Drought is a way of life on Banaba—a way of life Taboree Biremon knows all too well.
“My wife and I didn't eat. We fed the children,” explained Biremon, describing life during a drought that hit Banaba a few years back. “There was no food. We fed the children first, but we were starving. We laughed a lot to show them that there was no trouble—but there was big trouble.”
Biremon, a resident of Tabwewa Village, has lived through multiple droughts in the 25 years he's spent on Banaba. These droughts happen every three to four years and often last for months on end. During this time, most of the island's vegetation dies out, including the staple food crops of cassava, pumpkin, and papaya.
“My wife and I didn't eat. We fed the children.”Taboree Biremon, who has survived several droughts on Banaba Island
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Banaba has frequent droughts because it is a high island with no natural streams or underground reservoirs of fresh water, according to Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands. Others have noted that strong La Nina years can induce severe droughts and prevent the normal pattern of rainfall.
The consequences are devastating. For families who practice a primarily subsistence-based lifestyle, malnourishment is a regular occurrence. But the resilient islanders have managed to survive by living like their ancestors did for centuries before regular contact with foreign cargo ships.
The Banabans say that the droughts are difficult to survive today, especially after decades of strip mining by the British Phosphate Commission. The mining not only removed most of the island's fertile, phosphate-rich soil, but also destroyed hundreds of the more drought-resistant coconut and pandanus trees, significantly reducing the island's food supply. Replanting on the destroyed land, Banabans say, is nearly impossible.
The mining process also contaminated many of the island's freshwater caves, which the islanders once relied upon for drinking water during extended periods of drought. (You can read more about the mining, and the islanders' displacement, here).
Many of the roughly 200 current residents have been living here since 1979, when the the British Phosphate Commision left the island. And while life today is extremely difficult on Banaba, the residents say they are determined to survive in order to protect their ancestral homeland from further mining.
“If we ever saw a coconut floating in the ocean, we had to swim for it…just to get it for food for our children.”Taboree Biremon
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“It was a drought when I came over to Banaba in ‘91, and it lasted for about two years. There was no cassava and no fruit. We ate just fish and octopus. We boiled the papaya tree because inside there was water,” Biremon said.
“If we ever saw a coconut floating in the ocean, we had to swim for it—even though we had no energy—just to get it for food for our children,” Biremon continued. “But my feeling was that if my ancestors did this, and survived here, I could do it—that is what helped me survive.”
Adding to the already difficult situation is a lack of reliable communication, which often prevents emergency provisions of rice, flour, and medical supplies from reaching the island in times of need. Only one nurse works seven days a week in the island's medical clinic, and boats to and from the island are infrequent and unpredictable—they usually come only once every few months.
So during droughts, families eat fish almost exclusively, for every meal, every day, for months on end. Some eat the eyes of the fish for water and nutrients. And even though the village is starving, they must gather enough energy to go out and fish every day.
Otimeaua Rabawa, another resident of Tabwewa Village, described a typical diet during the most recent drought.
“We had no food, just fish. We had boiled fish, grilled fish, and raw fish. We had fish to replace our ‘rice' and our ‘fruit.'”
Still, the Banabans are proud to live on their ancestral homeland. Hard work, a sense of humor, and honor and respect for their ancestors get families through, they say.
“I will die on Banaba,” Rabawa said. “I am proud to be living here on Banaba because I'm living like a real Banaban, like our ancestors.”
Janice Cantieri is a journalist and researcher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who has been documenting the stories of displacement and adaptation between the Pacific Island nations of Kiribati and Fiji. She has followed the stories of the Banaban Islanders, residents of a phosphate island in Kiribati, who were displaced to Rabi Island in Fiji by the British Phosphate Commission in 1945 and have been separated from their ancestral homeland for the past seventy years. She has also chronicled the stories of i-Kiribati on the Tarawa Atoll, who are currently facing the possibility of migration and displacement to Fiji and elsewhere in the Pacific as the sea level continues to rise and inundate the low-lying islands, which are only 2-3 meters above sea level. Using a combination of written stories, images, and video, her posts have told the stories of the Kiribati people, their culture and heritage, while also documenting the adaptations, challenges, and innovations they have developed in response.
