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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the planets-from-long-ago-in-a-galaxy-far-far-away? dept.

Astronomers have detected exoplanets in a galaxy 3.8 billion light years away using gravitational microlensing:

In an incredible world first, astrophysicists have detected multiple planets in another galaxy, ranging from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter. Given how difficult it is to find exoplanets even within our Milky Way galaxy, this is no mean feat. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma achieved this thanks to clever use of gravitational microlensing.

[...] Oklahoma University astronomers Xinyu Dai and Eduardo Guerras studied a quasar 6 billion light-years away called RX J1131-1231, one of the best gravitationally lensed quasars in the sky. The gravitational field of a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away between us and the quasar bends light in such a way that it creates four images of the quasar, which is an active supermassive black hole that's extremely bright in X-ray, thanks to the intense heat of its accretion disc.

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, the researchers found that there were peculiar line energy shifts in the quasar's light that could only be explained by planets in the galaxy lensing the quasar. It turned out to be around 2,000 unbound planets with masses ranging between the Moon and Jupiter, between the galaxy's stars. "We are very excited about this discovery. This is the first time anyone has discovered planets outside our galaxy," Dai said.

Separately, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected dimethyl ether and methyl formate molecules in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf galaxy and satellite of the Milky Way just 160,000 light years away. These molecules had not been previously detected outside of the Milky Way galaxy. The study also found evidence of methanol, which had already been detected in the LMC.

Probing Planets in Extragalactic Galaxies Using Quasar Microlensing (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aaa5fb) (DX)

The Detection of Hot Cores and Complex Organic Molecules in the Large Magellanic Cloud (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aaa079) (DX)

Also at Universe Today, National Geographic, the University of Oklahoma, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.


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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:17AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:17AM (#634217) Journal

    Why, thank you, takyon!

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