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[br][br][br]Professor Xinya Dai and postdoctoral researcher Eduardo Guerras say they have detected the presence of a population of planets in a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away from Earth. It’s the first time planets have been detected in another galaxy.[br][br]Guerras says the planets were indirectly detected because no instrument is strong enough to see an object that is so far away. Dai and Guerras used microlensing to detect them. In this case, the galaxy sits within the line of sight of a quasar. When an object, like a galaxy, moves in front of a very bright object, like a quasar, the foreground object’s gravity distorts the light of the background object, making it appear brighter. The same technique has been used to discover some exoplanets in the Milky Way.[br][br]The planets are floating, which means they do not orbit a star. Guerras thinks there might be many floating planets in our own galaxy. “They are not bounded to any star. It’s not like the planets that we are used to in the solar system that orbit around the sun. These are planets that wander around between the stars in the dark,” Guerras said. |
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发表于 2018-02-09 23:58:12
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