You’ve probably heard of the star in today’s paper. The “WTF star” (WTF stands for “Where’s the flux?” of course) has been in the media since its discovery and two follow-up papers hit astro-ph. Today, a group of astrobiters pool our expertise to bring you a comprehensive look at KIC 8462852 and what new observations may reveal.
In around five billion years, the hydrogen fuel in the core of the Sun will run out, and our star will begin to die. After swelling up into a red giant, many times bigger than its current size, the Sun will blow away its outer layers to leave a tiny, ultra-dense core, around the size of the Earth. White dwarfs, as these dead, slowly cooling star cores are known, are the ultimate fate for the vast majority of stars in the Universe.
How do you observe an Earth transit, from Earth? You use some of the Solar System’s largest mirrors. The authors did. They found an anomaly.
Last month Nasa announced, in what seems like a roughly annual event, the discovery of “Earth 2.0”. Described as a “Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth”, Kepler 452b is the first small planet (defined here as less than twice the radius of the Earth) to be in a roughly one year orbit around a Sun-like star.
But is it otherwise that similar to the Earth? Is it potentially habitable? To try and answer that, let’s look at the discovery paper.
According to planet formation theory, gas giants are more massive than rocky, terrestrial planets. But Kepler-10c is the size of Neptune, and denser than the Earth! Read on to find out more about the discovery of a new class of planets.
KOI 2700b is a planet with an identity crisis: it thinks it is a comet.