Sunday, September 11, 2011

"Ghost" Planet Discovered


Now here is something VERY weird. NASA using the Kepler Space Telescope have located an planet that defies the laws of physics. Kepler 19-b circles its' sun in an orbit that should for all intents and purposes be impossible. Kepler 19-b speeds up and slows down its orbit for no apparent reason!

From the article:
  • (Kepler 19-b) completes one orbit every nine days and seven hours. (But here is where the problem appears) sometimes it will complete the orbit five minutes faster than it should, and other times it will be five minutes slow.
  • The explanation for this ... anomaly is the presence of a ... companion planet. (However no one has yet found) any direct sign of this planet, designated Kepler-19c. That makes this invisible exoplanet the first ever that is only known from its gravitational effect on another planet.


Centers for Astrophysics article

2 comments:

John said...

... Gremlins....

Beam Me Up said...

OMG what happens after midnight then! RUUUUUUUUUUN!