Youngest Exoplanet Discovered

We know that the planets in our solar system were born from a dusty disk surrounding the sun billions of years ago;wouldn't it be amazing if we could see another star system going through the birthing throes of this protoplanetary phase?

Today, a team of astronomers using the awesome power of the twin 10-meter Keck Telescopes atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have announced just that. 

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For the first time they have directly imaged a baby world forming close to its parent star inside an empty track of a larger disk of dust. This makes it a record-breaker -- the proto(exo?)planet is five-times younger than the youngest exoplanet discovered to date.

The baby world -- called LkCa 15 b -- orbits LkCa 15, a T Tauri star located 450 light-years from Earth that is already known to possess a dusty circumstellar disk. 

T Tauri stars are very luminous, young, variable stars. In astronomical timescales, they've recently formed from a cloud of gas under gravitational collapse. The gravitational energy released is what provides the energy to power the star, a phase before nuclear fusion is ignited in their cores.  

So, when we observe LkCa 15, we know we are looking at a star that's just starting out, potentially with a whole system of worlds that might form from its protoplanetary disk.

And now we know that there will be at least one world, LkCa 15 b, that Keck can see slowly forming.

"LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder," said astronomer Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. "This young gas giant is being built out of the dust and gas. In the past, you couldn't measure this kind of phenomenon because it's happening so close to the star. But, for the first time, we've been able to directly measure the planet itself as well as the dusty matter around it."

Using a clever trick, Kraus and co-investigator Michael Ireland, of Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory, were able to tease out the light being emitted by the dust surrounding the newborn star. They combined the power of Keck's Adaptive Optics with a technique called aperture mask interferometry to manipulate the starlight after it is received by the telescope.

"It's like we have an array of small mirrors," said Kraus. "We can manipulate the light and cancel out distortions." By doing this, the bright light emitted by the star can be canceled out, resolving the faint disks and gaps therein where baby worlds may be hiding. In one of those gaps, LkCa 15 b resides.

"We realized we had uncovered a super Jupiter-sized gas planet, but that we could also measure the dust and gas surrounding it. We’d found a planet, perhaps even a future solar system at its very beginning," he adds.

Kraus and Ireland intend to continue surveying other nearby stars to see if similar worlds are forming in the ultimate hope of understanding the planetary formation processes that built our own solar system.

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Can I Buy Land On Moon?

For now at least, the moon is like the sea: everyone can use it, but no one can own it. In 1967 the U.S. and the Soviet Union negotiated the Outer Space Treaty, which states that no nation can own a piece of the moon or an asteroid. 

“You have a right to go up and take the lunar soil, but you don’t have any right to draw a square on the surface of the moon and say, ‘That square is mine,’” says Stephen E. Doyle, a retired lawyer who served as NASA’s Deputy Director of Internal Affairs. If the Space Settlement Institute—which lobbies for private industry to develop land on other planets—has its way, new laws will allow space colonists to stake moon claims and start a colony.

Alan Wasser, the Space Settlement Institute’s chairman, says that a private company should build a “spaceline,” similar to an airline, between the Earth and moon. And because a corporation is not a nation, the Outer Space Treaty would not apply. Corporations have settled new worlds before. The London Company was a joint stock enterprise that established the Jamestown Settlement in 1607,providing transportation to pioneers in return for seven years of labor in America, where they cultivated tobacco and other crops for the company’s profit. 

Wasser says that land ownership—and the promise of profits based on it—is a necessary incentive to invest in space settlement. He is lobbying for legislation that would commit the U.S. government to honor future moon claims. But anyone can buy a deed to land on the moon right now. The Lunar Registry (“Earth’s leading lunar real-estate agency”) sells such deeds on its website for about $20 an acre. Doyle says that some kind of lunar governing body is necessary to recognize and enforce property rights, but no such body exists. So as it stands, the claims are not much more than fancy pieces of paper. 

 

Doyle says that future moon settlers could look to the Antarctic Treaty, which designates the continent as a scientific preserve and prohibits military activity or mining; 28 countries maintain research stations subject to review by the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs, which oversees best practices of scientific research on the continent. “Anybody who understands the implications of imposing a national law on celestial bodies,” Doyle says, “understands we are better to treat it like Antarctica and the high seas than we are to treat it like Manhattan.” If not, he says, we would “take all the problems and contests we’ve had on the surface of the Earth for 5,000 years and extend them to outer space.”

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NASA Moon Mission Preparations for September Launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to study the moon is in final launch preparations for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

GRAIL's twin spacecraft are tasked for a nine-month mission to explore Earth's nearest neighbor in unprecedented detail. They will determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and advance our understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.

"Yesterday's final encapsulation of the spacecraft is an important mission milestone," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Our two spacecraft are now sitting comfortably inside the payload fairing which will protect them during ascent. Next time the GRAIL twins will see the light of day, they will be about 95 miles up and accelerating."

The spacecraft twins, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, will fly aboard a Delta II rocket launched from Florida. The twins' circuitous route to lunar orbit will take 3.5 months and cover approximately 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometers) for GRAIL-A, and 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) for GRAIL-B.

In lunar orbit, the spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them. Regional gravitational differences on the moon are expected to expand and contract that distance.

GRAIL scientists will use these accurate measurements to define the moon's gravity field. The data will allow mission scientists to understand what goes on below the surface of our natural satellite.

"GRAIL will unlock lunar mysteries and help us understand how the moon, Earth and other rocky planets evolved as well," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

GRAIL's launch period opens Sept. 8 and extends through Oct. 19. On each day, there are two separate launch opportunities separated by approximately 39 minutes. On Sept. 8, the first launch opportunity is 8:37 a.m. EDT (5:37 a.m. PDT); the second is 9:16 a.m. EDT (6:16 a.m. PDT).

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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