Gaming is generally a solitary activity, and interactions with other players tend to take place through the online world. So how can a virtual game be transformed to a real-life stage show, intended for a mass audience?
Set design and architectural practice Stufish is used to creating stage shows, such as for tours by Madonna, Queen and Lady Gaga, and the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
But the consultancy's latest venture has been quite different they were tasked with transforming cult Japanese fantasy video game Dragon Quest into a narrative-driven spectacle, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Nintendo-owned game. The show is currently touring theatres across Japan and will see up to 400,000 visitors in total.
While gamers are able to influence consequences within a game, watching a large-scale theatre show, pop concert or musical is generally a spectator-sport, where audience members peer into a box rather than interact with the characters.
Stufish, however, has tried its best to make Dragon Quest Live Spectacular a participatory show. Audience members are able to influence on-stage action through individual wristbands which enable them to vote for plot twists and character actions and weapon choices in advance.
The set itself also incorporates dramatic use of projections, screens and 3D mapping, plus multiple stages scattered around the audience space, which aim to involve the audience “in the magical world of the video game”, says Stufish chief executive officer Ray Winkler.
The graphics and the costumes had to also be true to the computer game, says Winkler. “When you're in a 360° arena environment, there's so much visual smog,” he says. “Things like trussing, and cables from the rigging can obscure what's happening in the show, and it's obvious you're in the real world we tried to recreate the landscape you see when playing the game on a laptop, in the digital world.”
To do this, Stufish created moving, island stages across the entire arena floor space, including where the audience were seated, which allowed on-stage characters to walk through the crowd.
This included eight satellite stages, two larger stages at either end of the arena, and a large performance stage at the centre which acted as the focal point for the performance and the action.
Having so many stages made the show difficult to direct, says Winkler. “When at the theatre, you generally look at one stage and the story unravels in front of you. Here, there was never one single vantage point with which to tell the story from.”
But the island stages were important to fully immerse the audience. The Stufish designers first thought of the formation when moving sugar sachets and milk pots around over breakfast, says Winkler. “We never veered away from that,” he says. “That formulated our first sketches, which went on to be the set.”
The use of arial bridges and stages allowed for movement, and helped to reinforce the 360° performance space. “It was an ever-changing landscape,” says Winkler.
Projections coupled with clever use of materials such as gauze curtains and lighting also helped to create a more pixelated, digital look to the characters on-stage. The consultancy created a “conceptual bridge” out of two layers of projections, forming a corridor in the middle.
Performers were then harnessed and flown through this corridor of light, which created the illusion that they were digitally rendered and part of a projection seen on a hanging see-through curtain. Coupling these special effects with dramatic, bold costuming and graphic images, helped to immerse the audience within the imagined world, says Winkler.
“There was a lot of emotion in the audience,” says Winkler. “Because of the environment, there was extreme audience participation to the point where people were crying and screaming. Of course, these are people who are heavily involved in the fantasy gaming genre anyway.”
While the show is certainly aimed at superfans, creating a large-scale spectacle creates a sense of commercialism and perhaps wider accessibility to an otherwise niche hobby but to truly understand the narrative, and not just appreciate the special effects, it definitely helps to have played the game.
“The show is very cacophonous,” says Winkler. “Everyone responds to the spectacle but to understand what it's about, you have to be in the know with Dragon Quest.”
But how do you create a narrative for an open-ended game, the fate of which is ultimately decided by its players? Live show director Kahori Kanaya worked closely with stage writer and the game's creator Yuji Horii to create a “fixed narrative trajectory”, says Winkler, which “stayed true to the characters” in the game.
“There were quests, battles, low moments and high moments just like there is the game,” he says. “The characters had the same superpowers and faced the same villains that they do in the game too. It's about bringing something alive in 3D, which already exists well in 2D.”
