Evidence of giant asteroid collision in debris disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris
Click for original figure.
Scientists comparing infrared data collected twenty years apart — first by the Spitzer Space Telescope and then by the Webb Space Telescope — think they have detected evidence of a gigantic asteroid collision in the debris disk that surrounds the very young star Beta Pictoris, located 63 light years away.
The graph to the right shows the change found between the observations. From the caption:
Scientists theorize that the massive amount of dust seen in the 2004–05 image from the Spitzer Space Telescope indicates a collision of asteroids that had largely cleared by the time the James Webb Space Telescope captured its images in 2023.
…When Spitzer collected the earlier data, scientists assumed something like small bodies grinding down would stir and replenish the dust steadily over time. But Webb’s new observations show the dust disappeared and was not replaced. The amount of dust kicked up is about 100,000 times the size of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, Chen said.
It is believed by scientists that the debris disk that surrounds Beta Pictoris is comparable to the early solar system when the planets first started to form. This collision could be similar to the kind of collision that is thought to have formed the Moon, when a large Mars-sized object smashed into the early Earth.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original figure.
Scientists comparing infrared data collected twenty years apart — first by the Spitzer Space Telescope and then by the Webb Space Telescope — think they have detected evidence of a gigantic asteroid collision in the debris disk that surrounds the very young star Beta Pictoris, located 63 light years away.
The graph to the right shows the change found between the observations. From the caption:
Scientists theorize that the massive amount of dust seen in the 2004–05 image from the Spitzer Space Telescope indicates a collision of asteroids that had largely cleared by the time the James Webb Space Telescope captured its images in 2023.
…When Spitzer collected the earlier data, scientists assumed something like small bodies grinding down would stir and replenish the dust steadily over time. But Webb’s new observations show the dust disappeared and was not replaced. The amount of dust kicked up is about 100,000 times the size of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, Chen said.
It is believed by scientists that the debris disk that surrounds Beta Pictoris is comparable to the early solar system when the planets first started to form. This collision could be similar to the kind of collision that is thought to have formed the Moon, when a large Mars-sized object smashed into the early Earth.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
How does it make sense that we as flesh and blood human, conscious beings are the result of a bunch of energy and “stuff” colliding and gravitationally intermixing? How does that make sense?
It does not make sense, but here we all are anyway.
Will we at some point really fundamentally understand it?
I doubt it.
Mr. Zimmerman:
Beta Pictoris is located in 63 light years away, not 63 million light years as you wrote.
Questioner: Oy. “million” should not have been there. Deleted. Thanks.
This is unartfully phrased: Does gravity work that fast?
Twenty years doesn’t seem like much time for “dust clouds” visible from 63 light-years away to settle? coalesce?
A more local example to illustrate my point: How long did it take for cislunar space to clear out after the proto-moon bashed into Earth and threw stuff everywhere? Would that amount of debris be visible as “dust” from 63 light-years away?
Mark Sizer makes a very good point. The physical size of anything visible from 63 LY makes it difficult to imagine it simply shrinking away in less than 20 years.
Yes, I agree with both of you. A debris field would spread out forming an orbit similar to our astroid belt. coalesce of the dust will take millions of years. Even Jupiter still has moons, the Trojans and the astroid belt that have not been coalesce yet.
So what could it be? Remnants from a supernova that their solar systems passing through? Chronal Mass ejection from their Sun? A black hole ripping apart a body and then sucking it back in? A large object moving in a counter rotating/revolution direction smashing into a planet neutralizing its momentum allowing it to fall directly into their Sun?
None of these imaginative scenarios will disappear any short than a few million years, any ideas?
(I know you were all sick of me posting how the evidence determined it was our moon that is the Mars sized object that smashed into the earth producing our continents… I’ll save you the repetitive nature of my ADD)