Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff Lauren bol Obam here for those interested
Speaker 1: in space science or even science fiction. Astronomers have been
Speaker 1: full of fascinating news in the past few years. As
Speaker 1: technology improves, researchers have been able to discover even more
Speaker 1: celestial objects than we ever imagined, from comets and asteroids
Speaker 1: zipping through our Solar System to dark matter and planets
Speaker 1: orbiting distant stars. Now we have evidence of planets far
Speaker 1: beyond those we've ever discovered before. But all the planets
Speaker 1: we found through our advanced technology have been within our
Speaker 1: own Milky Way Galaxy until now. That is. In a
Speaker 1: paper published in October one in the journal Nature Astronomy,
Speaker 1: a team of astronomers and astrophysicists has put forth a
Speaker 1: new planetary candidate farther away than we've ever seen before.
Speaker 1: It's called Catcheley M fifty one U L S one
Speaker 1: B and is located in Messier fifty one, also called
Speaker 1: the Whirlpool Galaxy. While humans might never see or even
Speaker 1: confirm the existence of this potential planet, even its theoretical
Speaker 1: reality paves the way for more discoveries and the deep
Speaker 1: reaches of space beyond anything yet discovered. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about how we find planets. Four decades researchers have used
Speaker 1: data from Earth based and orbital telescopes to find planets
Speaker 1: beyond those in our Solar system, called exoplanets. Typically, researchers
Speaker 1: look for a transit event, which is when the planet's
Speaker 1: orbit takes it in front of its star. From our perspective,
Speaker 1: transits occur in our Solar system too. You might recall
Speaker 1: one of the most recent transits that occurred in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen when tiny Mercury passed in front of the Sun.
Speaker 1: Depending on the size of the planet relative to the star,
Speaker 1: a transit event will cause the star's brightness too dim,
Speaker 1: even when the star doesn't emit light along the visible wavelength.
Speaker 1: That's why the Chandra X ray observatory was used to
Speaker 1: discover this new planetary candidate. In many cases, researchers are
Speaker 1: able to observe the star dimming and surmise that a
Speaker 1: planet must be orbiting that star or stars, as there
Speaker 1: are circumbinary planets that orbit two stars. These planetary candidates
Speaker 1: are put forward to the scientific community to verify with
Speaker 1: additional data, and have resulted in more than four thousand
Speaker 1: confirmed exoplanets. Up until this point, though every proposed exo
Speaker 1: planet has been located within a small region of our
Speaker 1: own galaxy, the Milky Way. What makes this new paper
Speaker 1: compelling is the proposal that the researchers have a planetary
Speaker 1: candidate outside the Milky Way. Way outside the Milky Way.
Speaker 1: According to their research, the potential planet is an estimated
Speaker 1: twenty million light years from Earth. They also proposed a
Speaker 1: new term for such planets, extra planets. The researchers chose
Speaker 1: to look outside our galactic neighborhood for two reasons. For
Speaker 1: there's a better probability of discovering a planetary candidate using
Speaker 1: an X ray transit technique, since the binary stars that
Speaker 1: omit X rays are physically smaller and thus more likely
Speaker 1: to be fully obscured when one of their planets transits
Speaker 1: across them. The second reason was practical. The team had
Speaker 1: access to use the Chandra X ray observatory at a
Speaker 1: time when the observatory was pointed at an area of
Speaker 1: space where there were lots of data points for the article.
Speaker 1: This episode is based on how Stuff Work spoke with
Speaker 1: Theoron Carmichael, one of the papers authors, speaking on behalf
Speaker 1: of the team. He explained the focus outside of the
Speaker 1: Milky Way was due to the number of X ray
Speaker 1: sources within the field of view of the Chandra observatory.
Speaker 1: This made things more convenient to observe by allowing for
Speaker 1: a focus on one area of the sky and not
Speaker 1: having to point the telescope in very different locations in
Speaker 1: the sky. As of now, we're not aware of any
Speaker 1: new exo planet candidates that orbit X resources in the
Speaker 1: Milky Way. This technique is certainly applicable to X resources
Speaker 1: within the Milky Way, and perhaps now scientists will be
Speaker 1: inspired to look when their turn comes up on Chandra. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: due to this potential planet's tremendous distance from Earth and
Speaker 1: unique system composition, it's going to take a long time
Speaker 1: to verify whether it actually exists. The system has two stars,
Speaker 1: a neutron star or black hole astronomers aren't exactly sure
Speaker 1: which that's emitting the X rays observed to be dimming
Speaker 1: during the transit, and a companion star that's twenty times
Speaker 1: the mass of our own son. The planetary candidate orbits
Speaker 1: both of those celestial objects, making it circumbinary, and it
Speaker 1: takes roughly seventy years to make that orbit, so the
Speaker 1: next time a transit might be visible would be several
Speaker 1: decades from now. Carmichael said, Since the next transit event
Speaker 1: is so uncertain, it could be as soon as decades
Speaker 1: from now or much longer. There aren't any plans in
Speaker 1: place to take follow up observations of this particular planet candidate. Instead,
Speaker 1: new X ray observations and archival data of previous observations
Speaker 1: are more readily available to search for more planet candidates
Speaker 1: like this one. So while the existence of M fifty
Speaker 1: one u l S one B might never be verified,
Speaker 1: researchers plan to use it as inspiration to search for
Speaker 1: other planetary candidates like it, far beyond the bounds of
Speaker 1: our galaxy and perhaps even within it. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article Researchers find first potential planet outside
Speaker 1: the Milky Way on how stuff works dot Com, written
Speaker 1: by Valerie Stymack. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Clang. Or more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.