Impossible Moons

Why haven't we found dozens of exomoons yet? With planets as small as the Moon having been detected by NASA's Kepler Mission, it's fair to wonder why we only know of a single exomoon candidate to date. Despite the lack of moon detections, there are actually hundreds of known planets that wobble around, a tell-tale sign that a moon could be present. Unfortunately, these wobbles can also be caused by other planets and so in a new research appear Prof Kipping and Alex Teachey have re-visited the theory behind exomoons and come up with a new trick to help us discern between the two - impossible moons.

Presented & Written by Prof David Kipping.

This video is based on research conducted at the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, New York. You can now support our research program directly here

References:

► Kipping, D. & Teachey, A., 2020, "Impossible moons Transit timing effects that cannot be due to an exomoon", MNRAS

► Kipping, D., et al., 2015, "The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK)V. A Survey of 41 Planetary Candidates for Exomoons", ApJ 813, 14

► Kipping, D., et al. 2009, "On the detectability of habitable exomoons with Keplerclass photometry", MNRAS 400, 398

► Kipping, D., 2009a, "Transit timing effects due to an exomoon", MNRAS 392, 181

► Kipping, D., 2009b, "Transit timing effects due to an exomoon II", MNRAS 396, 1797

Video materials & graphics used:

► Exoplanet animation by ESO/L.Calçada/M.Kornmesser

► Exoplanet animation by ESO/P. Delorme/Nick Risinger/R. Saito/VVV Consortium

► Exoplanet animation by ESO/M. Kornmesser

► Perijove by NASA/Seán Doran

► Jupiter zoom out by djxatlanta

► Wanderers short film by Erik Wernquist

► Io animations from BBC2 & the Kurdistan Planetarium

► Enceladus plume by NASA Cassini/JPL

► Dragonfly animation by NASA/JHUAPL

► Europa clipper by NASA/JPL

► Transit animation by NASA Ames/Dana Berry

► Exoplanet animation by Martin Kornmesser/Luis Calçada

► TTVs animation by NASA Ames/Kepler

► Le Verrier cartoon by l'Ecole polytechnique

► Trappist1 animation by ESO/L. Calçada/spaceengine.org

► Field of lights by The Tribune

► K218b animation by ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

► SunEarthMoon animation by phystv

► Supercomputer video from Verge Science/William Poor/Leo Maco

► Kepler Orrey III by NASA/Dan Fabrycky

► Gl581 animation by ESO/L. Calçada

► JWST animation by NASA/Northrop Grumman/Michael McClare

► K1625b animation by NASA/ESA/STScI/L. Hustak

Movies/TV scenes used:

► Avatar (2009)/20th Century Fox

► The Martian (2015)/20th Century Fox

Music used in chronological order:

► "Painted Deserts" by Shimmer, licensed through SoundStripe.com

► Cylinder Five () by Chris Zabriskie (); licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license ()

► "Ticking" by Alternate Endings, licensed through SoundStripe.com

► Music from Neptune Flux, "We Were Never Meant to Live Here" by Chris Zabriskie (); licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license ()

► "Waking Up" by Atlas, licensed through SoundStripe.com

► "Fusion" by Indive, Halo Drive EP, (); licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license ()

And also...

► Columbia University Department of Astronomy

► Cool Worlds Lab website

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THANKS FOR WATCHING!!

#Exomoons #ImpossibleMoons #CoolWorlds