From what exactly was found, to the impact that it could have on our understanding of
the universe, and more!
Join us as we explore toi 849 b: First Exposed Planetary Core Discovered!
Before diving right in, it's important to understand a key fundamental property of planets
in our universe.
Mainly, they all have cores.
From the smallest of planets to the greatest of supergiants, there are cores in each and
every planet that help not only form them, but ensure that they survive long term in
the universe.
The problem for scientists is that while we can guess what they are like, there is no
definitive way of KNOWING what they are like.
Take our own Earth for example, we can guess based on research and findings and "understandings'
of the way planets are supposed to work what our core is like.
But we've never seen it.
In fact, we've never even come close to reaching it.
Not to mention, that our planet is a solid planet, and there are numerous gas planets
out there whose cores might be something entirely different.
Which is why scientists have been eagerly searching the universe looking for a core
that is just...out there.
And we might have finally found one.
Astronomers have spotted the exposed core of a massive alien world, an unprecedented
find that could shed considerable light on planet formation, evolution and diversity.
The planetary core, called TOI-849b, is unlike anything scientists have seen before, and
it could hide a wealth of exciting information in its bizarre depths, researchers say.
"The discovery of this planet shows that planet formation and evolution proceeds in unusual
ways not anticipated from studying the solar system," David Armstrong, the lead author
of a new study reporting the discovery of TOI-849b, told Space.com,
"There is a huge range and diversity of planets out there, with more found every week, and
if anything is becoming clear it is that we should not be surprised at strange new discoveries,"
said Armstrong, a researcher in the physics department at the University of Warwick in
England.
"With luck, the new understanding of planet formation planets like TOI-849b can open up
will help us understand how our own solar system formed."
So, how exactly did we find this core?
TOI-849b was detected by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched
to Earth orbit in April 2018 and has discovered more than 50 alien worlds to date, along with
more than 2,000 still-unconfirmed candidates.
("TOI" stands for "TESS object of interest.")
As its name suggests, TESS hunts for alien worlds using the "transit method," meaning
it watches for tiny but telltale dips in the brightness of stars created by orbiting planets
traveling across their faces.
The TESS observations revealed that TOI-849b lies extremely close to its host star, completing
one lap every 18 hours.
This orbital region is known as the "Neptunian desert," because Neptune-size worlds are very
rare there.
The newfound object is Neptune-size, the TESS data shows, but it's far from Neptune-like.
After all, Neptune is quite cold, for starters.
And TOI-849b's surface temperature is likely around 2,780 degrees Fahrenheit (1,530 degrees
Celsius), Armstrong and his colleagues determined.
Whereas Neptune's average temperature is -392 degrees Fahrenheit (-200 Degrees Celsius).
So yeah, it's quite different as you can see.
The researchers also studied the object using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher
(HARPS), an instrument installed on a telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La
Silla Observatory in Chile.
HARPS and similar spectrographs allow scientists to track the motions of stars precisely, revealing
how much they're tugged to and fro by the gravitational pull of their orbiting planets.
The HARPS data suggests that TOI-849b is two to three times more massive than Neptune,
which itself is 17 times heftier than Earth.
"TOI 849 b is the most massive terrestrial planet — that has an Earth-like density
— discovered," Armstrong said in a statement.
"We would expect a planet this massive to have accreted large quantities of hydrogen
and helium when it formed, growing into something similar to Jupiter.
The fact that we don’t see those gases lets us know this is an exposed planetary core,"
he added.
"This is the first time that we’ve discovered an intact exposed core of a gas giant around
a star."
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It's unclear how TOI-849b arrived at this rather bizarre evolutionary point.
Is it a former gas giant that lost its atmosphere after venturing too close to its host star,
say, or slamming into another planet? (Stellar radiation at TOI-849b's orbital location,
while intense, is not nearly powerful enough to strip away a gas-giant atmosphere entirely,
the researchers said.)
Or did TOI-849b never accrete enough gas to become a Jupiter-like world?
"This is a mystery, and a great question," Armstrong told Space.com.
"I think the key clue is that TOI-849b lies in the Neptunian desert, which hints at a
rare history.
That suggests to me one of the more unusual or aggressive pathways, perhaps tidal disruption
or an impact during the formation process, but we need more study to be sure."
Though TOI-849b is the first object of its kind ever spotted around another star, our
own solar system may host something similar: the weird metallic asteroid Psyche, which
some scientists think is the exposed core of a Mars-size planet.
We'll learn a lot more about Psyche in the relatively near future.
NASA is developing a mission, also called Psyche, that is scheduled to launch in August
2022 and arrive at the 140-mile-wide (226 kilometers) asteroid in 2026.
Now by this point it's fair to think that you might be lost in the "awe and wonder"
in finding TOI-849b and what exactly it means for our understanding of the universe as a
whole.
We'll do our best to help you understand its importance.
First and foremost, as we noted before, while our study of planets has gone on for many
decades and has yielded some very interesting results, when it comes to the core of our
planet, we're somewhat at a loss.
We just don't know what is at the core of both rocky and gaseous planets.
We can guess, we can extrapolate what they are, but there's no true way of knowing because
we haven't been down there and there's nothing close to an exposed core (that we can definitively
confirm at present) that we can study.