Designing for the stage means that a player's individual preferences are removed but in its place, the use of ariel techniques, projections and lighting tricks helps to maintain that feeling of a virtual world, even when sat surrounded by other members of an audience. Ultimately though, for this to work, the audience themselves have to be invested in the first place.
“If someone comes to a show like this, they're suspending disbelief,” says Winkler. “They believe that what they see in front of them is the Dragon's Quest. There's a lot of good will in there none of what we propose would actually work without that.”
Dragon Quest Live Spectacular premiered at Tokyo's Saitama Super Arena in July, and is currently touring across Japan until the end of August.
The post Dragon Quest Live Spectacular: turning a Nintendo game into a live stage show appeared first on Design Week.
Edinburgh steps back in time to prehistoric Scotland, Guantánamo shapes interior design, and Rem Koolhaas gets profiled by his son all in your weekly art dispatch
Fire! Fire!
An epochal event that marks the birth of modern Britain as Christopher Wren rebuilt the capital in its wake is explored in this family-friendly survey of the Great Fire of London. Find out how the Monument to the fire's outbreak doubles up as a telescope, among other gems in the ashes of history.
• Museum of London, London, until April 2017.
The Barbican will showcase the work of designers including Lindsey Lang in its new shop, set to open in autumn.
The new 330m2 retail space will include areas dedicated to collections covering homeware, stationery, clothing and jewellery, and a changing pop-up space devoted to showcasing emerging talent.
Lang and the likes of Kate Farley and Alfred & Wilde have been commissioned to interpret elements of the architecture and interior design of the Barbican's buildings in their designs.
The Barbican says: “The result is a collection of impeccably designed objects that subtly convey the gravitas of the building.”
Lang has created a series of geometric homeware, inspired by the Brutalist architecture of the Barbican's residential estate the Lauderdale Tower, focusing in particular on its textured, concrete walls.
Alfred & Wilde's Elements collection spans textiles, prints and homeware, and uses simple graphic illustrations and motifs to depict the modernist architecture of the Barbican Centre. The design studio has also collaborated with jeweller Wolf & Moon on a jewellery collection.
Illustrators Daniel Clarke and Kate Farley have created homeware and stationery ranges which also use graphics to interpret the architectural forms of the Barbican estate, while illustrator James Brown has created prints which visualises the language of music.
Charlotte Trounce has created a colourful kids' collection of stationery and games which incorporates characters and illustrations seen around the Barbican building, while photographer Anton Rodriguez and design writer Katie Treggiden have produced a book exploring the work of Barbican residents and the history of the site.
The new Barbican shop has been designed by architectural practice Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), which has worked with the organisation on various projects over the last 15 years.
AHMM director Peter Morris says that the main aim of the shop was “flexibility and neutrality”, as it includes modular units which can be moved as the Barbican Centre's programme changes.
“In the context of the arts centre, [we wanted] to think of this more as a museum or gallery than a shop,” he says.
All the items will be available to buy at the new shop or via the Barbican's online shop from October, and range from £4 £55.
The new Barbican shop will open in October. At the time of publishing, The Barbican could not reveal an exact date.
All photos © Oliver Douglas, styled by Anna Sheridan.
The post The Barbican's new shop will showcase designer collections appeared first on Design Week.
There's more information on genetic mutations and in the scientific literature than cancer doctors can process easily. Smart, fast computers might be able to help.
Hyde Park Picture House wins £2.4m grant while William Morris's country home in Oxfordshire is one of 11 other recipients
A tiny cinema that opened in Leeds within months of the outbreak of the first world war, now believed to be the only one in the world still lit by gas, has won a £2.4m heritage lottery grant to restore historic features and open up its archives.
The Hyde Park Picture House is among a dozen sites receiving major grants, including William Morris's beautiful Oxfordshire country home, Kelmscott Manor, where the flowers and wildlife inspired many of his designs.
Continue reading...Fast-food chain Subway revealed a rebrand this week, which sees a simpler, non-italicised logotype.
