So today was a mind-blowing day with many press releases telling us just how we were wrong about where planets form, how and how fast galaxy clusters form, and the halos of galaxies as they form.

Play

Links


The most distant protocluster discovered by the Subaru Telescope. The blue shading shows the calculated extent of the protocluster, and the bluer color indicates higher density of galaxies in the protocluster. The red objects in zoom-in figures are the 12 galaxies found in it. This figure shows a square field-of-view 24 arcminutes along each side (corresponding to 198 million light-years along each side at a distance of 13.0 billion light-years). Each zoom-in figure is 16 arcseconds along each side (corresponding to 2.2 million light-years). (Credit: NAOJ/Harikane et al.)


Galaxy Cluster Formation


Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time observed that a fast radio burst passed through a galactic halo. Lasting less than a millisecond, this enigmatic blast of cosmic radio waves came through almost undisturbed, suggesting that the halo has surprisingly low density and weak magnetic field. This new technique could be used to explore the elusive halos of other galaxies.

Halos of Galaxies


Artist impression of giant planet with small star. Credit – Dr. Pamela Gay.

Planet Formation

Transcript

This is the Daily Space for today, Friday, September 27, 2019.

Most Mondays through Fridays, either I or my cohost Annie Wilson will be here bringing you a quick rundown of all that is new in space and astronomy. We’ve been doing this podcast version of our longer-running Twitch series for 2 weeks now, and we’re so grateful to all you who have already joined us. If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you could share our show with others. You never know whose life you are going to change by introducing them to science.

———————

We’re at a weird time in astronomy right now. As a field, we went from cosmology becoming an observational field in the 1920s, to systematically proving prominent theories true and adding in details from essentially the 60s through to the 200s, to today finding things with new telescopes that tell we are still missing major pieces of the cosmological problem. A major part of our understanding of the universe comes from a very simple story: Our Universe, at the moment that neutral atoms formed and light separated from the matter, was a largely smooth cloud of material. Slight bumps and hollows would eventually turn into great galaxy clusters and the voids we see in the large scale structure of our universe today. Computer models can start from nothing, and build forward to create structures that mimic our modern universe, and using these models, we have assumed timelines for our Universe’s construction, setting out when we believe the first stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters should make their way onto the cosmic stage.

The thing is, the actual universe never read our instruction manual, and it’s been literally writing its own rulebook in the sky for nearly 14 billion years.

In new research using the Gemini Observatory, the Subaru telescope, and Keck observatory, astronomers have discovered a proto-cluster of gas rich galaxies  located 13billion light years away. Because light takes time to travel, this extreme distance means we’re seeing galaxies form in the early universe, and the structures we’re seeing formed in just less than 800 million years. So far, observations have confirmed the presence of 12 star forming galaxies in this system. This was done by using spectra to prove these objects are located at the same distance, and that none of them are foreground or background objects. All of these systems were found to be undergoing massive amounts of star formation, and one galaxy on the outskirts was this cluster possessed an extraordinary amount of gas. The entire system was 500 million light years across, and given the age of the system, light from one side of the galaxy wouldn’t have had time to travel to the other side of the galaxy when all these stars shined their light toward us. 

While 12 galaxies may not seem that impressive compared to the 1000 galaxy sized clusters we have today, it’s important to realize we can only resolve the light from some of the galaxies in this system. Overall, this patch of universe appears to be 15 times denser than surrounding regions seen at the same time period. Further observations are now being planned to use the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to look at this proto-clusters structure and to look for dust enshrouded systems using radio light.

This newly discovered system, which is named z660D, sets a new record as being the earliest known cluster to have formed, stealing that title away from a system 100 million years more modern, that was found during a prior survey.

———————

From the edge of the universe, we move a bit closer to home, where we continue to find things don’t look as expected. In general, galaxies have 3 main parts: a spheroid of stars surrounding a supermassive blackhole, an outer halo of gas with things like globular clusters, and in some cases a disk of gas, dust, and stars like we have in our Milky Way. Galactic halos are places largely transparent cold gas that we thought was clustered into turbulent clouds. Since we can’t directly measure this material, testing our theories on both its motions and its magnetic fields has been challenging and requires those halos be illuminated by a background source. 

