Researchers spot Saturn-sized planet in the “Einstein desert”
摘要
研究人员通过微引力透镜现象和盖亚空间望远镜的观测，首次在“爱因斯坦沙漠”中发现了一颗土星大小的行星。微引力透镜现象发生在行星经过地球与另一恒星视线之间时，其引力会扭曲星光并短暂增亮。这一发现有助于探索不围绕任何恒星运行的“流氓行星”的起源，其形成可能有两种不同途径。
Most of the exoplanets we've discovered have been in relatively tight orbits around their host stars, allowing us to track them as they repeatedly loop around them. But we've also discovered a handful of planets through a phenomenon that's called microlensing. This occurs when a planet passes between the line of sight between Earth and another star, creating a gravitational lens that distorts the star, causing it to briefly brighten.
The key thing about microlensing compared to other methods of finding planets is that the lensing planet can be nearly anywhere on the line between the star and Earth. So, in many cases, these events are driven by what are called rogue planets: those that aren't part of any exosolar system at all, but they drift through interstellar space. Now, researchers have used microlensing and the fortuitous orientation of the Gaia space telescope to spot a Saturn-sized planet that's the first found in what's called the "Einstein desert," which may be telling us something about the origin of rogue planets.
Going rogue
Most of the planets we've identified are in orbit around stars and formed from the disks of gas and dust that surrounded the star early in its history. We've imaged many of these disks and even seen some with evidence of planets forming within them. So how do you get a planet that's not bound to any stars? There are two possible routes.
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