Not to mention, it's fair to believe that both rocky and gaseous planets have different
kinds of cores.
So we can study TOI-849b all we want to learn about the potential cores of gaseous planets,
but when it comes to solid planets like Earth, Mars, Mercury, etc., it might be something
entirely different.
But even with the differences, it would be a massive step in the right direction to understanding
a simple concept of the universe that we honestly haven't gotten to fully grasp yet: the birth
of a planet.
Now on some level that might seem like an odd claim, as we can pretty much guess how
planets form based on our personal understanding of the universe.
But it's not that simple.
Much of what we predict in regards to the formation of planets is based on the planets
we've been able to observe and speculate about in terms of timing, formation, and how they
ended up where they are now.
A great example is the Earth.
While we can speculate when exactly it was formed based on the age of the sun and the
universe at large, certain elements still are speculation only.
Such as the formation of the moon.
Some say it was always there, others say a massive asteroid hit the Earth in its early
stages and the resulting fragmentation was launched into space, held in place by Earth's
gravity and eventually formed the moon.
But...we don't know which answer is truly right.
Another great example of not fully understanding how things formed is Mars.
Mars was long suggested to have formed a certain way and in a certain amount of time.
But discoveries made in the last couple of years have now put a doubt on those estimates,
and actually makes it appear as though Mars formed a LOT earlier than we surmised.
What does this all have to do with the cores of planets?
Because those are the first things that formed!
It all has to do with the birth of the solar system (and the universe at large if you think
about it) via an event that we call the solar nebula.
In short, the Solar Nebula was the theory that when the universe was made there was
a large cloud of gas and debris that was made and it spanned across the universe.
With certain pockets being denser than others.
This in turn formed the sun and other stars in the sky (again, this is a loose definition).
In our solar system the sun was going and starting to form, the Solar Nebula was still
reaching out in all manners, and the sun wasn't the only thing forming when it was starting
to collapse and become like it is now.
Through this process, a lot of things were literally just "thrown together", and it made
not just the planets, but comets, asteroids, moons, and many other things that you can
find up in the sky.
This is one of the reasons why there are so many objects in our solar system, and why
there are so many different kinds of planets.
Some of the planets are gas giants because that's all they had to work with (or they
had solid dense cores and the gasses just run to that) and when they were big enough
and such, regular matter like rocks and stuff couldn't stick to it.
In contrast, planets like Earth, Mars, and Pluto were able to go and be solid because
of the matter that was around them.
The gasses of the nebula were start a part of them, but they were absorbed either into
the ground or into the very atmosphere itself.
But none of this would've started planet-wise without the cores.
Which can be proven because of things like asteroids and comets and the like.
If it was so easy to make a core, and thus a planet, we would have much more than 9 in
our system.
The cores of planets aren't just items they're special, they're unique, and that's why it's
a big deal to have found one at all like TOI-849b.
Because more times than not, you don't see planets without their cores.
Let alone ones that are really close to a star and thus easier to explore from where
we are and learn more about them.
By studying TOI-849b, we can learn minute details about cores that we've never thought
of before.
Which if you recall some of the team who found the core reacting to it, they feel the same
way.
Just finding it was an anomaly in and of itself, but the further we dive into this core (metaphorically
speaking of course) and the more we discover, the more we'll learn about planets as a whole.
Including why certain cores are composed the way they are, how that dictates the kind of
planets they "form around them" and much more.
And while it might be a stretch to state that we could learn more about our own planet core
from TOI-849b (as again ours is a solid planet and TOI-849b comes from a gas giant) we might
be able to find some clues that could point to what is really in the center of our planet.
Which may help paint a very special picture of Earth that we honestly didn't have before.
Plus, there's another bonus to knowing that something like TOI-849b is out there.
Mainly, it means that there could be even more exposed cores out there.
And as any scientist will tell you, while having one sample of something rare is nice,
by having more, we can make even greater inferences as to what is going on with them.
Finding TOI-849b was something decades in the making in many respects, but now, we have
an example of what to look for, and technically where they could possibly be.
So by that logic, that means that there could be a whole slew of other planetary cores out
there that are exposed and are just waiting to be found.
This will give new motivation to find them and study them so that we can learn even more
about them, the planets, and the universe at large.
Now, there is no doubt that we did get lucky with TOI-849b, even the scientists who found
it noted that it was in a "desert" that it shouldn't have been in...and yet it was there.
So perhaps we'll get lucky again and find yet another exposed core, it's hard to say.
As in all things though, whether we find it or not, this is an important step for the
study of the universe.
Because we every new find or "impossible find" that we discover, we get ever closer to understanding
more about what we are, where we came from and more.
Who knows what information we'll get from TOI-849b and potential other cores.
But any knowledge is good knowledge, and if it can help us understand the Earth and the
universe even more?
It could lead to even greater discoveries, and that's exactly what we need.
Thanks for watching everyone!
What did you think of this look at TOI-849b and the potential this core could have for
understanding Earth and other planets in the universe?
Do you think that we indeed will learn more about the universe from this?
What discoveries do you think will help shape what we know?
Let us know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!