“Galaxy” by Hanne at DeviantArt.
Oct 12, 2015
Stars are not constant.
Attempts to locate planetary bodies in orbit around distant stars suffer from the “glare problem”: starlight tends to obscure direct observation of dim companions. A little over 18 years ago, astronomer Geoff Marcy and his team, using the 120-inch telescope at the Lick Observatory, found two exoplanets, 47 Ursae Majoris b and 70 Virginis b by analyzing the motion of their primaries.
According to theory, as planets revolve they exert a pull on their parent stars, causing them to “wobble” slightly. Astronomers knew that Doppler shifts could be used to identify binary stars—extremely massive objects—so it was thought that less massive objects could also be identified using that method. The difficulty with the procedure was that even large planets pull on stars by only several meters per second, so a more detailed picture of stellar spectra was needed, or a new way of conducting the search.
NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope on March 7, 2009. Kepler’s three and a half year mission was to search for Earth-sized planets around other stars. It has found 1000 “confirmed” planets and over 3000 potential candidates so far. Kepler does not use Doppler shift as its means of detection like the earliest planet hunters did. It uses a photometer to measure light output from a target star. The theory is that when an object passes in front of a target star, the starlight will dim by a minute amount. Kepler can scan 150,000 stars simultaneously utilizing that method.
In May 2013, a steering mechanism on Kepler failed, making it impossible to accurately position the spacecraft. NASA subsequently came up with a plan using the solar wind to help align the vehicle. Although observations are not as detailed or as frequent, Kepler returned to a functioning state and has remained operational.
Using a technique called “asteroseismology”, astronomers announced earlier this year that Kepler discovered an “ancient solar system, dating back to the dawn of the galaxy”. Called Kepler-444, it is thought to have five planets, but more research is needed to confirm that finding. They seem strangely certain in other areas, however. As the published paper states:
“Kepler-444 formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20% of its current age. This makes Kepler-444 the oldest known system of terrestrial-sized planets. The Kepler-444 system was already older than our own solar system is today when our Sun and planets were born.”
It is amazing that so much information can be gleaned from a tiny spark of light equivalent to seeing a candle on top of the Willis Tower in Chicago while standing on the Empire State building in New York.
Since many exoplanets are “super-Jupiters”, with orbits closer to their stars than Mercury is to the Sun, an argument for their creation in stellar electrical expulsion can be made. As Electric Universe advocate Wal Thornhill wrote: “How else should we expect to find an extrasolar planet whipping around its parent in a few days or in an eccentric orbit? Eccentric orbits should be short-lived. They hint at recent events in those distant planetary systems; perhaps the birth of a new planet.”
Also, as has been presented in previous Picture of the Day articles, rocky bodies, like Mercury or the Moon, are ejected from larger, highly charged objects, they are not born in dusty eddies surrounding a stellar “cocoon”.
Despite the disagreement between Electric Universe theory and conventional viewpoints about planetary evolution, the most fundamental question of all is whether the theory that Kepler’s data appears to support is correct. If stars are flickering over regular intervals it could be due to something intrinsic to them and not because something solid is eclipsing their light. Algol, otherwise known as Beta Persei, for example, decreases in apparent magnitude every 68 hours and 49 minutes and then returns to normal brightness. Could the same thing be happening to other stars on smaller and slower scales?
Stephen Smith
Hat tip to Allen Bethea
