What is the origin of our Asteroid Belt? Is there enough material for a Planet?

Read the full story of the asteroid belt here, on page 10:   We Came From The Stars, And Then From Mars 

In this highly detailed NASA illustration, the asteroid field is the yellow area between Mars and Jupiter:

May 15th 2023:

James Webb Space Telescope detects outgassing water from main-belt comet

by Planetary Science Institute

After 15 years of attempts, researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have for the first time successfully detected water outgassing from a main-belt comet.

A recently published Nature paper “Direct detection of water from a main-belt comet with JWST” led by Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland reports the first direct spectroscopic detection of water outgassing from a main-belt comet named Comet Read. Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Henry Hsieh is a co-author on the paper.

Main-belt comets are a rare sub-class of comets that have mostly circular orbits entirely confined to the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but show comet-like behavior—ejecting material that creates a fuzzy appearance and often tails—that astronomers believe is produced by sublimation—or the transition of ice directly to gas—of icy material.

Only dust has ever been detected being ejected by main-belt comets though, despite many attempts to detect escaping gases that should also accompany sublimation-powered cometary activity. Most main-belt asteroids are not expected to have much ice, given their location in the warm inner solar system where they are thought to have resided for billions of years.

For comparison, most other comets that display activity caused by sublimation spend large portions of their time in the cold outer solar system on highly elongated orbits that only occasionally pass through the inner solar system. Given these considerations, doubts have persisted about whether main-belt comets could really be icy. Until now.

“Since the discovery of main-belt comets, we have collected a substantial body of evidence that their activity is produced by sublimation, but until now, it has all been indirect. This new result from JWST represents the first direct evidence of sublimation in the form of water outgassing—or outgassing of any kind—from a main-belt comet, following studies dating back to 2008 to detect outgassing in main-belt comets using some of the biggest ground-based telescopes in the world,” explained Hsieh, who led the discovery of main-belt comets as a new kind of comet in 2006.

In the paper, Hsieh and his colleagues further find that Comet Read, and therefore possibly other main-belt comets as well, has a fundamentally different chemical composition from other comets, showing almost no carbon dioxide, a common component of cometary outgassing, relative to the amount of water found. Whether it experienced different formation circumstances or evolutionary history,

Comet Read is unlikely to be a recent asteroid belt interloper from the outer solar system. Based on these results, main-belt comets appear to represent a sample of volatile material that is currently unrepresented in observations of classical comets and the meteoritic record, making them important for understanding the early solar system’s volatile inventory and its subsequent evolution.

“Because substantial water ice—which is a major component of the volatile material that typically produces activity in ‘classical’ comets from the outer solar system—is unexpected in main-belt asteroids given how close to the sun they are, there has always been some doubt about whether main-belt comet activity is produced by water ice sublimation rather than some other process that doesn’t involve ice, such as impacts or material being flung into space by fast-spinning asteroids,” Hsieh said.

“Water in main-belt comets is important because objects from the main asteroid belt have been proposed as a potential source of Earth’s water in the early solar system, where the modern day main-belt comets appear to provide an opportunity to test this hypothesis. This only works though if they do in fact contain water ice. The confirmation of water outgassing in at least one main-belt comet confirms that learning about the origin of Earth’s water from main-belt comets is a viable possibility,” Hsieh said.

The team used JWST to observe Read shortly after its close approach to the sun, when outgassing was expected to be at its strongest, taking both imaging and spectroscopic observations at near-infrared wavelengths in order to search for characteristic spectroscopic features of water vapor and other common gases produced by cometary sublimation.

More information: Kelley, M.S.P. et al. Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet. Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06152-y www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06152-y

First exoplanet targets recommended for Webb observation — SpaceFlight Insider

Size comparison of Kepler-442b with Earth. This is a potential candidate for first exoplanet observation by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk: Helgo13 Now that the James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror has been aligned successfully, scientists are identifying the first exoplanets for the telescope to observe. On March 21, NASA announced the milestone…

First exoplanet targets recommended for Webb observation — SpaceFlight Insider

Now that the James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror has been aligned successfully, scientists are identifying the first exoplanets for the telescope to observe.

On March 21, NASA announced the milestone of 5,005 confirmed exoplanets. One of JWST‘s major tasks will be studying the atmospheres of exoplanets to look for signs of life.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield recommended Kepler-442b, a likely rocky world in its star’s habitable zone as an ideal first planetary target for the new infrared telescope.