Recently, and entirely accidentally, astronomers were able to make exactly this kind of an observation. At the time, they were using the Very Large Telescope to look for the source of Fast Radio Bursts identified with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project. These extraordinarily brief and bright radio sources are not well understood, and it is hoped that by studying where the light is coming from, we may be able to sort what they are. While we’re not necessarily any closer to understanding fast radio bursts, this one particular series of bursts did shine understanding on the halo of galaxies.

The Very Large Telescope observations determined that a series of 40 microsecond long fast radio bursts came from a distant galaxy, and on their way toward earth, passed through the halo of an intervening galaxy. 

By catching how the light from Fast Radio Bursts passes through a halo, astronomers were able to make measurements never before possible.

And these measurements showed that at least this galaxy halo isn’t like what we expected. Rather than having turbulent gas that would distort the fast radio burst’s light, it appears to be made of extremely smooth, and in the words of the ESO press release, tranquil gas. Further, astronomers saw none of the telltale signs of a magnetic field. Basically, this has none of the turbulent magnetic goodness that so many models had hoped for. This is currently a data set of one, and we don’t know if what we’re seeing is the norm or an exception, but whatever it is, it is awesome.

———————

Our final story of the day is yet one more case of, huh, we did not expect that. 

In this case, the thing we didn’t expect was a gas giant orbiting a red dwarf star. Observers in the CARMENES consortium have announced that a red dwarf star just 30 light years away is being orbited by a planet with a mass between that of Saturn and Jupter. This star, GJ 3512, is only 12% the mass of our Sun, and this star-planet combination defies all our current solar system formation models. 

It had been thought that small stars you form small planets in large numbers, making systems like Trappist 1 and it’s 7 worlds potentially the norm. This type of system is formed when a Molecular Cloud of gas and dust collapses and fragments, and a single fragment forms a star at its center with a surrounding disk of materials that build up through collisions into a series of small planets.  

This kind of model can’t explain a system like GJ 3512, because there shouldn’t be enough mass in the disk, to form this size of a planet, and there isn’t an easy way to build this large of an object out of a disk through collisions along. It’s suggested in a new paper Science, that it may be that most solar systems form planets through collisions between smaller objects – something called a bottom up approach – but most doesn’t mean all. Some systems, like this one, may instead use a top down approach where the collapsing cloud of material fragments into the stuff that will form the star and the stuff that will form the planet. This is closer to how we see binary star systems forming. 

The possibility that different kinds of solar systems can form in different ways shouldn’t be that surprising, but this is definitely a case of the universe being far more creative than we are. While it’s easy to forget, we need to remember that these are still the early days of exoplanet exploration, and we are going to need a lot more data before we can even start to say that we understand the diversity of systems our models need to explain.

And that rounds out our show for today.

———————

Thank you all for listening. The Daily Space is produced by Susie Murph, and is a product of the Planetary Science Institute, a 501(c)3 non profit dedicated to exploring our Solar System and beyond. We are made possible through the generous contributions of people like you. If you would like to learn more, please check us out on patreon.com/cosmoquestx 

 I will now take your questions, and ask you to please at CosmoQuestX to help me find them in the chat. While you type them in, let me remind you that the Daily Space is a production of the Planetary Science Institute, and is hosted by myself and Annie Wilson. 

Last week we launched a new podcast edition of this show. If you want a 10 minute, chaos free listen, click over to dailyspace.org and check it out. We are still working on getting it listed in podcast directories, but don’t worry, it will be there soon.

Each live episode of the Daily Space is archived on YouTube. If you miss an episode here on Twitch.tv, you can find it later on youtube.com/c/cosmoquest. These episodes are edited and produced by Susie Murph. 

We are here thanks to the generous contributions of people like you who allow us to pay our staff a living wage. Every bit, every sub, and every dollar committed on Patreon.com/cosmoquestx really helps. If you can’t give financially, we really do understand, and there are other ways you can help our programs. Right now, the best way you can help is to get the word out. Let you friends know, share our channel to your social media, or leave a recommendation. You never know what doors you are opening.

We really wouldn’t be here without you – thank you for all that you do.

e halos of galaxies as they form.

