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Article: <[email protected]>
From: [email protected](Nancy )
Subject: Re: UC Newswire story - Velikovsky has merit
Date: 19 Feb 1997 16:42:30 GMT
In article <[email protected]> Ian
Tresman writes:
> Two other curious systems (70 Virginis and HD 114762)
> have large planets that swoop close to their stars and then
> out again, almost like huge comets. ... If this notion
sounds
> vaguely familiar, it should: Immanuel Velikovsky proposed
> that similar events in our own solar system could explain
> certain oddities in the rotations and positions of planets.
> [email protected] (Ian Tresman)
Yes indeed, and not only those two star systems. On our Troubled Times web site I refer to another discovery, reported by CNN in late 1996.
http://www.zetatalk.com/theword/tword26i.htm
..........
A CNN article by Associated Press
dated October 23, 1996.
New rebel planet found outside solar system
It's roller-coaster orbit stuns scientists
A new planet that breaks all the rules about how and where planets form has been identified in orbit of a twin star about 70 light years from Earth in a constellation commonly known as the Northern Cross. The new planet has a roller-coaster like orbit that swoops down close to its central star and then swings far out into frigid fringes, following a strange egg-shaped orbit that is unlike that of any other known planet. "We don't understand how it could have formed in such an orbit," said William D. Cochran, head of University of Texas team that discovered the planet at the same time that a group from San Francisco State found it independently.
The researchers presented papers on the new planet Wednesday at a national meeting of the American Astronomical Society's planetary division. The new planet is the latest in a series of bodies found in orbit of stars outside the solar system and is part of a quickening effort by astronomers to find distant worlds. Cochran said the planet orbits the smaller of twin stars in the constellation Cygnus, a prominent stellar grouping known as the Northern Cross. The planet's star is called 16 Cygni B and the larger companion star is 16 Cygni A. ... Cochran said the stars are so close, that the gravitational tug of Cygni A may have pulled the new planet into its wildly eccentric orbit. ...
During one part of its 804-day-long year, the planet would pass within 67 million miles of its sun. This would be the planet's summer, said Cochran. Then the planet would swing far out, reaching a point 158 million miles from the star. This would be its winter and it would last more than 500 days, the researcher said. Most planets in the solar system have an almost circular orbit, like that of the Earth, and most theories about how planets form are based on them settling into a circular orbit. The eccentric orbit of the new planet adds a new dimension that astronomers will have to consider in theories about planetary formation, Cochran said.