The brand is following the trend of flat, minimal rebrands, better suited to digital applications.
The border has also been removed from the typeface, and the colour palette reduced to only yellow and green, with a more orange-toned yellow shade and a lighter green used. The brand has retained its well-known arrows attached to the “S” and the “Y”.
Alongside the refreshed typeface is a new icon, which is an “S” comprised of the brand's green and yellow arrows.
Subway is rolling out the new design globally in early 2017, and will not reveal the designers behind the project until then but has said that the project was led by the company's in-house creative team alongside “a variety of design partners”.
Fake replicas of much-loved design classics will now be banned, under a change to copyright law that started rolling out this month.
This will affect copycats of designers including Charles and Ray Eames, Arne Jacobsen, Marcel Breuer and Phillipe Starck.
The change to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 means that revolutionary designs will now be protected for 70 years after a designer dies, rather than 25.
To benefit from this law change, designs need to qualify as “works of artistic craftsmanship”, a term coined by the Intellectual Property Office to determine whether something can be classed as “work of art” or not.
In case your work doesn't qualify as artistic or crafty enough, designers should still register their designs to protect their work, explains Dids Macdonald, founder at organisation Anti-Copying in Design (ACID).
You can read more about the copyright law change here.
London's Victoria and Albert Museum announced this week that it will be completely overhauling its main shop.
Studio Friend and Company has been appointed to complete the £1 million project, as part of the V&A's development programme FuturePlan.
Friend and Company is being paid £96,250 for the work and won the pitch out of six competing consultancies. The studio will be looking to create a retail space that works “in close dialogue with the galleries, exhibitions and events surrounding it”, according to the museum.
The opening date has yet to be announced.
Studio Bompas & Parr is known for its wacky, theatrical installations, from alcohol vapour bars to food museums. Next month's project is an interpretation of children's author Roald Dahl's book The Twits, a magical and terrifying theatrical dining experience.
This week, we spoke to the set designer Sam Wyer about translating the book to experiential theatre, and how he hopes to engross his audience.
Dinner at the Twits runs at The Vaults in London Waterloo, from 4 September 30 October.
To read our full interview, head here.
Product design consultancy Frog has launched two new MRI scanner systems this week, which look to make scanning easier for babies and other scans less claustrophobic.
The WristView system is a hand and wrist MRI scanner, which allows only the arm to be encased rather than the whole body, providing a “non-claustrophobic” alternative to conventional scanners, says Frog.
The Embrace Neonatal System is a newborn baby scanner, which can prep and scan in under an hour, and is designed to be used within neonatal hospitals so that babies can be cared for throughout the scan.
Frog has worked with life-science company Aspect Imaging on the two new innovations. The consultancy has not yet confirmed when the products will be going to market.
The post 5 important things that happened in design this week appeared first on Design Week.
Childline has worked with Amaze on a range of digital products, which can offer children and young people tailored services including therapeutic tools and different ways of communicating with counselors.
The children's charity, which specialises in 24-hour confidential counseling, is celebrating its 30th year this year.
On the new site the needs of children aged 9-19 are catered for in different ways so that they can find the right kind of help they need.
Childline has 750,000 registered users and more than half of those currently contact the organisation via its website.
Amaze and its content partner Episerver won a tender for the project and first realised that the 1500 volunteer counsellors needed a simpler interface to navigate.
A new backend system was also developed, which Amaze says will help with security and guaranteeing the anonymity of service users.
Amaze chief executive officer Natalie Gross says that the service will “safeguard users” and provide them with “essential therapeutic support.”
Children accessing the service will now be able to use self-help and peer-to-peer features as well as counsellor-led therapies across different devices.
New custom built tools include chat features for single or multiple users, ways to indicate and express emotions, as well as other therapeutic tools such as the Drawing Tool, which encourages users to express their feelings visually, rather than through words.
“The new website will provide a forum for children to talk together, access articles, use therapy tools or talk to a volunteer counsellor in a safe haven, where anonymity and security is of absolute importance,” says Gross.
