Space and astronomy news
Something ancient and primordial lurks in Earth’s core. Helium 3 (3He) was created in the first minutes after the Big Bang, and some of it found its way through time and space to take up residence in Earth’s deepest regions. How do we know this?
Scientists can measure it as it slowly escapes.
Continue reading “Primordial Helium, Left Over From the Big Bang, is Leaking Out of the Earth”
Our conventional models of planet formation may have to be updated, according to a pair of new papers.
Accretion is the keyword in current planet formation theory. The idea is that the planets formed out of the solar nebula, the material left over after the Sun formed. They did this through accretion, where small particles accumulate into more massive objects. These massive boulder-sized objects, called planetesimals, continued to merge together into larger entities, sometimes through collisions. Eventually, through repeated mergers and collisions, the inner Solar System was populated by four rocky planets.
But the new research suggests that the collisions played out much differently than thought and that objects collided with each other several times, in a series of hit and runs, before merging. This research fills some stubborn holes in our current understanding.
Continue reading “The Early Solar System was Messier and More Violent Than Previously Believed”
We recently observed the strongest magnetic field ever recorded in the Universe. The record-breaking field was discovered at the surface of a neutron star called GRO J1008-57 with a magnetic field strength of approximately 1 BILLION Tesla. For comparison, the Earth’s magnetic field clocks in at about 1/20,000 of a Tesla – tens of trillions of times weaker than you’d experience on this neutron star…and that is a good thing for your general health and wellbeing.
Neutron stars are the “dead cores” of once massive stars which have ended their lives as supernova. These stars exhausted their supply of hydrogen fuel in their core and a power balance between the internal energy of the star surging outward, and the star’s own massive gravity crushing inward, is cataclysmically unbalanced – gravity wins. The star collapses in on itself. The outer layers fall onto the core crushing it into the densest object we know of in the Universe – a neutron star. Even atoms are crushed. Negatively charged electrons are forced into the atomic nuclei meeting their positive proton counterparts creating more neutrons. When the core can be crushed no further, the outer remaining material of the star rebounds back into space in a massive explosion – a supernova. The resulting neutron star, made of the crushed stellar core, is so dense that a single sugar-cube-sized sampling would weigh billions of tons – as much as a mountain (though if you’re “worthy” you MIGHT able to lift it since Thor’s Hammer is made of the stuff). Neutron stars are typically about 20km in diameter and can still be a million degrees Kelvin at the surface.
But if they’re “dead,” how can neutron stars be some of the most magnetic and powerful objects in the Universe?
Searching the Universe for strange new star systems can lead to some pretty interesting finds. And sometimes, it can turn up phenomena that contradict everything we think we know about the formation and evolution of stars. Such finds are not only fascinating and exciting, they allow us the chance to expand and refine our models of how the Universe came to be.
For instance, a recent study conducted by an international team of scientists has shown how the recent discovery of binary system – a millisecond pulsar and a low-mass white dwarf (LMWD) – has defied conventional ideas of stellar evolution. Whereas such systems were believed to have circular orbits in the past, the white dwarf in this particular binary orbits the pulsar with extreme eccentricity!
To break it down, conventional wisdom states that LMWDs are the product of binary evolution. The reason for this is because that under normal circumstances, such a star – with low mass but incredible density – would only form after it has exhausted all its nuclear fuel and lost its outer layers as a planetary nebula. Given the mass of this star, this would take about 100 billion years to happen on its own – i.e. longer than the age of the Universe.
As such, they are generally believed to be the result of pairing with other stars – specifically, millisecond radio pulsars (MSPs). These are a distinct population of neutron stars that have fast spin periods and magnetic fields that are several orders of magnitude weaker than that of “normal” pulsars. These properties are thought to be the result of mass transfer with a companion star.
