Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

News

Here’s one for embattled astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez: Are proposed exoplanets just gas and dust?

When the exoplanet expert takes up his recently announced appointment at Ball U in Indiana (despite controversy), it would be interesting to see him tackle this question: The narrow, sharp-edged and slightly off-centre rings of dust that surround some stars may be the result of interactions between gas and dust, rather than the gravitational effects of planets, as previously proposed. The finding, published in this week’s Nature1, could dramatically affect estimates of the number of exoplanets hiding in such stellar systems. Many nearby stars, especially young ones, are surrounded by disks of dust debris, which orbit the stars at distances roughly equivalent to that at which Pluto orbits the Sun. Embedded in some of those disks are dust rings that Read More ›