• Astronomy: six planets (almost) in rhythm (U of Geneva)

In every scientist’s life, there are discoveries that radically change how we view our universe. I still don’t know what the biggest discovery of my life will be, but I’m hoping that when I’m and old and crotchety scientist I’ll be joking about that 30 year mistake of thinking the universe was Dark Energy dominated, and taking joy in a lifetime of seeing our understanding of solar systems grow and grow as we find the orbiting alien stars and as we explore our local worlds with an ever expanding fleet of robot collaborators.

We have gone from discovery of planets being 1 exciting world at a time to instead being small flocks of worlds found on a regular basis.

Using the ground based SOPHIE spectrograph, astronomers from the Universite de Geneve have studied a 6 planet system orbiting the star HD 158259. Spectroscopes see planets by looking at how they tug around their host star with gravity. This system includes 1 super Earth and 5 mini Neptunes, tightly packed together around a fairly average star. Now, finding systems like this is no longer entirely news worthy, but this system caught scientists attention with its rhythm and jazz. The world’s in this system are almost precisely in a 3:2 ratio. The innermost planet goes around 3 times for when the next outer world goes around twice, and that world goes around 3 times for withn the 3rd planet goes around twice. This continuing pattern of 3:2 isn’t perfect. It plays more like a middle school drum section than a perfectly synced professional gig. Still… it’s kind of cool… and I got to say it is partnered with one of the worst best intentions graphics of the year. In a graphic meant to show a 2 to 3 resonance, they show the planets as notes, but it isn’t really spaced right… you’ve just got to see it for yourself. It is so “just not quite right” it is fabulous.