Liked on YouTube: The Exoplanets Of Trappist 1 Planetary System!

The Exoplanets Of Trappist 1 Planetary System!
The Exoplanets Of Trappist 1 Planetary System! It seems like every couple of weeks the news headlines announce a new “Earth-size” planet, making it look as if leaving earth and inhabiting another planet is just around the corner. But actually, we are far from that! In this video, we are going to talk about a planetary system that made the world go crazy back when it first came out with how many Earth-size planets it contains. We are talking about the planetary system “TRAPPIST-1”! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe for more videos:https://www.youtube.com/c/InsaneCuriosity?sub_confirmation=1? Business Enquiries: lorenzovareseaziendale@gmail.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #InsaneCuriosity The story goes back to the year 1999 and begins with a star 40 light years away in the constellation “Aquarius”, the star was discovered by the astronomer “John Gizis” with the help of his colleagues. They gave the star the hideous long name; “2MASS J23062928-0502285”!!!!! The star was identified as an “ultra-cool” M-type dwarf star, that’s a type of star, which as their name suggests, holds a very low temperature that goes below 2700 °K (4400 °F). You might think that’s still very hot, but believe me, for a star, that’s ”ultra-cool”, much cooler than our sun’s surface temperature for example, that goes to nearly 6000 °K ( 10000°F). The star is very dim in the night sky, stargazers can not see it with the naked eye, and in comparison to our sun, the star “2MASS J23062928-0502285” is a dwarf star, with only 11% of the sun’s diameter which makes it just a little bit bigger than Jupiter, and it’s also much redder in colour than the sun. And because of its small size, the star consumes fuel much slower than our own sun, that’s why when we look at its age, we find it twice as old as the sun. Scientists have estimated the star’s age to range between 5.4 and 9.8 billion years, while our sun is only 4 and a half billion old. The story progresses ‘till we reach the year 2008 when the construction to build a new telescope called “TRAPPIST” was approved, the name is a short for the “TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope” and it’s a telescope funded by Belgian Fund for Scientific Research and the Liège University in Belgium. The “TRAPPIST” telescope consists of 2 robotics telescopes, one located in the “La Silla Observatory” in Chile and the other in the “Oukaïmeden Observatory” in Morocco. The main purpose of building this telescope was to study bodies outside the solar system, such as exoplanets and comets and asteroids and other small bodies. Now, we flash forward again to the year 2016 when astronomer “Michaël Gillon”, alongside NASA astronomer “Susan M. Lederer” found 3 Earth-sized exoplanets around the star “2MASS J23062928-0502285”, and in honor of the “TRAPPIST” telescope, astronomers gave the star a newer neat and fancy name: “TRAPPIST-1”. More observations in the following year using the NASA’s “Spitzer Space Telescope” and other telescopes have discovered that the star “TRAPPIST-1” actually hosts 7 Earth-sized exoplanets, not just 3! And all 7 planets orbit the host star at a distance closer than Mercury is to our Sun, that’s so ridiculously close that if you were to stand on one planet, you’d be able to see the others as moons in the sky and even visually bigger than our Moon! Another thing astronomers noticed was how the planets may be tidally locked to their host star just like how the moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Being “tidally locked” means that a body orbits its host with only one face always facing the host. In the case of the planetary system “TRAPPIST-1”, all the planets in the system may have one face facing the star at all times, leading to permanent day time on one side and permanent night time on another side, which in turn causes extreme temperature change and weather patterns. The discovery marked the first time ever for astronomers to spot THAT MANY Earth-sized exoplanets around a single star! Further observations and simulations have confirmed that the first 6 of the exoplanets may be rocky ones, and the last planet could be of icy nature. The discovery also marked for the first time 3 planets (“TRAPPIST-1e” “TRAPPIST-1f” and “TRAPPIST-1g”) in the same planetary system within the habitable zone. See, Finding an Earth-size planet is not merely enough for it to be able to host life as we know it, the planet needs to fall within what astronomers call “the habitable zone” and also clear some criteria about its atmosphere. The habitable zone is the zone that is not so far away nor so near to a star, and at which a planet could orbit with just the right temperature for life to evolve and for water to exist on it.
via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbQPO9i_ErA