NatureNews, New Scientist, etc: Star belted by smashed comets’ dust? Rain forecast for alien world. (PLUS: More exoplant news)
A Scenario of Future Thunderstorms Deduced From Ruckus Around Eta Corvi
On the preprint service arXiv astro-ph a remarkable 60-page paper (see Grist below), based on data from the infrared-gathering Spitzer Space Telescope and another instrument on Mauna Kea, just popped up. It sums up signs of a life-sparking cataclysm unfolding around a star so close one can see it with the naked eye. A donut of dust is so chock full of water (ice and vapor) and other materials common in comets that the best explanation offered is that one, or several, of those mountain-sized ice balls have recently gone to smithereens on something big and hard. A planet would do. A NASA Jet Propulsion Lab press release and a teleconference from a meeting at Goddard Space Flight Center propelled a small swarm of news stories in the last day or so.
A good number of astronomers and planetary specialists, but few news reporters, already got the word two weeks ago at a joint meeting of the American Astronomical (not -autical, as first said here while writing fast, thinking slow) Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences and the European Planetary Science Congress in Nantes, France.
Thus there has been a one-two punch of coverage, the second one bigger. Reporters are describing an intriguing hypothesis. Perhaps, in a budding system of planets around a fairly young, hot star 60 light years away named Eta Corvi and a bit more massive than the sun, is an Earthlike planet in the Goldilocks zone where life is plausible. Perhaps it is right now getting its delivery of water. The inferred carriers are comets from a distant realm comparable to our sun’s comet-storehouse, the Kuiper Belt. Seeing it happen yonder bolsters the idea that Earth got much or most of its water the same way during an era known as the Late Heavy Bombardment 4 billion years ago or so.
First Story:
- NatureNews: Ron Cowen (Oct. 5): Comets take pole position as water bearers: First out, from the scene in France two weeks ago, and perhaps the best of the bunch. Cowen puts this news well down in a summary from two presentations, one pertaining to new evidence for comet-delivery of Earth’s water, and then the signs of the same story unfolding before our eyes near another star. Plus, the yarn has from one prime source explicitly that a targeted search is in order for the planet supposedly receiving its water.
- … Please let us know if other reporters – several were there – got it from the meeting in France.
Today’s Batch of Stories:
- TIME Magazine – Michael D. Lemonick: 400 Trillion Miles Away, a Comet Storm Waters a World ; Fine hed, and Lemonick refers to the other evidence, that surfaced in Nantes and again in Nature last week, in our solar system and supporting the Late Heavy Bombardment scenario.
- New Scientist – Lisa Grossman: Comets may be creating oceans on alien planet ;
- Universe Today – Nancy Atkinson: Evidence of a Late Heavy Bombardment Occurring in Another Solar System ; Nice selection of quote for a tagline: “This system was shouting, ‘I’m something extraordinary, come figure out my mystery!’”
- Discovery News – Ian O’Neill: Comet Armageddon Detected In Nearby Star System ;
- ISNS (Inside Science News Service, Amer. Inst. of Physics) Michael Schirber: Striking Evidence of Comet Delivering Water, Molecules to Earth-Like Planet: With an outsider’s expert opinion of the work (he says it’s just fine).
- Space.com: Comet Storm Rages in Alien Star System, Study Finds ;
I have a question that many readers of these stories may also have. If there is from this dust-up a suspicion of a Neptune-size or even a smaller rocky planet in the habitable zone of a star so close, what independent evidence might there be for it? One might suspect that radial-velocity (doppler shift) surveys could have seen the star’s wobble. Or perhaps the orbital periods at 3 AU make that impossible to detect without years’ more data. Or perhaps the system is face-on to Earth, giving a bright signal from the tori of dust and other debris, but no Doppler shift from our perspective. A better question is why nobody appears to have given any hint of this second shoe to the story, other than Cowen’s relay of one scientist’s plea that a search be attempted. Again, is there a way to directly deduce the planets themselves? The paper itself gives clues. One wonders how many reporters read closely or even scanned through it, and how many relied entirely on press releases, the teleconference for reporters, and perhaps largely (and lazily but I don’t know enough to even whisper any names, and who knows they may have had editors screeching for copy now and please cover a few other stories today too) rewrote what colleagues had already written. The paper is below in Grist. Follow the link to see the opportunity to download full text. The section on the nature of both the impacted planet and a Jupiter-sized world much farther out, in the Kuiper belt, scattering comets every which way, starts at about page 34. It’s a stimulating, if somewhat technical, discussion. A longer, feature-sized story would need to include this future-oriented angle.
Grist for the Mill:
NASA JPL Press Release, arXiv Spitzer Evidence for a Late Heavy Bombardment and the Formation of Urelites in η Corvi at ~1 Gyr ; Abstract of report at EPSC-DPS meeting two weeks ago;
More Exoplanet News: Also this week and also from the same meeting at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, a University of Hawaii astronomer and an Australian colleague report rare, direct imagery of a warm thing near a star that appears to be a newborn planet’s dusty glow.
- AP – Audrey McAvoy: Hawaii astronomer captures image of forming planet ;
- Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: How are planets born? LkCa 15 could give scientists first-ever peek ; Well-done setting of the scene before getting into the new findings, plus an outside opinion on their worth.
- ABC (US) Ned Potter: Birth of a Planet: First Pictures of Youngest Planet Yet Seen ;
- Wired – Mark Brown: Keck telescope finds youngest known planet ;
- Sydney Morning Herald – Charles Purcell: Birth of a planet caught on camera ;
- Space.com – Mike Wall: Planet for First Time ;
- Nature News (blog) Ron Cowen : Astronomers spot the birth of a planet ; Cowen also reports to ksjtracker that he recently learned that this whole piece of news has been laid out in a video archive on the web, unnoticed by reporters, since March. Further, that he had noticed it on the program last January at the American Astronomical Soc’y meeting in January but hadn’t time to get to the session. Ah well. They say news is news when reporters hear about it (and publish).
Grist for the Mill:
Macquarie University Press Release ; University of Hawaii Press Release; arXiv astro-ph paper LkCa 15: A Young Exoplanet Caught at Formation? ;
- Charlie Petit