Basically, MSPs that are orbited by a star will slowly strip them of their mass, sucking off their outer layers and turning them into a white dwarf. The addition of this mass to the pulsar causes it to spin faster and buries its magnetic field, and also strips the companion star down to a white dwarf. In this scenario, the eccentricity of orbit of the LMWD around the pulsar is expected to be negligible.
However, when looking to the binary star system PSR J2234+0511, the international team noticed something entirely different. Here, they found a low-mass white dwarf paired with a millisecond pulsar which the white dwarf orbited with a period of 32 days and an extreme eccentricity (0.13). Since this defies current models of white dwarf stars, the team began looking for explanations.
As Dr. John Antoniadis – a researcher from the Dunlap Institute at University of Toronto and the lead author of the study – told Universe Today via email:
“Millisecond pulsar-LMWD binaries are very common. According to the established formation scenario, these systems evolve from low-mass X-ray binaries in which a neutron star accretes matter from a giant star. Eventually, this star evolves into a white dwarf and the neutron star becomes a millisecond pulsar. Because of the strong tidal forces during the mass-transfer episode, the orbits of these systems are extremely circular, with eccentricities of ~0.000001 or so.”
For the sake of their study, which appeared recently in The Astrophysical Journal – titled “An Eccentric Binary Millisecond Pulsar with a Helium White Dwarf Companion in the Galactic Field” – the team relied on newly obtained optical photometry of the system provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and spectroscopy from the Very Large Telescope from the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
In addition, they consulted recent studies that looked at other binary star systems that show this same kind of eccentric relationship. “We now know [of] 5 systems which deviate from this picture in that they have eccentricities of ~0.1 i.e. several orders of magnitude larger that what is expected in the standard scenario,” said Antoniadis. “Interestingly, they all appear to have similar eccentricities and orbital periods.”
From this, they were able to infer the temperature (8600 ± 190 K) and velocity ( km/s) of the white dwarf companion in the binary star system. Combined with constraints placed on the two body’s masses – 0.28 Solar Masses for the white dwarf and 1.4 for the pulsar – as well as their radii and surface gravity, they then tested three possible explanations for how this system came to be.
These included the possibility that neutrons stars (such as the millsecond pulsar being observed here) form through an accretion-induced collapse of a massive white dwarf. Similarly, they considered whether neutron stars undergo a transformation as they accrete material, which results in them becoming quark stars. During this process, the release of gravitational energy would be responsible for inducing the observed eccentricity.
Second, they considered the possibility – consistent with current models of stellar evolution – that LMWDs within a certain mass range have strong stellar winds when they are very young (due to unstable hydrogen fusion). The team therefore looked at whether or not these strong stellar winds could have been what disrupted the orbit of the pulsar earlier in the system’s history.
Last, they considered the possibility that some of the material released from the white dwarf in the past (due to this same stellar wind) could have formed a short-lived circumbinary disk. This disk would then act like a third body, disturbing the system and increasing the eccentricity of the white dwarf’s orbit. In the end, they deemed that the first two scenarios were unlikely, since the mass inferred for the pulsar progenitor was not consistent with either model.
However, the third scenario, in which interaction with a circumbinary disk was responsible for the eccentricity, was consistent with their inferred parameters. What’s more, the third scenario predicts how (within a certain mass range) that there should be no circular binaries with similar orbital periods – which is consistent with all known examples of such systems. As Dr. Antoniadis explained:
“These observations show that the companion star in this system is indeed a low-mass white dwarf. In addition, the mass of the pulsar seems to be too low for #2 and a bit too high for #1. We also study the orbit of the binary in the Milky way, and it looks very similar to what we find for low-mass X-ray binaries. These pieces of evidence together favor the disk hypothesis.”
Of course, Dr. Antoniadis and his colleagues admit that more information is needed before their hypothesis can be deemed correct. However, should their results be borne out by future research, then they anticipate that it will be a valuable tool for future astronomers and astrophysicists looking to study the interaction between binary star systems and circumbinary disks.