Play

Links


Galaxy Cluster Formation

Halos of Galaxies

Planet Formation

Transcript

This is the Daily Space for today, Friday, September 27, 2019.

Most Mondays through Fridays, either I or my cohost Annie Wilson will be here bringing you a quick rundown of all that is new in space and astronomy. We’ve been doing this podcast version of our longer-running Twitch series for 2 weeks now, and we’re so grateful to all you who have already joined us. If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you could share our show with others. You never know whose life you are going to change by introducing them to science.

———————

We’re at a weird time in astronomy right now. As a field, we went from cosmology becoming an observational field in the 1920s, to systematically proving prominent theories true and adding in details from essentially the 60s through to the 200s, to today finding things with new telescopes that tell we are still missing major pieces of the cosmological problem. A major part of our understanding of the universe comes from a very simple story: Our Universe, at the moment that neutral atoms formed and light separated from the matter, was a largely smooth cloud of material. Slight bumps and hollows would eventually turn into great galaxy clusters and the voids we see in the large scale structure of our universe today. Computer models can start from nothing, and build forward to create structures that mimic our modern universe, and using these models, we have assumed timelines for our Universe’s construction, setting out when we believe the first stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters should make their way onto the cosmic stage.

The thing is, the actual universe never read our instruction manual, and it’s been literally writing its own rulebook in the sky for nearly 14 billion years.

In new research using the Gemini Observatory, the Subaru telescope, and Keck observatory, astronomers have discovered a proto-cluster of gas rich galaxies  located 13billion light years away. Because light takes time to travel, this extreme distance means we’re seeing galaxies form in the early universe, and the structures we’re seeing formed in just less than 800 million years. So far, observations have confirmed the presence of 12 star forming galaxies in this system. This was done by using spectra to prove these objects are located at the same distance, and that none of them are foreground or background objects. All of these systems were found to be undergoing massive amounts of star formation, and one galaxy on the outskirts was this cluster possessed an extraordinary amount of gas. The entire system was 500 million light years across, and given the age of the system, light from one side of the galaxy wouldn’t have had time to travel to the other side of the galaxy when all these stars shined their light toward us. 

While 12 galaxies may not seem that impressive compared to the 1000 galaxy sized clusters we have today, it’s important to realize we can only resolve the light from some of the galaxies in this system. Overall, this patch of universe appears to be 15 times denser than surrounding regions seen at the same time period. Further observations are now being planned to use the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to look at this proto-clusters structure and to look for dust enshrouded systems using radio light.

This newly discovered system, which is named z660D, sets a new record as being the earliest known cluster to have formed, stealing that title away from a system 100 million years more modern, that was found during a prior survey.

———————

From the edge of the universe, we move a bit closer to home, where we continue to find things don’t look as expected. In general, galaxies have 3 main parts: a spheroid of stars surrounding a supermassive blackhole, an outer halo of gas with things like globular clusters, and in some cases a disk of gas, dust, and stars like we have in our Milky Way. Galactic halos are places largely transparent cold gas that we thought was clustered into turbulent clouds. Since we can’t directly measure this material, testing our theories on both its motions and its magnetic fields has been challenging and requires those halos be illuminated by a background source. 

Recently, and entirely accidentally, astronomers were able to make exactly this kind of an observation. At the time, they were using the Very Large Telescope to look for the source of Fast Radio Bursts identified with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project. These extraordinarily brief and bright radio sources are not well understood, and it is hoped that by studying where the light is coming from, we may be able to sort what they are. While we’re not necessarily any closer to understanding fast radio bursts, this one particular series of bursts did shine understanding on the halo of galaxies.

The Very Large Telescope observations determined that a series of 40 microsecond long fast radio bursts came from a distant galaxy, and on their way toward earth, passed through the halo of an intervening galaxy. 

By catching how the light from Fast Radio Bursts passes through a halo, astronomers were able to make measurements never before possible.

And these measurements showed that at least this galaxy halo isn’t like what we expected. Rather than having turbulent gas that would distort the fast radio burst’s light, it appears to be made of extremely smooth, and in the words of the ESO press release, tranquil gas. Further, astronomers saw none of the telltale signs of a magnetic field. Basically, this has none of the turbulent magnetic goodness that so many models had hoped for. This is currently a data set of one, and we don’t know if what we’re seeing is the norm or an exception, but whatever it is, it is awesome.

