifically, Forgan calculated the habitable zone for Earth-sized rock bodies in orbit around Kepler-1625b-i or its host planet. He found that these bodies do not currently live in a habitable zone, but that they may have done so when their host star was younger. (The star has now consumed most of its fuel in hydrogen and will eventually expand to become a giant red star, with brightness reaching levels that will generally destroy the livability of all the worlds there. .)
Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
[ad_2]
Source link
