Winking Star Decoded as Root of Planetary System

sam1am points out a New York Times report on a recent paper published in Nature about the formation of planetary systems. A binary star system surrounded by a protoplanetary disc was observed over a period of six years by scientists at Wesleyan University. The orbit of the stars around each other caused changes in illumination from within the disc and allowed the researchers to learn a great deal about its composition. Some of the basic data is posted on the university's site. An animation of the system is also available. From the NYTimes: "'This is the first step in going from smoke particles to macroscopic things like planets and asteroids,' Dr. Herbst said in an interview, noting that these grains were about the same size as those found in many meteorites. Observing starlight reflected from these grains, he said, represented a rare opportunity to study the structure and chemical properties of material in the inner parts of another planetary system."

Comments

Re:1mm objects at 2400 light years

[William Robinson]

have managed to identify objects of a 1mm size at a distance of 22,705,268,200,000,000,000 meters (14108399600000000 miles).

Why now?? I can identify a winking chik at a distance of 10 miles.

Re:Wesleyan University, eh?

[sapphire wyvern]

I think it just did.

Your post was the equivalent of opening Schrodinger's cat-box...

Earth-like??

[mickywicky]

Well... sure the building blocks for Earth-like bodies are there... but wouldn't the gravitational dance of the two stars rip such bodies apart unless they rotate around the epicentre of the binary system? Which in turn would mean the nearest it could be would be as far a Jupiter's orbit or so?
I mean... if I were sitting on Ganymede (or even on Titan) I'd hate for our sun to dance around like those two do. Talk about extreme seasons!

Winking Star?

[kyriosdelis]

(oblig. Monty Python..)

Say no more!

Re:Winking Star?

[lobiusmoop]

Must.. resist.. Uranus jokes.....

Re:Dare I Say It?

[stjobe]

There's only one thing that differentiates man from the animals - we're not afraid of vacuum cleaners.

Yeah, but what separates man from the animals is a condom, hopefully.

Hope the admins are careful over there

[KDingo]

Wouldn't want to do something careless like rm -rf /*

Well, you also have indirect proof

[someone1234]

of a dust particle in her eye. Why else she would wink?

Re:Well, you also have indirect proof

[idontgno]

Actually, he'd detect the wink accurately.

The gender of the winker, though...

Oblig. Linux

[San-LC]

So, since the star was decoded as root, does this mean you would have to "sudo" in order to get any readings from it?

Re:Wesleyan University, eh?

[morgan_greywolf]

I wonder when the first post with a ST:TNG reference will appear? :-) (With apologies to CleverNickName:

"But, Caaaaptaaaain....I don't want to post a ST:TNG reference!"

PW3NED!

[Tiger4]

Root of a whole STAR system! SWEET!