Thursday, October 31, 2013

ScienceDaily: Stars News

ScienceDaily: Stars News


How the universe's violent youth seeded cosmos with iron

Posted: 30 Oct 2013 12:29 PM PDT

By detecting an even distribution of iron throughout a massive galaxy cluster, astrophysicists can tell the 10-billion-year-old story of how exploding stars and black holes sowed the early cosmos with heavy elements.

Lava world baffles astronomers: Planet Kepler-78b 'shouldn't exist'

Posted: 30 Oct 2013 11:29 AM PDT

Kepler-78b is a planet that shouldn't exist. This scorching lava world circles its star every eight and a half hours at a distance of less than one million miles - one of the tightest known orbits. According to current theories of planet formation, it couldn't have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there.

Earth-like exoplanet in mass and size: While too hot to support life, Kepler 78b is roughly the size of Earth

Posted: 30 Oct 2013 11:28 AM PDT

In August, researchers identified an exoplanet with an extremely brief orbital period: The team found that Kepler 78b, a small, intensely hot planet 400 light-years from Earth, circles its star in just 8.5 hours — lightning-quick, compared with our own planet's leisurely 365-day orbit. From starlight data gathered by the Kepler Space Telescope, the scientists also determined that the exoplanet is about 1.2 times Earth's size — making Kepler 78b one of the smallest exoplanets ever measured.

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