———————

Our final story of the day is yet one more case of, huh, we did not expect that. 

In this case, the thing we didn’t expect was a gas giant orbiting a red dwarf star. Observers in the CARMENES consortium have announced that a red dwarf star just 30 light years away is being orbited by a planet with a mass between that of Saturn and Jupter. This star, GJ 3512, is only 12% the mass of our Sun, and this star-planet combination defies all our current solar system formation models. 

It had been thought that small stars you form small planets in large numbers, making systems like Trappist 1 and it’s 7 worlds potentially the norm. This type of system is formed when a Molecular Cloud of gas and dust collapses and fragments, and a single fragment forms a star at its center with a surrounding disk of materials that build up through collisions into a series of small planets.  

This kind of model can’t explain a system like GJ 3512, because there shouldn’t be enough mass in the disk, to form this size of a planet, and there isn’t an easy way to build this large of an object out of a disk through collisions along. It’s suggested in a new paper Science, that it may be that most solar systems form planets through collisions between smaller objects – something called a bottom up approach – but most doesn’t mean all. Some systems, like this one, may instead use a top down approach where the collapsing cloud of material fragments into the stuff that will form the star and the stuff that will form the planet. This is closer to how we see binary star systems forming. 

The possibility that different kinds of solar systems can form in different ways shouldn’t be that surprising, but this is definitely a case of the universe being far more creative than we are. While it’s easy to forget, we need to remember that these are still the early days of exoplanet exploration, and we are going to need a lot more data before we can even start to say that we understand the diversity of systems our models need to explain.

And that rounds out our show for today.

———————

Thank you all for listening. The Daily Space is produced by Susie Murph, and is a product of the Planetary Science Institute, a 501(c)3 non profit dedicated to exploring our Solar System and beyond. We are made possible through the generous contributions of people like you. If you would like to learn more, please check us out on patreon.com/cosmoquestx 

 I will now take your questions, and ask you to please at CosmoQuestX to help me find them in the chat. While you type them in, let me remind you that the Daily Space is a production of the Planetary Science Institute, and is hosted by myself and Annie Wilson. 

Last week we launched a new podcast edition of this show. If you want a 10 minute, chaos free listen, click over to dailyspace.org and check it out. We are still working on getting it listed in podcast directories, but don’t worry, it will be there soon.

Each live episode of the Daily Space is archived on YouTube. If you miss an episode here on Twitch.tv, you can find it later on youtube.com/c/cosmoquest. These episodes are edited and produced by Susie Murph. 

We are here thanks to the generous contributions of people like you who allow us to pay our staff a living wage. Every bit, every sub, and every dollar committed on Patreon.com/cosmoquestx really helps. If you can’t give financially, we really do understand, and there are other ways you can help our programs. Right now, the best way you can help is to get the word out. Let you friends know, share our channel to your social media, or leave a recommendation. You never know what doors you are opening.

We really wouldn’t be here without you – thank you for all that you do.

o today was a mind-blowing day with many press releases telling us just how we were wrong about where planets form, how and how fast galaxy clusters form, and the halos of galaxies as they form.

Play

Links


Galaxy Cluster Formation

Halos of Galaxies

Planet Formation

Transcript

This is the Daily Space for today, Friday, September 27, 2019.

Most Mondays through Fridays, either I or my cohost Annie Wilson will be here bringing you a quick rundown of all that is new in space and astronomy. We’ve been doing this podcast version of our longer-running Twitch series for 2 weeks now, and we’re so grateful to all you who have already joined us. If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you could share our show with others. You never know whose life you are going to change by introducing them to science.

———————

We’re at a weird time in astronomy right now. As a field, we went from cosmology becoming an observational field in the 1920s, to systematically proving prominent theories true and adding in details from essentially the 60s through to the 200s, to today finding things with new telescopes that tell we are still missing major pieces of the cosmological problem. A major part of our understanding of the universe comes from a very simple story: Our Universe, at the moment that neutral atoms formed and light separated from the matter, was a largely smooth cloud of material. Slight bumps and hollows would eventually turn into great galaxy clusters and the voids we see in the large scale structure of our universe today. Computer models can start from nothing, and build forward to create structures that mimic our modern universe, and using these models, we have assumed timelines for our Universe’s construction, setting out when we believe the first stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters should make their way onto the cosmic stage.

