"Nearly 4.5 billion years ago, a colossal impact between Earth and a Mars-size planet triggered the formation of the moon.  But the giant collision did more than put a familiar face in our sky:  Fragments from the impact not only struck the asteroid belt, but appear to have left telltale scars behind on the asteroids." (5)

"For the first time, the mainstream has CONFIRMED that the main asteroid belt contains the remnants of a collision with Earth/Tiamat.  Previous probes have confirmed earthly minerals and volatiles on asteroids in the belt, rather than the exotic primordial materials that were expected.

• The first created the Tiamat/Earth-Moon system, while the second one reduced Tiamat to the size we see today as Earth.  

• The second one also scarred the previously-existing Moon (mostly on one side) as we see today.

"Lastly, this second collision, as Sitchin interprets, ALSO CAUSED THE TIAMAT/EARTH-MOON SYSTEM TO MIGRATE TO THE LAGRANGE POINT WE SEE TODAY." (6)

Last month, I delved into a discussion about Dark Matter stars which was, to be fair, very much 'out of left field' (1).  It was based upon the theoretical work of Dr Vladimir Netchitailo, a physicist specialising in lasers, who had produced a revolutionary discussion paper about the distribution of Dark Matter in the universe, and who said Dark Matter might actually concentrate in particularly dense areas, like galactic cores...and even within individual stars (2).  I have to say that even as I was writing it, I felt that on a fairly major level it was unworkable, as most physicists consider Dark Matter to be highly energetic in nature, hence difficult to detect.  But as there is as yet little empirical evidence from Dark Matter to inform us of its properties, most of this discussion is merely theoretical, so who knows?  Perhaps Dark Matter offers us some new possibilities that aren't simply going to be confined to high-end particle physics.

Shortly after I wrote about this, an article came out describing the distribution of matter and Dark Matter across spiral and elliptical galaxies (3), based upon observed kinematics, particularly the rotational speed of their outlying stars (4).  Without dark matter, the speeds should decrease with distance from the galaxy, at different rates for the two galaxy types.  The authors used a relatively simple model to provide a 'remarkably good' reproduction of the observed kinematics of these galaxies.   They then used Newton's Laws to calculate the mass of these galaxies from the speeds exhibited by their stars.  If Dark Matter exists, then it appears to 'conspire' with matter to distribute itself peripherally, in order to produce the required boost to the rotational speeds of the outer stars:

Bright 'lights' on the surface of the major asteroid/dwarf planet Ceres.  It's the stuff of science fiction, but NASA's Dawn spacecraft has imaged rather spectacular bright spots on one of the craters on its Northern Hemisphere (1).  Everyone's puzzled by them, and looking forward to closer images as Dawn draws nearer. 

The most recent 'official' word has it that the lights are due to light bouncing off highly reflective material on the surface of the dwarf planet:

""Dawn scientists can now conclude that the intense brightness of these spots is due to the reflection of sunlight by highly reflective material on the surface, possibly ice," Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission from the University of California, Los Angeles, said recently." (2)

But there is still a considerable element of doubt about the nature of that material, even among mission specialists:

"In photos released from its first science orbit, [Ceres] shows its cratered face and, in a few of those craters, the mysterious white spots NASA scientists have been puzzling over for months. A photo taken May 4 by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows the largest to be a number of differentiated white spots that some interpret to be water ice.

"Mark Sykes doesn’t think so. Sykes, director and CEO of Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, says if Ceres held that much ice it would have registered a much stronger signal with NASA’s Herschel Space Telescope. The spots might be minerals left over from evaporated ice, said Sykes, who is a co-investigator on Dawn’s science team.

"He said science team members had plenty of conjectures about Ceres when they met in Santa Monica, California, a couple of weeks ago. He’s not willing to draw any conclusions from images that represent 1.2 kilometers per pixel." (3)

In some of these images, an object has been spotted moving across the field of view (4).  The moving object adds an extra dimension, further heightening speculation that this whole zone of interest may be artificial in origin.  If confirmed, the moving object could well be an undiscovered moon of Ceres.  Or, if my hypothesis about a relatively recent impact is correct, then perhaps it's some of the impact debris now orbiting around Ceres.