The post Childline website redesigned to offer therapy tools and counselling appeared first on Design Week.
Globe-trotting documentary by Rem Koolhaas's son Tomas finds the film-maker racing to keep up with his 71-year-old father and struggling to achieve objectivity
One minute Rem Koolhaas is striding across sand dunes in Qatar, the next he's contemplating cows in a field in the Netherlands. In between, he's surveying the horizon of Beijing from a rooftop helipad, wandering the frozen streets of New York and escaping mobs of fans in Venice, before jumping in the sea to catch a moment of blissful solitude. “In a very compressed period, I am typically confronted with a literally unbelievable multitude of different contexts,” says the Dutch architect, as the camera follows him in quick succession from car to plane to boat.
You can say that again. As this new hour-long documentary jumps between the numerous locations where this globe-trotting 71-year-old is busy conjuring buildings from the ground, it sometimes feels like a feature-length commercial for a frequent flyer club.
Related: Rem Koolhaas's G-Star Raw HQ is like 'two brands having unprotected sex'
Koolhaas sounds less the radical provocateur and more like architecture's Amélie
Related: Tomes, sweet tomes: how Rem Koolhaas re-engineered the architecture book
Continue reading...Music has rebranded five-a-side football brand Powerleague, which is repositioning around improved customer experience and digital services as well as the creation of “football destinations”.
Powerleague has football pitches and facilities across the UK and Europe where organised amateur football leagues and tournaments take place.
In 2015 Music was brought in to bring the brand in line with the repositioned business and improve the way customers engage with the brand's digital services.
A research phase identified core principles including the spirit of learning to play, local allegiance and pride, the growth of women's football and uniting people through “a sense of shared passion and community”.
Customer insight data revealed that 90% of players live within ten miles of the area they play in. In response to this Music looked to reinforce the idea of connection and local pride by designing a crest for each Powerleague club imbued with a sense of place.
There have been 50 Powerleague crests created, each designed so that it avoids colours or symbolism associated with known teams.
Powerleague “Clubhouses” will be redesigned to reflect the new branding the first being Barnet before a further roll out takes place.
Music creative director David Simpson says: “This is what football is really about getting people together, creating a tribe and instilling local pride.
“Wherever you live and whoever you follow, the passion and energy behind football can be distilled into a powerful icon the club crest. It gives belonging and meaning. We look forward to seeing the adoption of the crests on kits throughout the UK and we can't wait to see the interior designs in place.”
A new site designed by Music with its digital partner Anything, will enable customers to access more services and localise their membership.
The post Music helps Powerleague create series of “football destinations” appeared first on Design Week.
Edinburgh steps back in time to prehistoric Scotland, Guantánamo shapes interior design, and Rem Koolhaas gets profiled by his son all in your weekly art dispatch
Fire! Fire!
An epochal event that marks the birth of modern Britain as Christopher Wren rebuilt the capital in its wake is explored in this family-friendly survey of the Great Fire of London. Find out how the Monument to the fire's outbreak doubles up as a telescope, among other gems in the ashes of history.
• Museum of London, London, until April 2017.
Edinburgh steps back in time to prehistoric Scotland, Guantánamo shapes interior design, and Rem Koolhaas gets profiled by his son all in your weekly art dispatch
Fire! Fire!
An epochal event that marks the birth of modern Britain as Christopher Wren rebuilt the capital in its wake is explored in this family-friendly survey of the Great Fire of London. Find out how the Monument to the fire's outbreak doubles up as a telescope, among other gems in the ashes of history.
• Museum of London, London, until April 2017.
the piece depicts a reclined man lying on the side of a huge hill, his arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed as the sun hits his face, and a pipe casually resting in his mouth.
The post saype draws 10,000 square meter man in the mountains of leysin, switzerland appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
Camille Henrot.
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portraits of competitors adorn the roof gardens of the seven-storey, marble-clad school building on ipanema beach.