The thing is, the actual universe never read our instruction manual, and it’s been literally writing its own rulebook in the sky for nearly 14 billion years.

In new research using the Gemini Observatory, the Subaru telescope, and Keck observatory, astronomers have discovered a proto-cluster of gas rich galaxies  located 13billion light years away. Because light takes time to travel, this extreme distance means we’re seeing galaxies form in the early universe, and the structures we’re seeing formed in just less than 800 million years. So far, observations have confirmed the presence of 12 star forming galaxies in this system. This was done by using spectra to prove these objects are located at the same distance, and that none of them are foreground or background objects. All of these systems were found to be undergoing massive amounts of star formation, and one galaxy on the outskirts was this cluster possessed an extraordinary amount of gas. The entire system was 500 million light years across, and given the age of the system, light from one side of the galaxy wouldn’t have had time to travel to the other side of the galaxy when all these stars shined their light toward us. 

While 12 galaxies may not seem that impressive compared to the 1000 galaxy sized clusters we have today, it’s important to realize we can only resolve the light from some of the galaxies in this system. Overall, this patch of universe appears to be 15 times denser than surrounding regions seen at the same time period. Further observations are now being planned to use the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to look at this proto-clusters structure and to look for dust enshrouded systems using radio light.

This newly discovered system, which is named z660D, sets a new record as being the earliest known cluster to have formed, stealing that title away from a system 100 million years more modern, that was found during a prior survey.

———————

From the edge of the universe, we move a bit closer to home, where we continue to find things don’t look as expected. In general, galaxies have 3 main parts: a spheroid of stars surrounding a supermassive blackhole, an outer halo of gas with things like globular clusters, and in some cases a disk of gas, dust, and stars like we have in our Milky Way. Galactic halos are places largely transparent cold gas that we thought was clustered into turbulent clouds. Since we can’t directly measure this material, testing our theories on both its motions and its magnetic fields has been challenging and requires those halos be illuminated by a background source. 

Recently, and entirely accidentally, astronomers were able to make exactly this kind of an observation. At the time, they were using the Very Large Telescope to look for the source of Fast Radio Bursts identified with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project. These extraordinarily brief and bright radio sources are not well understood, and it is hoped that by studying where the light is coming from, we may be able to sort what they are. While we’re not necessarily any closer to understanding fast radio bursts, this one particular series of bursts did shine understanding on the halo of galaxies.

The Very Large Telescope observations determined that a series of 40 microsecond long fast radio bursts came from a distant galaxy, and on their way toward earth, passed through the halo of an intervening galaxy. 

By catching how the light from Fast Radio Bursts passes through a halo, astronomers were able to make measurements never before possible.

And these measurements showed that at least this galaxy halo isn’t like what we expected. Rather than having turbulent gas that would distort the fast radio burst’s light, it appears to be made of extremely smooth, and in the words of the ESO press release, tranquil gas. Further, astronomers saw none of the telltale signs of a magnetic field. Basically, this has none of the turbulent magnetic goodness that so many models had hoped for. This is currently a data set of one, and we don’t know if what we’re seeing is the norm or an exception, but whatever it is, it is awesome.

———————

Our final story of the day is yet one more case of, huh, we did not expect that. 

In this case, the thing we didn’t expect was a gas giant orbiting a red dwarf star. Observers in the CARMENES consortium have announced that a red dwarf star just 30 light years away is being orbited by a planet with a mass between that of Saturn and Jupter. This star, GJ 3512, is only 12% the mass of our Sun, and this star-planet combination defies all our current solar system formation models. 

It had been thought that small stars you form small planets in large numbers, making systems like Trappist 1 and it’s 7 worlds potentially the norm. This type of system is formed when a Molecular Cloud of gas and dust collapses and fragments, and a single fragment forms a star at its center with a surrounding disk of materials that build up through collisions into a series of small planets.  

