Arcadian Functor

occasional meanderings in physics' brave new world

My Photo
Name:
Location: New Zealand

Marni D. Sheppeard

Monday, May 28, 2007

Light Metal Life

Universe Today reports on the new discovery from Texas of a system with two Jupiter like planets orbiting the metal poor star HD 155358. The metallicity suggests the star is about 10 billion years old.

The astronomers were surprised to find planets in such a system, because heavy elements are needed to assist core accretion in this model of planet formation. The alternative model suggests that instabilities cause a breakup of the disc, but the mechanism for this is unclear. "Having this process happen to form not just one, but two, planets around a star that had so little solid material available for planet-building is quite remarkable," Cochran said. This appears to be yet another confirmation of one of Louise Riofrio's predictions. Small dark matter objects may aid core accretion without the need for heavy elements.

2 Comments:

Blogger Matti Pitkänen said...

Fits nicely with the Bohr orbit model for planetary formation in which dark matter guides the process. I collected new material into a new chapter titled Quantum Astrophysics the book "Classical Physics in Many-Sheeted Space-Time".

The newest realizations are that quantum chaos could prevail in astrophysical and make visible the Z_n symmetric dark matter structures typically consistings of rings, wheels with spokes etc.
Visible structures correspond of course to breaking of symmetry to subgroup Z_m and the strong prediction is that m is ruler-and-compass integer.


In quantum chaotic scattering of astrophysical objects which form unbound states these structures should become visible. Collision of galaxies is basic example of this. To my suprise Google told me that cartwheel galaxies do indeed exist!

May 28, 2007 3:47 PM  
Blogger Kea said...

Thanks, Matti. It does indeed now seem that there's an awful lot of quantum astronomy to be done!

May 29, 2007 11:05 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home