APOD: NGTS-10b: Discovery of a Doomed Planet (2020 Feb 26)

[APOD Robot]

NGTS-10b: Discovery of a Doomed Planet

Explanation: This hot jupiter is doomed. Hot jupiters are giant planets like Jupiter that orbit much closer to their parent stars than Mercury does to our Sun. But some hot jupiters are more extreme than others. NGTS-10b, illustrated generically, is the closest and fastest-orbiting giant planet yet discovered, circling its home star in only 18 hours. NGTS-10b is a little larger than Jupiter, but it orbits less than two times the diameter of its parent star away from the star's surface. When a planet orbits this close, it is expected to spiral inward, pulled down by tidal forces to be eventually ripped apart by the star's gravity. NGTS-10b, discovered by researchers at the University of Warwick, is named after the ESO's Next Generation Transit Survey, which detected the imperiled planet when it passed in front of its star, blocking some of the light. Although the violent demise of NGTS-10b will happen eventually, we don't yet know when.

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[bystander]

viewtopic.php?t=40302

[subliminator]

FYI you've got a swapped character in the title: its the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), not the Next Generation Survey Transit (NGST).

Cheers,
subliminator (an APOD fan)

[CuriousChimp]

I find it intriguing that there seem to be a lot of these Hot Giant Worlds. Is it vaguely possible that this is an artificial situation? That they were engineered? That some sort of hot silicon or plasma-based lifeform needs to be so close to their home star that they deliberately manoeuvred so many worlds into that star's corona?

Or might they be power-plants? Generator "wires" sucking juice from the stars' coronae?

Or, more likely and slightly more boring, are they most likely to be just one end of the bell curve? Some planets are big, some bigger, some are far away from the heat, some closer and some a little suicidally close just by the random fluctuations in the original condensing disk?

I like the Alien Engineers ideas. That would be ever so cool but I expect it just ain't so.

It would be cool to send some probes just to see.

[Tszabeau]

Might’n a planet plowing through it’s star’s corona like that, develop a tail?

[orin stepanek]

Stand aside; I'm going to open the oven! Hot, Hot, Hot!

[Chris Peterson]

I find it intriguing that there seem to be a lot of these Hot Giant Worlds. Is it vaguely possible that this is an artificial situation? That they were engineered? That some sort of hot silicon or plasma-based lifeform needs to be so close to their home star that they deliberately manoeuvred so many worlds into that star's corona?

This is a good place to consider Occam's Razor...

Or, more likely and slightly more boring, are they most likely to be just one end of the bell curve? Some planets are big, some bigger, some are far away from the heat, some closer and some a little suicidally close just by the random fluctuations in the original condensing disk?

Keep in mind that the bigger the planet and the closer it is to its star, the more likely we are to detect it.

It would be cool to send some probes just to see.

Sure... if our civilization was stable enough to engage in projects that wouldn't return results for fifty or a hundred thousand years!

[neufer]

We have indeed discovered a Doomed Planet...and it is us.

---

It would be cool to send some probes just to see.

Sure...

if our civilization was stable enough to engage in projects
that wouldn't return results for fifty or a hundred thousand years!

Or even to engage in projects (e.g., a Carbon Tax)
that won't return results for fifty or a hundred years!

[TheOtherBruce]

I find it intriguing that there seem to be a lot of these Hot Giant Worlds. Is it vaguely possible that this is an artificial situation? That they were engineered? That some sort of hot silicon or plasma-based lifeform needs to be so close to their home star that they deliberately manoeuvred so many worlds into that star's corona?

Definitely not artificial. Exactly what happens seems to depend on exactly how the exoplanet system forms. In our system, the gas and ice giants almost definitely didn't form where they are today — Jupiter seems to have been formed first, then its orbit started migrating inwards due to friction with the proto-solar nebula, which hadn't completely dispersed yet. When Saturn formed, its gravity stopped the migration, otherwise Jupiter might have gone all the way in and disrupted the formation of the inner planets. All this happened very early on in the formation of the solar system, and the theory isn't quite nailed firmly down yet; there's still room for variations on that theme to come out.

[Boomer12k]

I wonder if the material would all spiral in after that, or for some time make a RING...

:---[===] *

[Ann]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Wikipedia wrote:

V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) is a red star in the constellation Monoceros about 20,000 light years (6 kpc) from the Sun.[7] The previously unknown star was observed in early 2002 experiencing a major outburst, and was possibly one of the largest known stars for a short period following the outburst. Originally believed to be a typical nova eruption, it was then identified as something completely different. The reason for the outburst is still uncertain, but several conjectures have been put forward, including an eruption related to stellar death processes and a merger of a binary star or planets.

How about V838 Mon was a merger between the star and a giant planet?

Maybe NGTS-10b will cause a similar eruption when it merges with its parent star?

Ann

[CuriousChimp]

I wonder if the material would all spiral in after that, or for some time make a RING...

:---[===] *

Even dull, unexciting, boring, stable old Sol has a ring, and a poor excuse for a Dyson Shell. If NegsTenby ever formed one so close to its sun that it was entirely within the corona that ring wouldn't last for long nor would it be very visible to aliens living on more conventional planets orbiting the star. It would indeed be ever such a waste.