This kind of model can’t explain a system like GJ 3512, because there shouldn’t be enough mass in the disk, to form this size of a planet, and there isn’t an easy way to build this large of an object out of a disk through collisions along. It’s suggested in a new paper Science, that it may be that most solar systems form planets through collisions between smaller objects – something called a bottom up approach – but most doesn’t mean all. Some systems, like this one, may instead use a top down approach where the collapsing cloud of material fragments into the stuff that will form the star and the stuff that will form the planet. This is closer to how we see binary star systems forming. 

The possibility that different kinds of solar systems can form in different ways shouldn’t be that surprising, but this is definitely a case of the universe being far more creative than we are. While it’s easy to forget, we need to remember that these are still the early days of exoplanet exploration, and we are going to need a lot more data before we can even start to say that we understand the diversity of systems our models need to explain.

And that rounds out our show for today.

———————

Thank you all for listening. The Daily Space is produced by Susie Murph, and is a product of the Planetary Science Institute, a 501(c)3 non profit dedicated to exploring our Solar System and beyond. We are made possible through the generous contributions of people like you. If you would like to learn more, please check us out on patreon.com/cosmoquestx 

 I will now take your questions, and ask you to please at CosmoQuestX to help me find them in the chat. While you type them in, let me remind you that the Daily Space is a production of the Planetary Science Institute, and is hosted by myself and Annie Wilson. 

Last week we launched a new podcast edition of this show. If you want a 10 minute, chaos free listen, click over to dailyspace.org and check it out. We are still working on getting it listed in podcast directories, but don’t worry, it will be there soon.

Each live episode of the Daily Space is archived on YouTube. If you miss an episode here on Twitch.tv, you can find it later on youtube.com/c/cosmoquest. These episodes are edited and produced by Susie Murph. 

We are here thanks to the generous contributions of people like you who allow us to pay our staff a living wage. Every bit, every sub, and every dollar committed on Patreon.com/cosmoquestx really helps. If you can’t give financially, we really do understand, and there are other ways you can help our programs. Right now, the best way you can help is to get the word out. Let you friends know, share our channel to your social media, or leave a recommendation. You never know what doors you are opening.

We really wouldn’t be here without you – thank you for all that you do.

e halos of galaxies as they form.

Play

Links


Galaxy Cluster Formation

Halos of Galaxies

Planet Formation

Transcript

This is the Daily Space for today, Friday, September 27, 2019.

Most Mondays through Fridays, either I or my cohost Annie Wilson will be here bringing you a quick rundown of all that is new in space and astronomy. We’ve been doing this podcast version of our longer-running Twitch series for 2 weeks now, and we’re so grateful to all you who have already joined us. If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you could share our show with others. You never know whose life you are going to change by introducing them to science.

———————

We’re at a weird time in astronomy right now. As a field, we went from cosmology becoming an observational field in the 1920s, to systematically proving prominent theories true and adding in details from essentially the 60s through to the 200s, to today finding things with new telescopes that tell we are still missing major pieces of the cosmological problem. A major part of our understanding of the universe comes from a very simple story: Our Universe, at the moment that neutral atoms formed and light separated from the matter, was a largely smooth cloud of material. Slight bumps and hollows would eventually turn into great galaxy clusters and the voids we see in the large scale structure of our universe today. Computer models can start from nothing, and build forward to create structures that mimic our modern universe, and using these models, we have assumed timelines for our Universe’s construction, setting out when we believe the first stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters should make their way onto the cosmic stage.

The thing is, the actual universe never read our instruction manual, and it’s been literally writing its own rulebook in the sky for nearly 14 billion years.

In new research using the Gemini Observatory, the Subaru telescope, and Keck observatory, astronomers have discovered a proto-cluster of gas rich galaxies  located 13billion light years away. Because light takes time to travel, this extreme distance means we’re seeing galaxies form in the early universe, and the structures we’re seeing formed in just less than 800 million years. So far, observations have confirmed the presence of 12 star forming galaxies in this system. This was done by using spectra to prove these objects are located at the same distance, and that none of them are foreground or background objects. All of these systems were found to be undergoing massive amounts of star formation, and one galaxy on the outskirts was this cluster possessed an extraordinary amount of gas. The entire system was 500 million light years across, and given the age of the system, light from one side of the galaxy wouldn’t have had time to travel to the other side of the galaxy when all these stars shined their light toward us. 