The post charis tsevis tiles mosaic murals at the rio olympics USA house appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
placed on architectural beams, staircases, and window frames, a stacked sequence of white cubes grows out from the lillebælt academy building.
The post BORGMAN | LENK adds architectural pixelation to a school campus in denmark appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
Latourette Park, Staten Island
NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:
This galaxy, known as NGC 2337, resides 25 million light-years away in the constellation of Lynx. NGC 2337 is an irregular galaxy, meaning that it — along with a quarter of all galaxies in the Universe — lacks a distinct, regular appearance. The galaxy was discovered in 1877 by the French astronomer Édouard Stephan who, in the same year, discovered the galactic group Stephan's Quintet (heic0910i).
Although irregular galaxies may never win a beauty prize when competing with their more symmetrical spiral and elliptical peers, astronomers consider them to be very important. Some irregular galaxies may have once fallen into one of the regular classes of the Hubble sequence, but were warped and deformed by a passing cosmic companion. As such, irregular galaxies provide astronomers with a valuable opportunity to learn more about galactic evolution and interaction.
Despite the disruption, gravitational interactions between galaxies can kickstart star formation activity within the affected galaxies, which may explain the pockets of blue light scattered throughout NGC 2337. These patches and knots of blue signal the presence of young, newly formed, hot stars.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Text credit: European Space Agency
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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA's mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA's accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency's mission.
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“We have no idea why our solar system doesn't look like these others, and we would love an answer,” said planetary scientist Kevin Walsh, of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. Since the time of Copernicus, scientists have slowly moved Earth out of its originally-conceived setting as the center of the Universe. Today, scientists recognize that the Sun is an average star—not too hot, not too cold, not too bright, not too dim—situated at a random spot in a typical spiral galaxy. So, when Kepler began its planet-hunting mission in 2009, scientists anticipated finding planetary systems that resembled our solar system.
Instead, Kepler mostly discovered planet types that our solar system lacks. With bodies like “hot Jupiters” (Jupiter-sized planets that orbit their star in only a few days) to “super-Earths” (massive rocky planets far larger than our own), exoplanet systems have a knack for surprising observers. Of the 1,019 confirmed planets and 4,178 planetary candidates identified to date, only one system resembles our own with terrestrial planets near the star and giant planets set at a distance.
In an effort to establish how the Sun and its planets compare to the newfound systems identified by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, a pair of astronomers suggest that our early solar system may have contained as many as four planets orbiting closer to the Sun than Venus, and that a series of cataclysmic collisions left Mercury as the last one standing.
“One of the problems in our Solar System is that, by Kepler standards, Mercury is very far from the Sun,” planetary scientist Kathryn Volk, of the University of British Columbia, told Astrobiology.
Volk and her colleague Brett Gladman, also of the University of British Columbia, propose that Systems of Tightly-packed Inner Planets (STIPs) surrounded most stars at the beginning of their lifetimes. Over time, collisions destroyed many of these planets, leaving them around only about 5 to 10 percent of the stars observed today.
But although only a handful of observed systems contain STIPS, Volk thinks that they may have once dominated — and that the Sun could have been one of the STIP systems whose original inner planets were destroyed.
“If STIPs readily formed, maybe they're found around all stars, and destroyed around 90 percent of them,” Volk said.
Kevin Walsh, quoted at the top of the post was not involved in the research, but applauds Volk's work in matching the Solar System up to other planetary systems by using models to search for unseen planets it may have held in the past.
“Partly, we have never thought about it before. We always tried to match the planets that we saw, and not some other systems of unseen planets. Now we see them around other stars, so it's a great question to ask.”
Volk and Gladman realized that the small number of STIPs could provide a clue as to why our solar system seems so different. The two took 13 observed Kepler systems that contain more than four close inner planets and ran them through simulations over a 10-million-year timescale. In 10 of the targets, the small planets suffered violent collisions that changed the structure of the planetary system. According to the scientists, the remainder were likely stable for more than 10 million years.