Located around 1,200 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, Kepler-442b was discovered by NASA’s Kepler and K2 missions. The planet orbits a K-type star 40 times less massive than our Sun and has an orbital period of 112 days. With a radius 1.34 times that of Earth, it is a super-Earth and one of the most promising worlds in terms of possibly hosting life.

Hadfield selected this planet based on a 2015 study in The Astrophysical Journal, in which a team of scientists ranked planets discovered by Kepler and K2 for being most likely to have liquid water on their surfaces. Kepler-442b was one of the planets the study identified.

“Basically, we’ve devised a way to take all the observational data that are available and develop a prioritization scheme, so that as we move into a time when there are hundreds of targets available, we might be able to say, ‘Ok, that’s the one we want to start with,’” paper lead author Rory Barnes of the University of Washington said in 2015.

Based on their ranking system, some scientists believe Kepler-442b is actually more habitable than the Earth.

“We ranked the known Kepler and K2 planets for habitability and found that several have larger values of H [the probability of being terrestrial] than Earth,” the paper’s authors wrote.

Another top planetary target for JWST is the TRAPPIST-1 system, located just 41 light years from Earth, which hosts seven planets in very tight orbits around a low-mass red dwarf star. Three or four of these planets are located in the star’s habitable zone. All seven are believed to be rocky worlds.

JWST will study the planets’ atmospheres and identify their components. In its search for signs of life, the telescope may be powerful enough to detect atmospheric pollution produced by intelligent civilizations.

“The optical performance of the telescope is absolutely phenomenal. The performance is as good, if not better, than our most optimistic predictions,” said JWST optical telescope manager Lee Feinberg of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center after JWST captured a sharp image of the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277 earlier this month.

Current plans call for JWST science operations to start in late June.

Listen to Mother Earth. Listen to this song.

CR 780

Billy:

That is just the way it is and it cannot be changed. I knew that when I was still with Sfath. Only back then it was not as bad as it is nowadays. Nowadays everything has changed in such a way that things are getting worse instead of better, so you can spread information about correct behaviour as much as you like, but neither those in power nor the common people listen to it. Even the fact that the Earth is alive and sends out its pulse beat, which sounds like a pulsating hum – as I recently described to someone from the core-group, but who cannot perceive any of it – which is apparently only perceived by a few earthlings, has changed agonisingly and points out how the planet is suffering due to the overexploitation of its resources. Since my earliest youth I have heard this sound, which sounds increasingly agonising. Sfath explained to me that I hear the groaning of the Earth, which comes from the overexploitation of the ores, the Earth’s petroleum and the escaping Earth gases, as well as the Earth’s resources of all kinds. But the earthlings would only notice the whole thing when it was too late, when overpopulation had already robbed and destroyed the planet of its resources to such an extent that it could no longer be changed. But when it is recognised one day, the whole of the Earth’s groaning will not be recognised as such, but will be attributed to industrial technology and thus trivialised and not recognised as the planet’s cry for help. As a result, the destruction of the Earth through the machinations of overpopulation will continue – which will make the companies, corporations and private individuals rich, because they fulfill the needs, desires and luxuries of humanity and thereby destroy the planet down to its foundations. And that this is happening is something I have been hearing since my earliest youth, and it is sounding worse and louder. Unfortunately, it is only individual human beings who care, who take it all in and try to do something better. However, this does nothing for the mass of humanity, certainly nothing for the huge overpopulation, because of which or as a result of whose machinations – which are fulfilled by money-greedy companies, corporations and private individuals, as I have said before and of which I am reminded again and again by hearing the groans – the Earth is being completely destroyed and tormented to such an extent that it is groaning and its climate is changing, whereby warming will also increase not only by 1 or 1.5 degrees in the foreseeable future, as is erroneously assumed, but towards 3 degrees. … …As for the Earth suffering through the over exploitation of its natural treasures, and as for the harassment of the planet by the human beings of the Earth, the Earth is less and less able to cope with it all, consequently its pulsating grumbles and groans are becoming worse and worse, indicating that it is suffering. This will certainly and well be recognized, but will be completely misinterpreted by the ‘all-knowing’ scientists and attributed to the use of hard-working technology, consequently nothing will be done about it, but everything will remain with the further and time-honored destruction of the planet.

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special thanks to: Monica

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CR 790

Billy:

…As far as I know, the earthlings still have no idea that everything is also dependent on swinging waves, namely on the swinging waves of the Earth itself, that it is precisely the Earth’s gravitational swinging wave that makes it possible for something to grow and flourish. However, it is not only the gravitational swinging waves that plays a very decisive role, which emanates from the Earth, but also other aspects that are just as unknown to earthly scientists as the gravitational swinging waves, which, as far as I know, they do not yet know….