NASA appears to be maintaining an open mind on the issue of the bright spots, and has even opened up a website poll to gauge public opinion about the various proposed solutions to the mystery (5). 

An international team of researchers have observed the movement of a sizeable gas-giant world, orbiting a young red dwarf star (designated HATS-6) some 500 light years away.  What makes this discovery special is the fact that this planet seems way too big for its small parent star.  It also lies extremely close to the parent M-dwarf star - a tenth the distance of Mercury to the Sun (1,2). 

It whizzes around the M-dwarf in just 3.3 days, making little old Mercury appear positively tortoise-like in comparison.

"We have found a small star, with a giant planet the size of Jupiter, orbiting very closely," said researcher George Zhou from the Research School of Astrophysics and Astronomy at The Australian National University.  "It must have formed further out and migrated in, but our theories can't explain how this happened." (3)

The proposed mechanism for such a drastic inward migration relies upon physical interactions with the proto-planetary disk:

"Scientists do not think hot Jupiters such as HATS-6b form where they now orbit; at such close range, the radiation and winds from their host stars would blow away most nearby matter, leaving too little to form such large planets.  Instead, researchers think giant planets are born far away from their stars and then migrate inward because of physical interactions with the ring of gas and dust that initially surrounds young stars, or as a result of gravitational interactions with nearby planets." (4)

But, in this case, how could the small proto-planetary disk of a M Dwarf really be expected to kick such a large gas giant inwards?  This does seem a very extreme case, if this standard mechanism is to be applied here.  Another aspect of this puzzling planet is its density.  It is less of a 'hot Jupiter' and more of a 'hot Saturn':

"The planet has a similar mass to Saturn, but its radius is similar to Jupiter, so it's quite a puffed up planet". (3)

Density-wise, this planet is incredibly light.   The discovery calls into question standard models of planet formation, none of which is able to predict such a massive gaseous world in such close proximity to a young red dwarf star. 

There is some speculation that the red dwarf and this super-light gas giant formed together, from the same central part of the revolving proto-stellar nebula, and then separated at birth (5).  There is a precedent for this kind of separation, in the form of the rather bizarre Wolf-Rayet stars.  These begin life big - initially containing at least 20 times more mass than the sun.  But their hydrogen-dominated outer layers soon puff up and are lost, exposing the objects' helium-burning cores to space.  Arguments about the mechanism remain unresolved (it's either due to the star's own strong stellar wind driving off the outer hydrogen layers, or their being dragged off by a binary companion) (6). 

Certainly, this is a very different beast to our tiny M Dwarf HATS-6, but if the binary star ("cosmic cannibalism") mechanism is the correct one, then this may lead to an understanding of how 'hot Jupiters' might form in a more general sense.  If outer, hydrogen-rich layers of stars are being drawn off by binary companions, and then if that process is interrupted for some reason (the loss to interstellar space of the binary companion, for instance), a 'hot Jupiter' might result.

""We found that it is possible to build up significant quantities of water in the gas phase without much enrichment in heavy elements," said [Shmuel] Bialy.  "In this current work, we calculated how much water could exist in the gas phase within molecular clouds that would form later generations of stars and planets.  In future research we intend to address questions such as how much water could have existed as interstellar ice, as in our own galaxy, and what fraction of all the water might actually be incorporated into newly-forming planetary systems."" (1)

This also implies a ready abundance of water in later, 'recycled' star forming regions throughout the life-time of the galaxy.  Life could have emerged early on, through the warm, aqueous conditions available in the early universe, and then spread out - through Panspermia - steadily over billions of years.  Our own solar system might well have begun life with abundant water incorporated within its condensing nebula, with the accompanying seeds of life ready to go...

As we began this blog, the prospects for a monster-sized watery mother world containing everything needed for life (i.e. "Tiamat") seems very reasonable indeed.