The ninth planet

As many of you probably know, Pluto has been declared a dwarf planet. This was declared by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in August of 2006. The reason for this is because other celestial bodies of similar size have been found in farther reaches than Pluto's orbit. This made the IAU decide that instead of continually adding new official planets to our solar system, we would have a subclass of dwarf planets instead.

Now, this brings me to the point of this blog post. In 2014, researchers stumbled upon this find by accident. They were viewing different dwarf planets farther out than Pluto's orbit and discovered something odd. Each orbit had a strange wobble to it that couldn't be explained. The probability that all of the orbits are doing this naturally without any other mass affecting it is about .007. This is a very small probability. So what scientists and researchers have determined, is there must be a large planet out there affecting the dwarf planets' orbits. This planet would be roughly ten times the mass of earth or about three times larger in overall size. Now before we get too excited about this discovery, it is still just a speculation since it hasn't been viewed directly. However, the evidence is definitely pointing towards this being a true ninth planet in our solar system even though it's way, way out there. The estimation is that this super-earth or super-neptune, depending on it's physical makeup, takes 20,000 years to orbit the sun. It also never gets closer than 300 to 600 astronomical units (distance between the sun and earth) to the sun. This is a massive orbit considering the earth only takes one year to do a full revolution around the sun. I'm hoping to hear more on this discovery and a confirmation that we do indeed have a true ninth planet lurking way out in our solar system.

The discovery of gravitational waves and what it means for science

As many of you have probably heard over the last week, scientists were able to confirm the existence of gravitational waves. These waves were theorized by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago in his relativity theory although he didn't have a way to prove it. The gravitational waves are created when two massive objects (eg. black holes) collide. Right before they merge, they send out a massive wave of energy that is greater than all of the stars in the universe combined. That is an amazing amount of energy dispersed which is almost impossible to fathom. That wave is sent out at the speed of light, but it differs from photons (light particles) since it does not interact with physical matter. This also makes them very hard to detect and why even Einstein wasn't fully confident in their existence. That is where LIGOs comes in. LIGOs (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) is a large scale physics experiment in which a laser is split by a mirror and then sent down two tunnels that are two and a half miles long. The split lasers are then bounced back to the original starting point and their light wavelengths are measured. If there is any difference between the two, that shows a detection of a gravitational wave. The reason is because the wave is actually warping everything in such a tiny amount that it actually changes the length of the one tunnel before the other even though it's a minuscule amount.  Now, in order to prove that it truly is a gravitational wave and not some unknown interference on earth, two of these facilities have been built. One is in Washington state and the other is in Louisiana. They are thousands of miles apart because it cuts down on any possible interference or a random anomaly. Since both detected the same disturbance within a fraction of a second, it confirmed a gravitational wave. More of these facilities are going to be built in the near future around the world to make them even more accurate and pinpoint exactly where these waves originate. This wave originated approximately 1.3 billion lightyears away where two black holes around 30 times the mass of the sun merged together.

So, now that I've tried to explain what a gravitational wave is to the best of my abilities, I'll tell you what this discovery means for science. When we look through a telescope, we are viewing the photons coming off of the object we are viewing. Either the object is creating the light (stars) or is having light reflected off of it (moons, planets, etc.). The problem with only using this method to view celestial objects is that light interacts with matter. It can be clouded by gases or dust by the milky way galaxy which keeps us from viewing very distant objects. Since gravitational waves do not interact with matter, we can detect waves that originated from all over the universe. This should allow us to look even farther back in time and help us try to understand the origin of the universe. This is one of the greatest discoveries in science in the modern era. I hope you guys enjoyed my blog and hopefully I can answer any questions you may have in the comments.

The James Webb telescope

The James Webb telescope is the next greatest piece in the viewing of space and celestial objects. It is a telescope that will be launched into space in October of 2018. The Hubble telescope was launched in 1990 and is still being used today. The James Webb telescope is the next generation of telescopes in space. It will be up to 100 times more powerful than the Hubble. This will allow scientists to look even farther into the universe and make more discoveries. The James Webb telescope uses large hexagon shaped mirrors to focus on faraway galaxies and stars. Once completed, the mirrors will be 21.4 feet in diameter. This is much larger than the Hubble's mirror and is made of different material since a Hubble-style mirror would be too heavy to launch into space. NASA's site keeps track of the progress and as of February 4th, 2016, the mirror segments have been fully completed. However, the launch date is still 2 years and 8 months away. I am excited for the pictures it will beam back.


Source: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/