10 Recent Space Discoveries 2/2 from Magdy's blog

Odd X-ray pulses are streaming from the core of the Andromeda and Perseus galaxies. And the signals’ spectrum (or light signature) does not match any known particle or atom. So astronomers are tentatively salivating over the prospect of a scientific breakthrough, as this phenomenon could just be the first tangible sign of dark matter.

Dark matter—the elusive, invisible bulk that accounts for most of the mass in the universe—might be composed of sterile neutrinos, which may or may not exist depending on whom you ask. These theorized particles supposedly produce X-rays in their death throes, and such emissions could account for the unexplained surges from the center of the aforementioned galaxies.

Furthermore, since the radiation emanates from the cores of the galaxies, it corresponds to areas of highly concentrated dark matter clumps. So while nothing is certain yet, this could be a momentous discovery that would greatly increase our understanding of a long-standing universal mystery.

Hubble has revealed yet another incredible curiosity—an asteroid that thinks it’s a comet. While the latter bodies are easily recognized by their bright, streaming tails, asteroids do not usually have such features since they possess little ice and are made mostly of heavier elements and rock. So spotting an asteroid with not one but six tails was an incredible surprise.

Asteroid P/2013 P5 is a unique find with its six spouting jets, as all other pieces of cosmic debris are quite content with considerably fewer. It blasts material indiscriminately into space like a cosmic lawn sprinkler

It’s unclear why the object behaves and looks the way it does. One awesomely destructive possibility is that P5 is rotating so quickly that it’s inadvertently killing itself. Its tiny gravity is no match for the greater rotational forces ripping it apart. And radiation pressure from solar emissions stretches the scattering debris into dazzling, comet-like appendages.

However, astronomers do know that P5 is a leftover chunk from a previous impact. The tails most likely contain zero ice content, since frozen water is unlikely to be found in an object that’s been previously exploded to 800 degrees Celsius (1,500 °F).

Planet HD 106906b is a head-scratcher. This super-monster is 11 times more massive than Jupiter, and its gaping orbit highlights all sorts of flaws in our tenuous understanding of planetary formation. HD’s distance from its parent star is an absolutely mind-boggling 650 astronomical units (AU).

The incredibly lonely Neptune, our most distant planet, lumbers around the Sun at a distance of 30 AU. This is already an amazing range, but HD is so far separated from its parent that Neptune and the Sun are comparatively within hugging distance. This huge discrepancy is responsible for the addition of many asterisks above our planetary formation theories, as astronomers scramble to explain HD’s existence in spite of its vast orbit and heft.

For example, the forces responsible for making planets are usually undone by such great distances, raising the possibility that HD was created via the collapse of a debris ring. Yet HD is too massive for that to happen. And the primordial disks of raw matter that can birth planets simply do not contain enough stuff to produce giants like HD.

Another possibility is that we’ve discovered a failed binary star system, wherein HD failed to attract enough material to ignite fusion within its gassy bosom. However, the mass ratio between potential binaries is usually no more than 10:1. In HD’s case, however, we’re looking at a 100:1 disparity.

Photo credit: Imke de Pater/UC Berkeley

Astronomers have been caught completely off guard by Uranus. The second-farthest member of our solar family is typically frigidly calm, but for some odd reason, the planet is currently awash in raging storms.

Dazzling Uranian tempests were expected back in 2007, during its equinox as the planet completed half of its 82-year orbit, and the full solar fury was unleashed directly upon the equator. Yet the stormy weather was supposed to abate as Uranus continued its journey around the Sun. It hasn’t.

With no internal heat source, the green giant relies on solar exposure to fuel its storms. But astronomers from the University of Berkeley, California recently observed major activity in the planet’s upper region, a vast layer of frozen methane. Some of these storms are close to the size of Earth, spiraling through the planet’s atmosphere for thousands of miles and shining so intensely that even amateur astronomers can spot large patches of light across the surface.

It’s unclear how the storms managed to stay healthy without the Sun’s assistance. The northern hemisphere has plunged into shadow yet still continues to host violent storm fronts. However, it’s possible that vortexes deeper within the planet are caused by similar processes to those observed on the much more tumultuous Jupiter.

Photo credit: M. Kornmesse/ESO

The Kepler Space Observatory is usually busy hunting down new planets, but it spent four years of its life tracking three gravitationally bound stars collectively known as KIC 2856960. KIC was just a run-of-the-mill triplet, two little dwarf stars orbited by a third stellar body going stag. Nothing weird so far, just three stars.

For example, Kepler saw four daily dips in the light curve as the binary dwarfs crossed each other every six hours. It also saw another slight decline in the observed light every 204 days caused by the eclipsing third star.

You’d think four years’ worth of observation would be enough to get well acquainted with KIC. And so did astronomers. But after fiddling with the numbers, the data didn’t make sense in the context of the observed behaviors of the stars. Their first job was to pin down the stellar masses. But no matter how they crunched the numbers, they failed to produce any sensible answers, even though ascertaining the mass of the stars should have been relatively straightforward.

For now, the stellar threesome has astronomers stumped. There is a potential answer that makes sense numerically yet not logically. It’s so farfetched to be almost unthinkable. The KIC system might contain a hidden fourth star. However, its orbit would have to perfectly mimic the orbit of the third star, giving the illusion of a single object.

Source:

http://listverse.com/2015/01/05/10-recent-space-discoveries-no-one-can-explain/