New Solar System?

NASA’s Hubble Telescope has recently taken the first visible photos of a planet, Formalhaut B, which orbits the star Formalhaut. The star is 25 light years away and the star is about 1.8 million miles inside of the ring surrounding it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, but the gravitational pull is still strong enough for the planet to be in orbit. The planet is no more than 3 times Jupiter’s mass. Scientists think that more planets may possibly form because the gravitational pull between the planet and the star is moving debris that also orbits the star.

The photos were sent to Earth on November 13, 2008. In 2004, the telescope took the first pictures of the Formalhaut star. These pictures revealed that there was proto planetary material orbiting the star as well as pieces of ice the size or Pluto. It has taken so long for photos of the planet itself to be taken because the planet is very fast moving. The first traces of the planet were in the 1980s when dust was found around the star.

The planet is very bright because there is a ring of debris orbiting it that reflects the star’s light. What is next for the planet? The next photographs that will be taken will be in infrared light so that NASA can see if there is water vapor on the planet, thus able to support life. The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched in 2013 and will be able to look for other structures in the system, such as other planets, asteroid belts, and things of that sort. Perhaps the new solar system resembles ours. We will have to wait and find out.

Space Portal

Portals connecting the Earth to the Sun, called FLEs or Flux Transfer Events, connect the Earth to the Sun temporarily every 8 minutes. This connection transfers energy from the sun to Earth. This information was presented at the 2008 Plasma Workshop in Huntsville, Alabama.

Around the Earth, there is an invisible magnetic field containing energy particles from the Sun. The field is a bubble that surrounds the planet like the atmosphere. When a part of the world is receiving sunlight, during the daytime, a cylinder connects the bubble to the sun. In the cylinder, energy is transferred and can be traced from the Earth to the Sun.

How do we know these are real? They sound made up, maybe out of Star Wars, but they are very real. NASA sent space ships to survey the size of the cylinder. The ships were able to read the energy particles traveling through the cylinder, proving they were present. Now, so they are easier to predict, scientists know how much energy flows through at a given time so they can simulate it on computers.