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Two Exocomet Families Found Around Baby Star System

Posted by samzenpus on from the across-the-universe dept.

astroengine writes Scientists have found two families of comets in the developing Beta Pictoris star system, located about 64 light-years from Earth, including one group that appears to be remnants of a smashed-up protoplanet. The discovery bolsters our theoretical understanding of the violent processes that led to the formation of Earth and the other terrestrial planets in the solar system. "If you look back at the solar system when it was only 22 million years old, you might have seen phenomena that's a like more like what's happening in Beta Pic," astrophysicist Aki Roberge, with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., told Discovery News.

3 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong distance away by dunkindave · · Score: 4, Informative

    Beta Pictoris is 63.4 light years away, not 64 million light years. 64 million light years would be at the other end of the galaxy and probably not even observable. When the article gets basic facts wrong I stop reading.

    1. Re:Wrong distance away by ganv · · Score: 3, Informative

      That error jumped out to me also. Its like describing a city 93 miles away and instead saying it is 93 million miles away which instead of being 1.5 hour drive is all the way to the sun. It is really useful to get a cosmic distance scale in your head: billions of light years is the size of the visible universe, millions of light years are distances to nearby galaxies. 30,000 light years is the distance to the center of our galaxy. 4 light years is the distance to the nearest stars.

    2. Re:Wrong distance away by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The linked article got it wrong, which is why the summary is wrong. As usual, the linked article is garbage and you have to dig into links you find there to get something close to reality.

      Reasonably well written summary here: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-f...
      Research here: http://www.nature.com/nature/j...