Huge Alien Planet Forcing Host Star Age Prematurely

A nearby star is not acting its age, thanks to the influence of a massive exoplanet.

The close-orbiting alien planet, known as WASP-18b, is apparently disrupting the magnetic field of its host star so much that the object is behaving like a much older star, researchers said.

"WASP-18b is an extreme exoplanet," study lead author Ignazio Pillitteri, of the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo in Italy, said in a statement.

"It is one of the most massive hot Jupiters known and one of the closest to its host star, and these characteristics lead to unexpected behaviour. The planet is causing its host star to act old before its time."

Artist's concept depicting the giant alien planet WASP-18b and its star, which are about 330 light-years away. 

Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss

The star WASP-18, which lies about 330 light-years away, is about as massive as our own sun.

The gas giant WASP-18b weighs in at more than 10 times the mass of Jupiter and completes one orbit around the star in less than 23 hours, leading scientists to classify it as a "hot Jupiter."

WASP-18b's tight orbit has led scientists to estimate that it may have only one million years of life or so remaining before it's destroyed by the parent star.

Pillitteri's team targeted WASP-18 with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and found it to be relatively quiet, a characteristic of older stars.

Young stars tend to be more active, with stronger magnetic fields, larger flares and more intense X-ray emission.

Stellar activity is connected to rotation, a process that slows with age.

Observations of WASP-18 using Chandra revealed no X-ray emission.

This by itself would suggest that the star has an age similar to the sun's 5 billion years, researchers said.

However, Pillitteri and his team used other data as well as theoretical models to calculate that WASP-18 is actually just 500 million to 2 billion years old, and thus approximately 100 times less active than a star its age should be.

"We think the planet is aging the star by wreaking havoc on its innards," said co-author Scott Wolk, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Massachusetts.

WASP-18b's strong gravitational pull may be disrupting the star's magnetic field, researchers said.

The planet's tug exerts forces similar to those imposed on Earth's tides by the moon, but on a much larger scale.

40,000 People needed to Colonise any Alien Planet

Adrian Mann's illustration depicts a future starship under construction in Earth orbit using a ring-type construction facility, which could provide hotel rooms for guests who wish to view the construction.

Hungary-based space illustrator Adrian Mann is a graphical engineer for Project Icarus.
Credit: Adrian Mann

If humanity ever wants to colonise a planet beyond the solar system, it's going to need a really big spaceship.

The founding population of an interstellar colony should consist of 20,000 to 40,000 people, said Cameron Smith, an anthropologist at Portland State University in Oregon.

Such a large group would possess a great deal of genetic and demographic diversity, giving the settlement the best chance of survival during the long space voyage and beyond, he explained.

"Do you want to just squeak by, with barely what you can get? Or do you want to go in good health?" Smith said on July 16 during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group (mp3 file).

"I would suggest, go with something that gives you a good margin for the case of disaster."

Revisiting the numbers
In the past, researchers have proposed that a few hundred people would be sufficient to establish a settlement on or near an alien planet but Smith thought it was time to take another look.

"I wanted to revisit the issue," he said. "It had been quite a long time, and of course we now know more about population genetics from genomics."

For his study, which was published in April in the journal Acta Astronautica, Smith assumed an interstellar voyage lasting roughly 150 years.

This time frame is consistent with that envisioned by researchers at Icarus Instellar, a nonprofit organization dedicated to pursuing travel to another star.

Smith's calculations, which combine information from population genetics theory and computer modeling, point toward a founding population of 14,000 to 44,000 people.

A "safe and well-considered figure" is 40,000, about 23,000 of whom would be men and women of reproductive age, Smith writes in the study.

This figure may seem "astoundingly large," Smith acknowledged, but he stressed that it makes sense.

Smith writes in the Acta Astronautica paper; "This number would maintain good health over five generations despite;

• increased inbreeding resulting from a relatively small human population, 
• depressed genetic diversity due to the founder effect, 
• demographic change through time and 
• expectation of at least one severe population catastrophe over the five-generation voyage,"

Data from the real world support the overall thrust of his findings, Smith added.

"Almost no natural populations of vertebrates dip below around five to 7,000 individuals," he said during the FISO talk.

" There are genetic reasons for this. And when they do go below this, sometimes they survive, but many times they go into what's called a demographic or extinction vortex."

Sending frozen sperm and eggs on the voyage with a limited number of human "tenders" is also an option, Smith said, though he didn't consider it seriously in the new paper.

"It can be done, but it's so different from the human experience of living in communities and so forth that I've kind of avoided that," he said.

"I'm kind of assuming, or sticking with, 'What is the experience of humanity so far, and what can we learn from it?"