In addition, the discovery of this high eccentricity binary system will make it easier to measure the masses of Low-Mass White Dwarfs with extreme precision in the coming years. This in turn should help astronomers to better understand the properties of these stars and what leads to their formation.
As history has taught us, understanding the Universe requires a serious commitment to the process of continuous discovery. And the more we discover, the stranger it seems to become, forcing us to reconsider what we think we know about it.
Further Reading: The Astrophysical Journal
There’s nothing more out of this world than quasi-stellar objects or more simply – quasars. These are the most powerful and among the most distant objects in the Universe. At their center is a black hole with the mass of a million or more Suns. And these powerhouses are fairly compact – about the size of our Solar System. Understanding how they came to be and how — or if — they evolve into the galaxies that surround us today are some of the big questions driving astronomers.
Now, a new paper by Yue Shen and Luis C. Ho – “The diversity of quasars unified by accretion and orientation” in the journal Nature confirms the importance of a mathematical derivation by the famous astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington during the first half of the 20th Century, in understanding not just stars but the properties of quasars, too. Ironically, Eddington did not believe black holes existed, but now his derivation, the Eddington Luminosity, can be used more reliably to determine important properties of quasars across vast stretches of space and time.
A quasar is recognized as an accreting (meaning- matter falling upon) super massive black hole at the center of an “active galaxy”. Most known quasars exist at distances that place them very early in the Universe; the most distant is at 13.9 billion light years, a mere 770 million years after the Big Bang. Somehow, quasars and the nascent galaxies surrounding them evolved into the galaxies present in the Universe today. At their extreme distances, they are point-like, indistinguishable from a star except that the spectra of their light differ greatly from a star’s. Some would be as bright as our Sun if they were placed 33 light years away meaning that they are over a trillion times more luminous than our star.
The Eddington luminosity defines the maximum luminosity that a star can exhibit that is in equilibrium; specifically, hydrostatic equilibrium. Extremely massive stars and black holes can exceed this limit but stars, to remain stable for long periods, are in hydrostatic equilibrium between their inward forces – gravity – and the outward electromagnetic forces. Such is the case of our star, the Sun, otherwise it would collapse or expand which in either case, would not have provided the stable source of light that has nourished life on Earth for billions of years.
Generally, scientific models often start simple, such as Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom, and later observations can reveal intricacies that require more complex theory to explain, such as Quantum Mechanics for the atom. The Eddington luminosity and ratio could be compared to knowing the thermal efficiency and compression ratio of an internal combustion engine; by knowing such values, other properties follow.
Several other factors regarding the Eddington Luminosity are now known which are necessary to define the “modified Eddington luminosity” used today.
The new paper in Nature shows how the Eddington Luminosity helps understand the driving force behind the main sequence of quasars, and Shen and Ho call their work the missing definitive proof that quantifies the correlation of a quasar properties to a quasar’s Eddington ratio.
They used archival observational data to uncover the relationship between the strength of the optical Iron [Fe] and Oxygen[O III] emissions – strongly tied to the physical properties of the quasar’s central engine – a super-massive black hole, and the Eddington ratio. Their work provides the confidence and the correlations needed to move forward in our understanding of quasars and their relationship to the evolution of galaxies in the early Universe and up to our present epoch.
Astronomers have been studying quasars for a little over 50 years. Beginning in 1960, quasar discoveries began to accumulate but only through radio telescope observations. Then, a very accurate radio telescope measurement of Quasar 3C 273 was completed using a Lunar occultation. With this in hand, Dr. Maarten Schmidt of California Institute of Technology was able to identify the object in visible light using the 200 inch Palomar Telescope. Reviewing the strange spectral lines in its light, Schmidt reached the right conclusion that quasar spectra exhibit an extreme redshift and it was due to cosmological effects. The cosmological redshift of quasars meant that they are at a great distance from us in space and time. It also spelled the demise of the Steady-State theory of the Universe and gave further support to an expanding Universe that emanated from a singularity – the Big Bang.