While 12 galaxies may not seem that impressive compared to the 1000 galaxy sized clusters we have today, it’s important to realize we can only resolve the light from some of the galaxies in this system. Overall, this patch of universe appears to be 15 times denser than surrounding regions seen at the same time period. Further observations are now being planned to use the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to look at this proto-clusters structure and to look for dust enshrouded systems using radio light.

This newly discovered system, which is named z660D, sets a new record as being the earliest known cluster to have formed, stealing that title away from a system 100 million years more modern, that was found during a prior survey.

———————

From the edge of the universe, we move a bit closer to home, where we continue to find things don’t look as expected. In general, galaxies have 3 main parts: a spheroid of stars surrounding a supermassive blackhole, an outer halo of gas with things like globular clusters, and in some cases a disk of gas, dust, and stars like we have in our Milky Way. Galactic halos are places largely transparent cold gas that we thought was clustered into turbulent clouds. Since we can’t directly measure this material, testing our theories on both its motions and its magnetic fields has been challenging and requires those halos be illuminated by a background source. 

Recently, and entirely accidentally, astronomers were able to make exactly this kind of an observation. At the time, they were using the Very Large Telescope to look for the source of Fast Radio Bursts identified with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder project. These extraordinarily brief and bright radio sources are not well understood, and it is hoped that by studying where the light is coming from, we may be able to sort what they are. While we’re not necessarily any closer to understanding fast radio bursts, this one particular series of bursts did shine understanding on the halo of galaxies.

The Very Large Telescope observations determined that a series of 40 microsecond long fast radio bursts came from a distant galaxy, and on their way toward earth, passed through the halo of an intervening galaxy. 

By catching how the light from Fast Radio Bursts passes through a halo, astronomers were able to make measurements never before possible.

And these measurements showed that at least this galaxy halo isn’t like what we expected. Rather than having turbulent gas that would distort the fast radio burst’s light, it appears to be made of extremely smooth, and in the words of the ESO press release, tranquil gas. Further, astronomers saw none of the telltale signs of a magnetic field. Basically, this has none of the turbulent magnetic goodness that so many models had hoped for. This is currently a data set of one, and we don’t know if what we’re seeing is the norm or an exception, but whatever it is, it is awesome.

———————

Our final story of the day is yet one more case of, huh, we did not expect that. 

In this case, the thing we didn’t expect was a gas giant orbiting a red dwarf star. Observers in the CARMENES consortium have announced that a red dwarf star just 30 light years away is being orbited by a planet with a mass between that of Saturn and Jupter. This star, GJ 3512, is only 12% the mass of our Sun, and this star-planet combination defies all our current solar system formation models. 

It had been thought that small stars you form small planets in large numbers, making systems like Trappist 1 and it’s 7 worlds potentially the norm. This type of system is formed when a Molecular Cloud of gas and dust collapses and fragments, and a single fragment forms a star at its center with a surrounding disk of materials that build up through collisions into a series of small planets.  

This kind of model can’t explain a system like GJ 3512, because there shouldn’t be enough mass in the disk, to form this size of a planet, and there isn’t an easy way to build this large of an object out of a disk through collisions along. It’s suggested in a new paper Science, that it may be that most solar systems form planets through collisions between smaller objects – something called a bottom up approach – but most doesn’t mean all. Some systems, like this one, may instead use a top down approach where the collapsing cloud of material fragments into the stuff that will form the star and the stuff that will form the planet. This is closer to how we see binary star systems forming. 

The possibility that different kinds of solar systems can form in different ways shouldn’t be that surprising, but this is definitely a case of the universe being far more creative than we are. While it’s easy to forget, we need to remember that these are still the early days of exoplanet exploration, and we are going to need a lot more data before we can even start to say that we understand the diversity of systems our models need to explain.

And that rounds out our show for today.

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Thank you all for listening. The Daily Space is produced by Susie Murph, and is a product of the Planetary Science Institute, a 501(c)3 non profit dedicated to exploring our Solar System and beyond. We are made possible through the generous contributions of people like you. If you would like to learn more, please check us out on patreon.com/cosmoquestx 

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