A Boy Discovered a Whole New Planet

The 7teen-year-old boys don't do what one Scarsdale high school student did, last summer he discovered a planet, a planet almost seven times the size of Earth it orbits two suns it's kind of like a certain fictional planet that's home to Luke Skywalker who sports KentBufo met the high schooler today to see exactly how he did it inside this Scarsdale home filled with Star Wars posters and telescopes WolfeSuki ER has some exciting news so he discovered a planet.

Wolf Cukier, planet TOI 1338 b

This seventeen-year-old Scarsdale high school senior says on the third day of his internship at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt Maryland he noticed something from the data gathered by NASA survey satellite tests. He noticed a dip or a transit from the TOI 1338 system and that was the first signal of a planet thrilled he shared his discovery with his team he first saw the initial dip and thought oh that looked cool but then when he looked at the full data from the telescope at that star he noticed or their mentor also noticed three different dips in the system a high school intern examined hundreds of eclipsing binaries to search for planetary transits, Wolfe was onto something larger than Earth literally now let's say this is Earth well this new planet is 6.9 times the size of it oh yeah it's also 1,300 light-years away NASA's test mission just discovered its first circumbinary planet a world orbiting two stars instead of one the official name for the new planet is TOI 1338 B TOI standing for tests object of interest Wolf's family had their own idea for a name family wishes his brother's ideas wolf topia now while NASA waits official confirmation from the American Astronomical Society on their discovery this stargazing teen is enjoying his new outlook of the unknown feels both cool and overwhelming.

The planet called TOI 700d has the potential for liquid water on its surface test stares at patches of sky for long stretches recording light from thousands of stars some of these stars have planets that cross or transit in front of them to seize these events as tiny regular dimming up the host stars one-star where tests saw transits is TOI 700 it's a red smaller person about 40% the mass and size of our Sun and generally a large portion of its temperature one lot of travels reported the nearness of a planet close to the star called TOI 700 B another set revealed a second planet named TOI 700 Ca little farther out the deeper shorter transit implies the planet is bigger than the first and the plane of its circle is slightly tipped a final set of indicated showed TOI 700 D orbiting even farther out

Tess observed the system for nearly11 months and saw each planet transit multiple times scientists determined that the inner and outer planets are almost earth size and maybe rocky the middle world is more than twice as large and most likely made of gas all three may be tidally locked rotating just once each orbit so the same side always faces the storm but most importantly TOI 700 Dis within the star's habitable zone scientists wanted independent confirmation of TOI 700 D so they monitored its star with NASA's Spitzer space telescope Spitzer saw a clear transit from the outer planet affair meningitis existence and improving scientist certainty of the planets size toi 700dis one of only a few earth-sized planets found in potentially habitable zones others include discoveries by Kepler and several planets in the Trappist one system because TOI 700 is bright and nearby the planets are good candidates for precise mass measurements by ground-based telescopes future missions may likewise let us know if the universes have atmospheres however scientists need to know what sorts of signs to search for researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center created models of the planet to explore its potential conditions one version is a water a covered world with an atmosphere like early Mars however denser another appears as though a thoroughly dry rendition of the present earth both models have vastly different surface temperatures light going through their environments makes particular signals because different molecules are present by simulating these data now scientists can make predictions for real future observations and narrow the range of TOI700 days possible conditions we still have much to learn about the TOI 700 system but thanks to tests Spitzer and the work of many scientists were beginning to form a picture of its exciting new worlds.

~sciencefreak