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An international research team co-led by Prof. Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia today announced that it has confirmed the existence of the universe's oldest known and farthest planet.
The findings end a decade of speculation and debate as to the true nature of this ancient world, which takes a century to complete each orbit. The un-named planet is 2.5 times the mass of our solar system's largest planet, Jupiter. Its existence provides evidence that the universe's first planets were formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang.
"This is tremendously exciting and certainly suggests that planets are probably more common that we had suspected," says Prof. Harvey Richer who announced the findings at a press conference held today at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The Jupiter-sized planet formed around a sun-like star 13 billion years ago. The ancient planet has had a remarkable life. When it was born it probably orbited its youthful sun at approximately the same distance Jupiter is from our sun. It has survived blistering ultraviolet radiation, supernova explosions and violent shockwaves.
Located near the core of an ancient star cluster 5,600 light-years away, it now orbits a pair of burned-out stars. One of the stars is observed as a pulsar by radio telescopes, but the other had not been seen until now. The research team used data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to precisely measure the second star, and this let them nail down the properties of the planet as well.
The team's research suggests that the planet is likely a gas giant, without a solid surface like the Earth. Because it was formed so early in the life of the universe it probably doesn't have great quantities of elements such as carbon and oxygen. For these reasons, it's unlikely the planet could support life.
Richer says that in the current model of planetary formation, planets evolve out of small collections of rocks (called planetesimals) which come together and become massive enough to gravitationally attract gas. The newly confirmed planet was formed so early in the history of the universe that its gas was still very metal-poor (and could not conceivably form rocks). This suggests that direct gravitational collapse of gas was its formation scenario so planets could have been forming continuously since the universe was very young.
Other members of the research team include Ingrid Stairs, a radio astronomer at UBC, Brad Hansen of UCLA, Steinn Sigurdsson of Penn State University, and Stephen Thorsett of UCSC.
Richer's work is supported by two of Canada's most prestigious granting agencies: The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Council.
The results of the team's research are to be published in the journal Science on July 11. Electronic images and additional information are available at http://hubblesite.org/news/2003/19.
Biography: Harvey B. Richer
Professor Harvey Richer was born in Montreal, Quebec. He studied at McGill University and obtained his doctorate in physics and astronomy from the University of Rochester.
Richer has been at the University of British Columbia since the early 1970s. For the past three years, he has been the Gemini Scientist for Canada. For the past three years, he has been the Gemini Scientist for Canada. Last year he was awarded a Canada Council Killam Fellowship that allows him to work full time on his research.
His research is largely focused on stellar astronomy and on what resolved systems of stars can tell us about dark matter, the age of the universe, the dynamical evolution of stellar systems, and the formation of galaxies. To investigate these diverse subjects, he observes a wide range of objects, including nearby stars, open and globular star clusters, and the resolved components of our neighbouring galaxies. To accomplish his research goals, he uses a variety of telescopes, particularly the Twin Gemini Telescopes, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Biography: Ingrid Stairs
Assistant Professor Ingrid Stairs came to UBC last year. She obtained her PhD at Princeton University where she worked on radio pulsars with recent Nobel laureate Joseph Taylor. She subsequently held postdoctoral appointments at Jodrell Bank Observatory, U.K., and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory facility in Green Bank, West Virginia. She holds a University Faculty Award in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and her research is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Journal
Science