The team then ran another set of simulations over a longer period of time to explore how systems evolve as they become more unstable, and to determine how the collisions are distributed over time. They found that half the systems resulted in a second collision, but showed no sign of impending disaster beforehand. Systems with collisions remained stable for almost their entire lifetime before planets began crashing into one another.
Based on their simulations, after 5 million years, approximately 5 to 10 percent of the STIPs sample would not yet have reached instability. Because STIPs are only seen around approximately 5 to 10 percent of the planetary systems observed by Kepler, this means that all could have been born with STIPs, but 90 percent of the STIP systems were destroyed by the time Kepler observed them.
“If every star once had a system of STIPs, then it would mean that the modelers have been missing the boat on planetary formation for a long time,” Walsh said. “We have always been trying to build models just to get our four rocky planets, whereas if this idea is right, then we have long ignored the possibility of also forming three to five planets as big as or even much bigger than Earth inside the orbit of Mercury. This would be extremely cool!”
If this was the case, it would mean that Earth wasn't a random outlier in the systems of planets, as it appear to be from casual observations. Instead, it would fit in and not require a special explanation as to its existence. If the Solar System—and by extrapolation Earth—is rare, it could have implications for the abundance of life in the Universe, but if it follows the same formation processes as other planetary systems, then it is no longer an quite as unusual.
Mercury has long been a problem for planetary scientists. In addition to being farther from the Sun than most of the planets observed by Kepler, Mercury is dense in heavier elements and short on lighter ones. One hypothesis regarding its strange composition involves a collision that stripped the planet of its lighter crust, leaving behind a dense, iron-heavy outer layer.
At the same time, Solar System models have turned up too much material to account for a single Mercury. In order to form a single planet in Mercury's orbit, simulations require an unlikely gap—an artificial edge—in the dust surrounding the young Sun that stretches nearly halfway to Earth's current orbit. If the gap stretched all the way to the star, as most scientists assume, the disk would contain far too much material.
If most planetary systems contained STIPS when they formed, that would mean the early Solar System could have once hosted them, as well. According to Volk, this would eliminate the artificial edge to the inner disk and explain the iron-dominated planet. Collisions would also account for Mercury's dense composition.
To verify this possibility, Volk and Gladman ran simulations that added four planets the mass of the Moon and with orbits of less than half the Earth-Sun distance. These planets did not affect the formation of Venus, Earth and Mars on 500 million-year timescales, despite the collisions undergone by their rocky neighbors, a story that matches the Kepler simulations they first ran.
“It is not rare to have a pair of planets go unstable and others not feel anything,” Volk said.
As the small inner planets collided with one another, they suffered one of two fates. In some cases, the mass of the crashing planets may have blown off, but then consolidated into a smaller number of bodies. In the other, more destructive scenario, less than 10 percent of the initial mass survives, with the rest of it blown into small pieces that spiral into the star or into other planets. The difference often depends on how fast the planets are moving when they crash into one another; like a car wreck, faster speeds tend to result in greater devastation.
While other observed Kepler STIP systems appear to have consolidated three or more larger bodies into one or two short-period planets observed today, our solar system seems to have reached the destructive end state.
“In a highly destructive regime, we're left with one survivor,” Volk said
NASA's Kepler mission scientists discovered a planetary system shown at the top of the page that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. It is smaller than Mercury, which made its detection a challenge.
The moon-size planet and its two companion planets were found by scientists with NASA's Kepler mission to find Earth-sized planets in or near the "habitable zone." However, while the star in Kepler-37 may be similar to our sun, the system appears quite unlike the solar system in which we live.
Astronomers think Kepler-37b does not have an atmosphere and cannot support life as we know it. The tiny planet almost certainly is rocky in composition. Kepler-37c, the closer neighboring planet, is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring almost three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d, the farther planet, is twice the size of Earth.
The first exoplanets found to orbit a normal star were giants. As technologies have advanced, smaller and smaller planets have been found, and Kepler has shown even Earth-size exoplanets are common.
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