The researchers, Yue Shen and Luis C. Ho are from the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University working with the Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena, California.
References and further reading:
“The diversity of quasars unified by accretion and orientation”, Yue Shen, Luis C. Ho, Sept 11, 2014, Nature
“What is a Quasar?”, Universe Today, Fraser Cain, August 12, 2013
“Interview with Maarten Schmidt”, Caltech Oral Histories, 1999
“Fifty Years of Quasars, a Symposium in honor of Maarten Schmidt”, Caltech, Sept 9, 2013
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Wanna build celestial objects? I mean it sounds easy – you just start with a big cloud of dust and give it a nudge so that it starts to spin and accrete and you end up with a star with a few wisps of dust left in orbit that continue to accrete to form planets.
Trouble is, this process doesn’t seem to be physically possible – or at least nothing like it can be replicated in standard theoretical models and laboratory simulations. There’s a problem with the initial small scale accretion steps.
Dust particles seem to stick readily together when they are very small – through van der Waals and electrostatic forces – steadily building up to form millimeter and even centimeter sized aggregates. But once they get to this size those sticky forces become less influential – and the objects are still too small to generate a meaningful amount of gravitational attraction. What interaction they do have is more in the nature of bouncing collisions – which most often result in pieces being chipped off the bouncing objects, so that they start getting smaller again.
This is an astrophysics problem known as the meter barrier.
But increasingly, theorists are coming up with ways to get around the meter barrier. Firstly, it may be a mistake to assume that you start with a uniform dust cloud, in which spontaneous accretion happens everywhere throughout the cloud.
Current thinking is that it may take a nearby supernova or a closely migrating star to trigger the evolution of a dust cloud into a stellar nursery. It’s possible that turbulence in a dust cloud creates whirlpools and eddies that favor the local aggregation of small particles into larger particles. So rather than going from a uniform dust cloud to a uniform collection of very small rocks – there is just a chance formation of accreted objects here and there.
Or we can just assume a certain stochastic inevitability about anything that has the faintest chance of happening – eventually happening. Over several million years, within a huge dust cloud that might be several hundred astronomical units in diameter, a huge variety of interactions becomes possible – and even with a 99.99% likelihood that no object can ever aggregate to a size bigger than a meter, it’s still entirely likely that this is going to happen somewhere in that vast area.
Either way, once you have a few seed objects, it’s hypothesised that the snowball process takes over. Once an aggregated object achieves a certain mass, its inertia will mean it becomes less engaged in turbulent flow. In other words, the object will begin to move through, rather than move with, the turbulent dust. Under these circumstances, it will behave like a snowball rolling down a snow covered hill, collecting a covering of dust as it plows through the dust cloud – increasing its diameter as it goes.
The time span required to build such snowballed planetesimals from a radius (Rsnow) of 100 meters up to 1000 kilometers is long. The modelling used suggests a time span (Tsnow) of between 1 and 10 million years is required.
It’s also possible to model planet formation around binary stars. Using orbital parameters equivalent to those of the binary system Alpha Centauri A and B, the snowball process is calculated to work more efficiently so that Tsnow is probably no more than 1 million years.
Once hundred kilometer-sized planetesimals have formed, they would still engage in collisions. But at this size, the objects generate substantial self-gravity and collisions are more likely to be constructive – eventually resulting in planets with their own orbiting debris, which then forms rings and moons.
There is evidence that some stars can form planets (at least gas giants) within 1 million years – such as GM Aurigae – while our solar system may have taken a more leisurely 100 million years from the Sun’s birth until the current collection of rocky, gassy and icy planets fully accreted out of the dust.
So, there’s more than a snowball’s chance in hell that that this theory may contribute to a better understanding of planet formation.
Further reading: Xie et al. From Dust To Planetesimal:The Snowball Phase?