The Great Comet of 1680

That is all.

Reference.

We are on an island in outer space

Forget about global warming or cooling or temperature for the moment.

Every day we add another 280,000 new people to a planet with more than 9.25 billion. So unless we stop overpopulating it, things will get worse. Much worse.

Overpopulation is calculated by the number of people that can (or can’t) be supported by the amount of food that can be grown per square kilometer. Food can’t be grown everywhere. It can only be grown on arable land. Arable land cannot grow an unlimited amount of food. It can only grow a certain amount. That is, 12 people can live indefinitely off of 1 square kilometer of arable land.

Think of an island. A small one… pretend you live there and can never leave.

50 people can live there forever, but if they multiply to 500, they will cut down all the trees, kill all the animals, and the entire society will starve, collapse, kill each other, and die.

So we are on a big island that is planet earth. We can’t live anywhere else right now. And we have a fixed, and even shrinking amount of arable land. We are cutting down the trees. We are killing the nature. We are poisoning the air, land, and water, and no one can say this is not true.

So we are turning that little island of 50 into 500, and the same end result will occur. Cause and effect. It is inescapable. We had 2 billion people in the year 1925. Today in 2021 we have over 9 billion. Just think about that for a few moments. Think what will happen in 100 or 200 years. I mean really think.

Now, no one has to be killed. Each life is precious. But we should not multiply like rabbits, because our entire ecosystem will collapse. We simply need to reproduce at a slower rate, so that over time, more people die naturally than are born naturally. If you just think about cause and effect, this will make sense. No one needs to have 5 to 10 kids in this day and age. If we continue at this rate, our entire civilization will collapse and suffer a huge and horrible catastrophe. This is unavoidable, unless we have fewer children in each family, and care for them more carefully and lovingly, and wait several years between each one, instead of popping out babies like a factory assembly line.

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But in case you are concerned about global warming, here is the latest news: https://phys.org/news/2021-08-climate-comprehensive.html

I* FOUND* AN EXOPLANET*!

The TESS space telescope has published the findings for the first two years of observation. Ground based telescopes will follow up to confirm the existence of these exoplanets. About 90 exoplanet candidates are slated to be studied in more detail.

OK, technically, I along with 23 other citizen scientists found TIC 480636441, and it has yet to be confirmed.

It has an orbital period of only 37 days, so it’s probably a burning hot hellfire planet. Toasty!

If you are one of the 22,000 exoplanet hunters, you can search to see if you helped find an exoplanet here:

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot-eisner/planet-hunters-tess/about/results

Here is a graph of the most promising candidates:

And this is what the light curves look like:

Visit the site to search for new planets yourself here: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot-eisner/planet-hunters-tess/

Phosphine biomarker Discovered in Venus’ Atmosphere

Today an international team of scientists led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK announced the discovery of phosphine (PH3) in the atmosphere of our neighboring planet Venus — a detection made using data from ground-based telescopes located in Hawaii and Chile. On Earth, phosphine is created for industrial uses in labs and by […]

Phosphine Discovery in Venus’ Atmosphere Raises the Big Question of Life — Lights in the Dark

Detecting New Planets

News article posted on 16 Apr 2020 by Rebekah Hounsell, Knicole Colon

Time flies — it has already been two years since TESS launched into space! Since launching on April 18, 2018, TESS has mapped out a significant fraction of the night sky, confirmed the existence of 45 exoplanets, found more than 1700 planet candidates, and been used to examine the variability of countless sources such as active galactic nuclei and supernovae.

Before science operations even began in July 2018, TESS managed to capture a set of images showing the motion of the comet C/2018N1, illustrating TESS’s unique ability to collect a set of stable periodic images covering a wide region of the sky.

Within the first few months of operation, TESS demonstrated its planet hunting abilities by detecting its first three exoplanets: a planet named Pi Mensae c, which is twice the size of the Earth and orbits its Sun like star every six days; LHS 3844 b, a rocky planet located in the constellation Indus, at a distance of only 49 light years; a dense non-rocky planet named HD 21749 b, which is three times the size of the Earth and 23 times more massive, making the planet more dense than Neptune.

TESS discovered its first Earth-size planet in the habitable zone, which was announced in early 2020. The planet named TOI 700 d orbits a cool M dwarf star approximately 40% the mass and size of the Sun and is just over 100 light years away in the southern constellation of Draco. To date TOI 700 d is one of only a few planets discovered within a system’s habitable zone.