However, the swallowing of a Hoy Giant blob of cold hydrogen might do nice, spectacular things to and with the corona and photosphere. Yet another reason for a probe or two ... hundred. We could possibly get them there before the big gulp, in time to watch the fireworks. As part of a vaster project to probe many stars it may be worth doing even if the results wouldn't come back in this election cycle. The probe swarms could even do extremely long baseline interferometry and other cool stuff en route and those heading for closer stars would report sooner than NegsTenby's lot.

Of course, with my luck the merging would take years and would be as spectacular as Newton Abbot on a wet Tuesday. Still, it would be interesting to know exactly what happens when a relatively normal star swallows a big planet. I wonder if there's any going to happen soon? Can we tell from these distances?



Oh, Sol's Ring? The Asteroid Belt. It's not a spectacularly thick one but it is there. And the partial Shell is of course the comet cloud way out there in the cool darkness. Neither are artificial.

[CuriousChimp]

I thought V838-Mon, "The V-Monster", was far too young, hot and big to have viable planets?

They shouldn't have had time to coalesce from the fluffy cloud, yet and The V-Monster probably won't live long enough to let them.

[CuriousChimp]

It would be cool to send some probes just to see.

Sure... if our civilization was stable enough to engage in projects that wouldn't return results for fifty or a hundred thousand years!

There's no need to be selfish. We don't need our civilisation to be stable nor even our species to exist; all we need to do is to initiate the project and let the Universe take from it what it will. If there is a sentient species with a technological City Culture around anywhere when the swarms of probes send back their Word, fine. If not, also fine, at least we would have tried.

If we are the only intelligences that ever exist in the entire cosmos, a distinct possibility, we should at least leave something behind that marks our existence even if our degenerate, half-related post-technological child species never have the powers to appreciate it. We should do these things for us if not for posterity and should a posterity inherit the benefits, the information from our works, that would be gravy on the sandwich. Should some future alien culture gain from our efforts, find our memories, decode our pictures, listen to our songs long after Man has become extinct, well that, too would be magical.

Science does not need to have an immediate result, we don't need instant gratification from it, it should suffice for us to know that eventually our work will or even may pay off. Science isn't politics. It is a far grander, more human vision than that.

And we should be doing great things simply because we can and because they are beautiful.

We won't, of course, but we should.

[neufer]

How about V838 Mon was a merger between the star and a giant planet?

Maybe NGTS-10b will cause a similar eruption when it merges with its parent star?

I thought V838-Mon, "The V-Monster", was far too young, hot and big to have viable planets?

They shouldn't have had time to coalesce from the fluffy cloud, yet and The V-Monster probably won't live long enough to let them.

<<The formation timescale of giant planets is an important problem. Old theories were unable to explain how their cores could form fast enough to accumulate significant amounts of gas from the quickly disappearing protoplanetary disk. The mean lifetime of the disks, which is less than ten million years, appeared to be shorter than the time necessary for the core formation. Much progress has been done to solve this problem and current models of giant planet formation are now capable of forming Jupiter (or more massive planets) in about 4 million years or less, well within the average lifetime of gaseous disks.>>

<<V838 Monocerotis [Age: 4 Myr] may have swallowed its giant planets.

If one of the planets entered into the atmosphere of the star, the stellar atmosphere would have begun slowing down the planet. As the planet penetrated deeper into the atmosphere, friction would become stronger and kinetic energy would be released into the star more rapidly. The star's envelope would then warm up enough to trigger deuterium fusion, which would lead to rapid expansion. The later peaks may then have occurred when two other planets entered into the expanded envelope.

The authors of this model calculate that every year about 0.4 planetary capture events occur in Sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy, whereas for massive stars like V838 Monocerotis the rate is approximately 0.5–2.5 events per year.>>

[CuriousChimp]

I find it intriguing that there seem to be a lot of these Hot Giant Worlds. Is it vaguely possible that this is an artificial situation? That they were engineered? That some sort of hot silicon or plasma-based lifeform needs to be so close to their home star that they deliberately manoeuvred so many worlds into that star's corona?

This is a good place to consider Occam's Razor...

Yerp, Old Bill says: "If it's weird and absolutely contrary to the usual run of Physics but it keeps happening, maybe it's about time to consider that Intelligence is buggering about with the bits."

It's the lesser known corollary to his shaving tool.

Or, more likely and slightly more boring, are they most likely to be just one end of the bell curve? Some planets are big, some bigger, some are far away from the heat, some closer and some a little suicidally close just by the random fluctuations in the original condensing disk?

Keep in mind that the bigger the planet and the closer it is to its star, the more likely we are to detect it.

Very, very true and obvious. The better lit something is the easier it is to see and being close to a star gets you exceedingly well illuminated indeed and huge beasties are more easily spotted than littler ones; we can see Ceres from miles away, tiny possible impactors not so much.

It would be cool to send some probes just to see.

Sure... if our civilization was stable enough to engage in projects that wouldn't return results for fifty or a hundred thousand years!

Hah! Very good point. We can't even do anti-pandemic stuff with a pay-off over days with any great skill. Humans have the attention span of ... okay, there just isn't anything else with that short an attention span. Nothing that survives for long.