Hubble photographed a planet escaping from a pulsar
Avi Blizovsky
The Hubble Space Telescope has apparently photographed, for the first time, a planet outside our solar system. In recent years, indirect evidence of the existence of such planets around other solar systems has been discovered, but this evidence was indirect. NASA convened a special press conference yesterday in which it presented the unique discovery - defined by its leaders as the most important discovery in the history of the space telescope since it was placed in orbit.
The discovery was made by Susan Terby from the Research Institute for Other Solar Systems in Pasadena, California, using the infrared camera that is also used as a multiple object spectrometer (that is, a camera that captures a wide field of view containing many stars in the infrared light range).
This planet formed around the double star TMR1 (abbreviation for Molecular Ring 1). which is in the Taurus group. Because of the attraction of the two stars that make up the double star system, it entered an orbit that threw it to a very large distance, and it is currently moving further and further away from the double star. This is a young star system, 300 thousand years old. The system is 450 light years from Earth. The mass of the planet is 2-3 times that of Jupiter, and it is considered a gas giant like it. Its size is apparently the same as that of Jupiter. Now the planet is about 200 million kilometers from the Sun and is moving away at a speed of 10 kilometers per second.
According to Prof. Zvi Maza from the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Tel Aviv University, if the facts are true, then it will be necessary to correct the theory of the formation of the planets. According to the accepted theories, it takes about ten million years for a planet to form. This means that planets are formed more easily than previously thought. So far and therefore they are probably more common than they thought until now, and this may also statistically increase the chance for the existence of life around other systems.
About ten years ago Prof. Maza was a member of the group that made the first discovery of the possibility of a planet orbiting the sun that is 90 light-years away from Earth. However, then, and in the twenty discoveries that have been added since then, the planet was not photographed, but its existence was calculated by measuring the orbits of the Saturn planets.
If the planet one day encounters another solar system, it may join it and circle it together with its planets, but the greater probability is that this planet will fly into the vastness of space and cruise there independently.
Question: Of course on such a planet it is impossible to talk about life?
From the ZA: "No, because it is large and liquid like Jupiter, and since it is moving away from the sun, it will cool down, thus making it difficult for life to form.