TESS also detected its first circumbinary planetary system in 2019. The planet, TOI 1338 b, is a world that orbits two stars in the constellation of Pictor, at a distance of 1300 light years. The two stars orbit each other every 15 days – one is 10% more massive than the Sun whilst the other is cooler and dimmer at 1/3 the size of the Sun. TOI 1338 b is believed to be the only planet in the system and is almost 7 times larger than the Earth.

Apart from hunting for planets, TESS, with its almost all-sky survey capability and high-cadenced observations, is a great tool to study the variable universe. TESS watched a star being torn apart by a black hole in a phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). This event was named ASASSN-19bt as it was first identified by the ground-based All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. The data provided by TESS allowed the astronomical community to view the light from the event much closer to the black hole than ever before!

TESS has also been used to create detailed high-cadenced light curves of supernovae (SNe). Recent work presented 18 early time light curves of Type Ia SNe occurring in the first six sectors of TESS data. SN Ia are one of our most mature cosmological probes, however we still do not have a firm understanding of the progenitor systems. The detailed early time observations of these transient events by TESS are extremely important and can provide vital information in understanding these systems.

The science highlighted here represents only a small amount of the incredible science to have come out of the TESS prime mission to date, thanks to efforts of both the TESS mission team and the TESS community. So what is next for TESS? The two-year prime mission will end in July 2020, and given the success of TESS, the mission has now been extended for a further two years through October 2022. TESS will remain as NASA’s key planet hunter, but it will also continue to provide the high-quality wide-field survey data required for the exploration of many different kinds of variable and transient events in the night sky — part of which is shown below in the mosaic of the southern sky as seen by TESS.

from: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/tess/april-18th-marks-the-two-year-anniversary-of-tess-in-space.html

Earth Day, Every Day

from GOTT. p. 255

130) And cultivate your land and the whole Earth without tormenting and destroying it, and be admonished to do this because otherwise it will raise itself up against you and bring you unweather, high waters, enormous storms, fire and drought, as well as dearths of fruits and other provision (food).

131) See that only good comes to you from Earth, as it will be and as it is due to you (as you are entitled to) when you strive for it; do at all times rightfully with your world so that no calamity comes (breaks in) over you from it for which you yourselves are to blame; consider that if calamity comes (breaks in) over you that you alone are to blame for it, even if most of you do not know it, because you do not care about the laws of condition (cause) and of decision (effect = cause and effect).

132) See the signs of your appearance (nature) and allow yourselves to be captivated (influenced) by them so that you recognise that the earth with its laws of its appearance (nature) will not submit to you, but that you must fall in line with it (integrate yourselves) in order to spend your existence (life) in togetherness with it, and to obtain (draw) the best gains (effects) from it.

133) Therefore consider: Whatever you do with your earth, it will never submit to you.

134) And be certain (knowing) that if you do not do rightfully with your world and with all people of your kind (human kind) then grievances (vexations) will come over you, such as great storms and high waters, and you will be oppressed (plagued) by locusts, by lice and frogs, as well as by scourges (plagues) and vermin and many kinds of life (life forms) and people of your kind (human beings) who change into deformed ones (mutated ones) for which you are to blame and spread torment; therefore do not be arrogant (vain) and do not commit outrages (misdemeanours) against the appearance (nature) or against the laws and recommendations of the wellspring of the love (Creation) so that no calamity comes over you.

GOTT 7:130-134

see also:“Destruction of the Environment as the Consequence of Overpopulation” pdf

Opinion: TESS finding few planets

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite began taking pictures of stars more than 15 months ago.  It is now 2/3rds finished looking at the local sky.  (17 of 26 sectors observed).  Although it has identified over 1500 objects of interest, so far there have only been 37 confirmed planets discovered.

KEPLER on the other hand, discovered over 2,600 exoplanets.

My conclusion?  KEPLER is KING and we should build and launch a few more of them.

Since the DRAKE equation has been solved years ago,

Drake Equation beats Fermi Paradox

N = 2,630,000

we still need to identify 55,000 more exoplanets in order to reach the statistical odds of finding a world with advanced intelligent life.

(2.63 million highly developed civilizations (1 in 59,316 star systems like ours host evolved human life)

The CHEOPS satellite, built by Swiss nerds, will try to calculate the densities of known exoplanets.  A secondary mission will be to try and spot potential clouds or atmospheres of local exoplanets, but it does not have a spectrometer on board.  What it will find remains to be seen.