Critical Test Of Gamma Ray Burst Theories

Long and precise follow-up measurements of the X-ray afterglow (AG) of very intense gamma ray bursts (GRBs) provide a critical test of GRB afterglow theories.

Dado & Dar (2016) show that the power-law decline with time of X-ray AG of GRB 130427A, the longest measured X-ray AG of an intense GRB with the Swift, Chandra and XMM Newton satellites, and of all other well measured late-time X-ray afterglow of intense GRBs, is that predicted by the cannonball (CB) model of GRBs from their measured spectral index, while it disagrees with that predicted by the widely accepted fireball (FB) models of GRBs.

Dado & Dar 2016 (preprint) - Critical Test Of Gamma Ray Burst Theories - (arXiv)

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‘Monster’ Planet Discovery Challenges Formation Theory

Artist’s illustration of a "hot Jupiter". Image Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss A new research presents the discovery of NGTS-1b, a hot-Jupiter transiting an early M-dwarf host in a P~2.6 days orbit discovered as part of the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). The planet has a mass of M~0.8 M(jupiter) making it the most massive planet ever discovered transiting an M-dwarf. NGTS-1b is the third transiting giant planet found around an M-dwarf, reinforcing the notion that close-in gas giants can form and migrate similar to the known population of hot Jupiters around solar type stars. The existence of the 'monster' planet, 'NGTS-1b', challenges theories of planet formation which state that a planet of this size could not be formed around such a small star. According to these theories, small stars can readily form rocky planets but do not gather enough material together to form Jupiter-sized planets. Such massive planets were not thought to exist ar...

CONSTRAINTS ON THE LOCATION OF A POSSIBLE 9TH PLANET

Image: The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Such an orbital alignment can only be maintained by some outside force, Batygin and Brown say. Their paper argues that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration. Credit: Caltech The astronomers have noticed some of the dwarf planets and other small, icy objects tend to follow orbits that cluster together. To explain the unusual distribution of these Kuiper Belt objects, several authors have advocated the existence of a superEarth planet in the outer solar system ( planet Nine or planet X ).

ORBITAL PERIODS OF THE PLANETS

For orbital period generally we refer to the sidereal period, that is the temporal cycle that it takes an object to make a full orbit, relative to the stars. This is the orbital period in an inertial (non-rotating) frame of reference (365,25 days for the earth).

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