HD 189733b: A Giant Blue Alien Planet where it Rains Molten Glass

This illustration shows HD 189733b, a huge gas giant that orbits very close to its host star HD 189733. 

The planet's atmosphere is scorching with a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometer-per-hour winds.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Kornmesser

There's a "blue marble" alien planet just 63 light-years from Earth, but the world is anything but friendly to life.

Researchers say the blue colour in the atmosphere likely comes from a rain of molten glass.

This super-hot glass rain is just one consequence of the close proximity between the gas giant alien planet HD189733b and its sun, which causes daytime temperatures to soar as high as 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (930 degrees Celsius), scientists said.

A fresh set of observations of the planet in X-rays also suggest HD189733b has an outer atmosphere that is far larger than expected.

These surprise finds are all signals that so-called hot Jupiter alien planets are worthy of study on their own, even though they are hostile planets to life, researchers said.



Hot Jupiters are large, roughly Jupiter-sized planets that become very hot by circling tight around their stars.

These worlds have been described as planetary daredevils because they orbit so close to their parent stars that they risk being consumed.

Often, one side of the planet is tidally locked to the star, exposing that side to scorching hot temperatures, while leaving the other side permanently turned away.

Hot Jupiters are easy to spot from a distance because as they pass in front of a star, their disc blots out a large portion of the star's light; HD189733b causes a three per cent drop in its star's light, for example.

The planets' gravitational pull often causes their parent stars to wobble, too.

While common in the universe, however, Hot Jupiters are totally different than what denizens of Earth's solar system encounter.

In our case, small, rocky planets orbit close to the star and the gas giants are much farther out.

The latest observations of HD189733b are challenging some theories of planetary formation and are just one of the reasons Hot Jupiters are earning more attention from astronomers these days.

"At first considered to be the 'chaff' researchers would have to wade through to get to the fainter Earth-like worlds, hot Jupiters are now attracting their own attention," NASA scientists wrote in a recent Science@NASA post.

Subaru Telescope: Pink Alien Planet GJ 504b Image Captured

Glowing a dark magenta, the newly discovered exoplanet GJ 504b weighs in with about four times Jupiter's mass, making it the lowest-mass planet ever directly imaged around a star like the sun.

This image is an artist's representation of the alien world. 

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger

Astronomers have snapped a photo of a pink alien world that's the smallest yet exoplanet found around a star like our sun.

The alien planet GJ 504b is a colder and bluer world than astronomers had anticipated and it likely has a dark magenta hue, infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii revealed.

"If we could travel to this giant planet, we would see a world still glowing from the heat of its formation with a color reminiscent of a dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta," study researcher Michael McElwain, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement from the space agency.

'Albertus Alauda': Nearest Alien Planet Gets New Name

The closest known alien planet beyond our solar system has a new unofficial name: Albertus Alauda.

That moniker won an online people's choice contest organized by space-funding company Uwingu to choose a more exciting, approachable name for the Earth-size alien planet Alpha Centauri Bb, a scorching-hot world that lies just 4.3 light-years away.

Jay Lark, who nominated "Albertus Alauda," said he chose the exoplanet name to honour his late grandfather.

"It is his name in Latin (Albert Lark)," Jay Lark wrote in his submission to the contest. "My grandfather passed away after a lengthy and valiant battle with cancer; his name in Latin means noble or bright and to praise or extol.

I think this is an apt description as my grandfather was a noble man and bright of character, and in this nomination I wish to honour (extol) him."

The Alpha Centauri Bb naming contest ran from March 19 through April 22. Proposing a name cost $4.99, while voting for one cost $0.99.

Uwingu (whose name means "sky" in Swahili) will use the proceeds to fund grants in space exploration, education and research, which is the company's chief purpose, officials said.

"Albertus Alauda" came out on top with 751 votes, scoring Jay Lark a commemorative plaque, a 12-month subscription to Astronomy Magazine, a shout-out on the Uwingu website and a phone call from Uwingu CEO (and former NASA science chief) Alan Stern and famed planet-hunter Geoff Marcy, an adviser for the company.

"Rakhat" and "Caleo" came in second and third place, garnering 684 and 622 votes, respectively.

The contest found its way into the headlines two weeks ago, after the International Astronomical Union issued a press release stressing its authority as the sole arbiter of the exoplanet-naming process and reminding readers that it's impossible to buy an "official" name.

While Uwingu wasn't mentioned by name, the release seemed aimed at the Alpha Centauri Bb competition.

Stern and other Uwingu officials fought back, saying the company had always maintained that the contest aimed to pick a popular or common name, not an "official" IAU one.