Dust Today, Gone Tomorrow

[joe_smith]

What to make of this????

A star with, a planet forming dust cloud when viewed two years ago, now all the dust gone? I thought changes like this took not in millions of years not two years????

Astronomers report a baffling discovery never seen before: An extraordinary amount of dust around a nearby star has mysteriously disappeared.

Melis describes the star, designated TYC 8241 2652, as a "young analog of our sun" that only a few years ago displayed all of the characteristics of "hosting a solar system in the making," before transforming completely. Now, very little of the warm, dusty material thought to originate from collisions of rocky planets is apparent.

Read more here

[blink138 (Pat)]

perhaps the creationst were right....... we were made in 4500 years after all ha ha!
pat

[Baddad (Marty)]

Perhaps if we find out what process was involved we can incite the same to make the clouds over SE Qld disappear.

Cheers

[silv (Annette)]

Pat and Marty

[Poita (Peter)]

This is great news, whenever something hard to explain comes along it causes a major rethink and hopefully reveals something new, that gives us a better understanding of how the universe hangs together.

Can't wait to see what comes out of this, I wonder if anyone else will come out of the woodwork that has IR images of the star during this time.

[lacad01 (Adam)]

Perhaps some aliens were testing a new vacuum cleaner "The Dust Buster Galactica"

[silv (Annette)]

LHC had created a worm hole in 2010 and the Higgs Bosons from around that star there traveled through time and space to appear here on earth. (you remember when they had to postpone the "opening" for half a year? that was after that test drive which created that hole. I am from Europe so I should know. I gained a lot of weight around that time, too.)

With less mass there's less gravitational forces and without them the dust vanished into space. Clear as pea soup.

[Miaplacidus (Brian)]

Someone just cleaned the lens is all.

[Baddad (Marty)]

If a second occurrence of this came to light, it would certainly cause some head scratching.

The imaging method is still in its infancy. So it may be quite possible.

Cheers

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Originally Posted by Miaplacidus

Someone just cleaned the lens is all.

You never know do you ? Could be a truer word than you think.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Maybe for the most recent images they used flats, but the previous ones they didn't? Everyone knows flats get rid of the dust bunnies.

[joe_smith]

The research is based on multiple sets of observations of TYC 8241 2652 obtained with the Thermal-Region Camera Spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope in Chile, the IRAS, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, NASA's Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the Herschel Space Telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA), and AKARI (a Japanese/ESA infrared satellite).

I don't think its an equipment error, they are sure its gone. If this is true and it has just a vanished without a trace of how, then to me we still have a long, long way to getting anywhere near the point when we can say any theory we have is any way near correct. Don't know why this is not all over the news, as it sates in the article:

"It's as if the rings around Saturn had disappeared," said co-author Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. "This is even more shocking because the dusty disc of rocky debris was bigger and much more massive than Saturn's rings. The disc around this star, if it were in our solar system, would have extended from the sun halfway out to Earth, near the orbit of Mercury

When you read this and read it again it blows my mind what is out there that can do this in such a short of amount of time.

My personnel view on this:
This should be major news everywhere just hope it doesn't end up going nowhere as science today has a good track record of ignoring things that may upset the current accepted views. For this to happen in the first place is imposable with our current knowledge, If I was to say to you one month ago that planet forming dust clouds could vanish without a trace and without effecting the star, and with no clues left as to what happened I would be called a "troll" and brain dead. But this is to me is just what has happened. I am looking forward to learning more about what they have to say what happened, after all the head scratching is done first. Its a strange universe we live in, with a even stranger animal trying to make sense of it.

[Baddad (Marty)]

You are correct Joe.

It is a major event. I have no idea what it may have been to affect such a massive change.

I too would like to see what if any results are discovered.

Cheers

[silv (Annette)]

now, that that protective belt is gone, what'll happen when a meteor crashes into the sun?

[silv (Annette)]

or maybe it isn't gone at all. maybe it "only" changed its temperature. what would be the reason for that?

like with Popeye eating spinach - and 20 years later they find less iron in it.

[Astro_Bot]

Sounds a bit sensationalist to me.

There was an IR spectrum consistent with dust. Now there isn't. It's not like someone went and collected a dust sample. Hopefully the new data will improve the precision and chain of logic in estimating dust (and other) surroundings of stars.

[joe_smith]

Just some more info for those that are interested in this.

A good article with an unreal artists impression to put it in prospective is on the Gemini Observatory site, and another article from the NASA site.

There was an IR spectrum consistent with dust. Now there isn't. It's not like someone went and collected a dust sample. Hopefully the new data will improve the precision and chain of logic in estimating dust (and other) surroundings of stars.

They came to the conclusion from all the IR gear below, I think they have all the data they need to say something really strange did happen. If there was no dust at all and the original data was in error, what dose that say for the rest of the data we have?

But nothing like the disappearing dust disk at TYC 8241 2652 had ever been seen during these three decades. The result is based upon multiple sets of observations of TYC 8241 2652 obtained with the Thermal-Region Camera Spectrograph (T-ReCS) on the Gemini South telescope in Chile, the IRAS satellite, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, NASA's Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai`i, the Herschel Space Telescope of the European Space Agency, and AKARI (a Japanese/ESA infrared satellite).