Name: この太陽系外惑星は突然宇宙から消えた、それはどこに行ったのか？ (This Exoplanet Suddenly Disappeared From Space, Where Did It Go?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T11:03:57.000Z
Duration: 4 min 15 s
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We have gotten really good at spotting exoplanets.

Usually we see them when they transit in front of their star and cause a drop in light levels,

or when their gravitational pull makes their star wobble.

But very rarely, it's possible to see them with an optical telescope and we've seen

But that number has actually gone down, because one of the first exoplanets ever directly

Now new research may explain where it went.

The planet in question was observed orbiting the star Fomalhaut, and so was named Fomalhaut b.

Hubble was the first to spot it in 2004 and again in 2006 as a moving dot around its star,

Even though it was estimated to be as massive as three Jupiters and much brighter than other

exoplanets, which tend to be too small to reflect enough light for us to see, Fomalhaut b

is a billion times fainter than its star.

One astronomer called it “one of the most difficult detections

Though it was spotted in 2004 and 2006, there was some controversy over whether or not it

For one thing, its orbit was highly elliptical.

Fomalhaut, by the way, also has a huge debris belt around it, so a false-color composite

image of the system taken by Hubble looks like, there's no other way of saying it,

Then there's the fact that it didn't radiate any detectable infrared radiation.

Scientists expected to see some heat coming off what they assumed was a large and young

Nonetheless, in 2008 scientists declared it was an exoplanet visible from Earth, causing

And then in 2014, Fomalhaut b up and vanished on us.

You ungrateful hunk of space rock, do you know how lucky you are? Pluto would kill to

To find out where it went, astronomers from the  University of Arizona returned to the

first images taken of it by Hubble in 2004 and tracked its evolution until its 2014 disappearance,

presumably while muttering “enhance” the whole time.

Over that 10-year period Fomalhaut b actually appeared to expand and fade away. 

Now, in early May of 2020, they think they have an explanation.

The astronomers who noticed the expansion and slow fade concluded that Fomalhaut b the

Instead they suggest it was a cloud of expanding dust that resulted from two massive planetesimals

This hypothesis would explain some outstanding questions about Fomalhaut b nicely, like the

elliptical shape of the orbit, and how it would fade as the small dust particles spread

out until they fell below Hubble's detection limit.

So, Fomalhaut b may not have been one of the 50 or so exoplanets we've directly imaged

through a telescope, but it may be something we've seen even less often.

We almost never directly observe collisions of massive objects like these, and based on

the simulations proposed by the study's authors, Hubble only just missed this collision.

It could be a very useful data point that helps us understand how planetary systems

That's assuming this new explanation is in fact what we saw.

It's thought a dust cloud like this wouldn't be visible until a decade after the asteroid's

crash, disagreeing with the model the astronomers from the University of Arizona put forward

More observations from bigger and better telescopes like the long awaited James Webb could finally

So, what I'm hearing is the Death Star...not totally off the table yet.

While this new paper suggests Fomalhaut b was the result of two planetesimals colliding,

it's not the first time someone proposed the “planet” was actually just a cloud

As our technology improves, we're not going to just look for exoplanets, but signs of

Check out Amanda's video on the future of space-observing cameras here.

Make sure to subscribe to Seeker for more videos like this, and as always, thanks for

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この太陽系外惑星は突然宇宙から消えた、それはどこに行ったのか？ (This Exoplanet Suddenly Disappeared From Space, Where Did It Go?)

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