Category Astronomy/Space

Artist’s illustration of Planet Nine, a world about 10 times more massive than Earth that may lie undiscovered in the far outer solar system. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Space researchers James Vesper and Paul Mason with New Mexico State University have given a presentation at this year’s American Astronomical Science meeting outlining the results of simulations they have been running to learn more about Planet Nine—a planet that many in the space science community believe exists far beyond Pluto. They presented evidence suggesting that if Planet Nine is out there, it is likely a rogue.

Planet Nine was first predicted to exist just 2 years ago, when a team of investigators noticed what appeared to be an unknown gravitational influence in the outer solar system...

This artist’s conception portrays a collection of planet-mass objects that have been flung out of the galactic center at speeds of 20 million miles per hour (10,000 km/s). These cosmic “spitballs” formed from fragments of a star that was shredded by the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. Credit: Mark A. Garlick / CfA

Every few thousand years, an unlucky star wanders too close to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The black hole’s powerful gravity rips the star apart, sending a long streamer of gas whipping outward. New research shows that not only can the gas gather itself into planet-size objects, but those objects then are flung throughout the galaxy in a game of cosmic “spitball.”

“A single shredded star can form hundreds of these planet-mass objects...

RGB image of the superbubble 30 Doradus C observed by Chandra (Bamba et al. 2004). The red, green, and blue colors represent the energy bands, 0.5–1.2, 1.2–2.0, and 2.0–7.0 keV, respectively. Credit: Sano et al., 2017.

An international team has uncovered molecular and atomic gas clouds associated with the superbubble 30 Doradus C, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Called superbubble or supershell, 30 Doradus C is a bright X-ray cavity in the LMC with a diameter of approximately 300 light years. Although it was well studied at different wavelengths that revealed its shell-like morphology and 6 stellar clusters, the interstellar gas associated with this superbubble has not been thoroughly investigated yet.

Due to its proximity and face-on inclination to Earth, LMC serves as ...