Free-floating planets—dark, isolated spheres that roam the universe untethered to a host star—do not suddenly appear out of nowhere in space. They probably form in the same way as other planets, in swirling disks of gas and dust that surround young stars.

However, unlike their planetary brethren, these worlds have been forcibly evicted from their celestial neighborhoods.

Astronomers once calculated that billions of Planets in the Milky Way galaxy were spinning out of control. Now scientists at NASA and Japan’s Osaka University are pushing that estimate to trillions of dollars. In two papers accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal, the researchers detailed that there are six times more of these planets than there are worlds orbiting the sun, two of which have been discovered so far. th Earth-sized free planet identified.

The existence of wandering worlds isolated from the stellar system has long been known but poorly understood. Previous discoveries suggested that most of these planets are about the same size as Jupiter, the most massive planet in our solar system. However, this conclusion was met with considerable resistance. The scientists who published it were also surprised by this.

To study these Rogue worlds more closely, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center astronomer David Bennett and his team conducted microlensing observations with an astrophysical telescope at the Mount John Observatory at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. spent his nine years using data from Exoplanets were discovered indirectly by measuring how their gravity distorts and magnifies light from distant stars behind them, an effect known as microlensing.

Using empirical models, the researchers calculated the mass transfer of more than 3,500 microlensing events, including stars, stellar remnants, brown dwarfs, and planet candidates. (Data from one of these candidates was compelling enough for the research team to claim the discovery of a new rogue Earth.) From this analysis, they concluded that the Milky Way estimate that there are about 20 times more floating worlds than there are planets on Earth. – Massive planets are 180 times more common than rogue Jupiter.

The conclusion that most rogue worlds are small makes more sense than imagining them to be Jupiter-sized, he said. Bennett believes that when two protoplanets collide, the planets spiral out of control. The force of impact is so great that someone is completely thrown out of a nascent star system.

But planets can only be knocked out of the system by larger bodies. If most of these star orphans were Jupiter-sized, there would be many so-called super-Jupiters orbiting their primary star, but these are rare. On the one hand, these results suggest that lower-mass planets are at risk of being ejected.

“So things are dangerous for the planet,” he said. Bennett The presence of large numbers of floating objects in the Milky Way also suggests that planet-sized objects colliding during the formation process are “probably more common than theorists expected,” he said. Stated.

Przemek Mróz, an astronomer at the University of Warsaw who was not involved in the work, said that the group`s results strengthened earlier hints about rogue worlds from observations made with the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment and the Korean Microlensing Telescope Network. “So now we have three independent studies and three independent lines of evidence that low mass free-floating planets are very common in the Milky Way,” he wrote in an email.

There`s still some ambiguity about whether these planets are truly unleashed, or just cast out to wide enough orbits that scientists can`t link them to a host star. Dr. Mróz thinks the observed population probably includes a mix of both, but it`ll be difficult to deduce the relative numbers of each with microlensing measurements alone.

The new studies` astronomers are looking forward to even better free-floating planet data taken with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a NASA mission set to launch in 2027, which could spot hundreds of rogue Earths. Combined with data from the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and well-placed ground-based observatories, scientists can rely less on models and measure mass more directly.

Are any of these planets habitable? Probably, the doctor guessed. Bennett explained that without a host star, it would be dimmer, but not necessarily cold. Hydrogen in the planet’s atmosphere can act like a greenhouse, trapping heat escaping from its interior and keeping microbial life alive in Earth’s deep-sea vents.

But for now, the search for life in these ruined worlds is out of reach. “Perhaps within 100 years they will find a way to do that,” said Dr. Bennett: But scientists are now looking at what we can actually do.

The research team never considered crossing the boundaries of the Milky Way. “But other galaxies are thought to be very similar,” he said. Bennett – I mean, these social misfits could be scattered throughout the universe.

When the helium shell explodes, not only 56Ni is synthesized. Sends a strong shock wave to a white dwarf. This impact can cause another explosion inside the star, so nature creates double-explosion supernovae.
Supernova spectroscopy supports this explanation, the authors say. “Spectroscopically, we find strong agreement between SN 2022joj and a double-explosion model with a white dwarf mass of ~1 M⊙ and a thin He shell of 0.01–0.02 M⊙,” the researchers write. writes.

The light curve tells astrophysicists a lot about what is happening in the star. This was no exception, and the light curve of SN 2202joj told the team of astronomers studying it a lot. Normally, the light curve of a type 1a supernova looks like this:

However, the SN 2202joj light curve is different from the normal Type 1a SN light curve. There are two separate peaks, the first being very red, then rapidly decreasing to blue.

The image below compares the light curve of SN 2202joj with the light curves of other SNs and different models of double burst SNs. This image contains a lot of data, but it’s worth a look. Researchers aren’t 100% sure it’s a double-blast SN. The early red color suggests he had two explosions, but other evidence is conflicting. “However, the composition of SN 2022joj’s nebular spectrum deviates from what would be expected for a double explosion,” they write. The nebula’s spectrum contains strong Fe III emissions that cannot be explained by double explosions.

“To test whether more detailed modeling, such as the double-explosion model, can explain the nebula’s spectrum, we need to include field-angle effects,” they conclude. Supernovae are rare, but they play an important role in nature. They synthesize metals and when they explode they spread into space. Without them, rocky planets like ours would not exist. Type 1a supernovae are important due to their unique role in the universe. Scientists believe they have synthesized most of the iron group elements, from titanium to zinc.

Nature creates many fascinating things in the universe, but one of the most impressive is the explosion of stars. A star contains an enormous amount of matter, and when one of them explodes, a supernova releases an enormous amount of energy in a short period of time. It’s no surprise that these objects attract our attention.

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