Part 1 found here – Let’s get Webb’ed – Part 1
THINGS ARE JMBO SIZED!
Nope, not a typo – the JMBO discovery – commonly known as Jumbo’s, are a new type of celestial body that we found. Jupiter Mass Binary Objects – or JMBO’s, are weird, and we need to study them more. While they have the name Jupiter in it, they have nothing to do with the planet, and rather is used strictly as a size reference. The binary objects are not planets, but they’re not stars either. They are free-floating objects, first discovered in the Orion nebula. Here’s the kicker though – our understanding of physics doesn’t allow these objects to be formed. They cannot form outside of planetary star system creations, they cannot form from gas clouds left over, they somehow got ejected from their host star system, AND, to top it all off, a 2nd JMBO, also broke free, and they began to orbit each other.
Planets get ejected from star systems all the time, and when it happens it’s crazy – usually it happens because of another star system collision, or a large enough object knocked it loose. When this happened, it managed to pull a 2nd object with it, and kept the stable orbit around each other, as it’s being ejected.
In terms of probability, this is a lottery winning series of events, with each event being its own lottery win. We found 40+ of them located and clustered together in the Orion nebula. Why are there 40+ of them in one specific area of the Galaxy, and not or less common in others? We don’t know enough about these and as always, we need to research more!
WE GOT NEW EYES! (AGAIN)
Everyone always thinks that telescopes are used for finding large items like nebulas, galaxies, and stars and planets. But we also have other eyes on this spaceship – some that let it see really tiny things. During the deployment and testing phases of the telescope, before operations began, tests were being performed on the MIRI instrument or Mid Infrared Research Instrument, and it focused on the asteroid belt separating Mars and Jupiter in our solar system. It focused on an asteroid that eventually was found out to be too bright to do the necessary tests on, but rather than the team just destroying the data and starting fresh, they began to dig into what it was that was so bright yet so small.
Why do we care about small things over big things? Well, small things are affected by gravity and other objects passing nearby. However they generally aren’t going to get destroyed with a collision, but rather, get flung elsewhere. Because of the chaos of this, finding them has been next to impossible, but the JWST has found some small objects. These objects when studied, can be used to unlock the secrets of the beginning of the universe. As always, we have to study them more 😉
Science is fun!
LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS!
If that’s not the most clickbait title I’ve written on here, I don’t know what is.
With the assistance from the Kepler telescope, we found and analyzed a dwarf planet called K2-18b, found near the constellation Leo, roughly 130 light years away from Earth. This planet, after we performed what’s known as Spectrographic Analysis (shown below) on the atmosphere, found that the atmosphere of this planet had water vapor in it. So what, we see these all the time, right? Well this one had a surface temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, it orbits its parent star inside the habitable zone, is believed to have water oceans, but the big kicker, it also had DMS, or Dimethyl Sulfide. Why does this matter? All DMS is created by organic life, and we’re talking phytoplankton and something beyond a cellular staged evolution.
Spectrographic Analysis is performed using various scientific tools, but breaks down to the color of the light that we get back from looking at it through special instruments. By breaking down the wavelength of light that is sent, we can see dips and bumps, similar to a vinyl record, where a “bump” is present and a “dip” is absence of an element in the atmosphere.
Sadly, while this does sound like Earth 2.0 for us, we cannot see if this planet is a rocky surface, or a gas giant. Our understanding of biological life says a gas giant cannot host life, but maybe it can? JWST out there just breaking our brains 🙂