NASA uses three space telescopes to detect water vapor on Neptune-sized exoplanet

byMariella Moon|@mariella_moon| 7 hours ago

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NASA has been discovering one exoplanet after another these days, but its scientists have to look a lot closer if they want to see more details, such as the planets' color or whether they have water. That's exactly what the agency did while observing HAT-P-11b -- by combining the power of three space telescopes, scientists have found clear skies and water vapor on the atmosphere of the Neptune-sized exoplanet. NASA observed the distant world while it was crossing its solar system's sun using one of Hubble's wide field cameras. Water vapor typically absorbs starlight during that process, and it's that light that reaches our telescopes. In order to confirm whether it's actually water vapor (mixed with hydrogen gas and other molecules), the scientists compared Hubble's data to visible-light data collected by Kepler and Spitzer light data taken at infrared wavelengths.

To note, this isn't the first time scientists found water vapor on exoplanets. But, they were all more akin to the size of Jupiter, since it's tough observing smaller ones like this from afar, especially since most of them seem to have cloudy atmospheres. This particular discovery gives NASA hope that it can work its way down to even smaller planets, until it can effectively observe Earth-sized rocky worlds in other solar systems.

Source: NASA

Tags: exoplanet, hubble, kepler, nasa, spitzer  Hide Comments 0Comments

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New telescopes could uncover a wormhole in our own galaxy

If you're ever unlucky enough to be sucked towards a super-dense black hole, you'll soon arrive at something called the event horizon -- from which nothing can escape, including light. Thanks to a new "earth-sized" radio telescope, scientists may soon know whether you'll become stretched out infinitely ("spaghetti-ized") or merely vaporized. Knowing which of those gory fates is correct will help astronomers in their quest to unify Einstein's theories involving planetary motion with sub-atomic quantum mechanics. Even more intriguingly, a separate telescope called the GRAVITY in Northern Chile may soon tell us if the Sagitarius 'A' black hole at the center of our own galaxy is actually a wormhole instead.

Leaving wormholes aside for a moment, the Event Horizon Telescope is designed to spy the structure of "regular" black holes. Located in Chile, it combines multiple radio telescopes around the world and an extraordinarily precise atomic clock to simulate one huge, earth-sized telescope. When trained on black holes, it should deliver pictures of a very bright ring of gas surrounding a circular dark spot, as close to "imaging" one as we're likely to get (considering they emit no light). Along with pretty pictures, it may give insight about whether a black hole's event horizon would allow matter in before elasticizing it or be an impenetrable "firewall" that incinerates anything foolish enough to enter.

The GRAVITY telescope, meanwhile, is designed to image black holes for a different purpose. Instead, it's looking to see if our own Milky Way galaxy's Sagitarius 'A' isn't a black hole at all, but a wormhole. Both types of structures contain an impenetrable event horizon, but are otherwise very different. For instance, black holes theoretically take a long time to form following the collapse of large stars and can be massive. Wormholes are also permitted by general relativity, but if they actually exist, were formed in a split second after the big bang and would be small structures. And as any science fiction buff knows, wormholes aren't bottomless pits like black holes but can join two vast sections of space-time, or even two separate universes. GRAVITY will detect the signature of our own black hole, and look for telltale energy signatures of wormholes created by orbiting plasma (see below). As for the rapid space-time travel, though, don't hold your breath -- while stabilizing a wormhole is theoretically possible, it wouldn't be easy.

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