Spotting the first extragalactic planets by microlensing
27 Mar 2018 14:49:35 UTC
Topic 214224
(moderation:
Hallo!
I became aware by reading this.
For full paper see here :
Previously, planets have been detected only in the Milky Way galaxy. Here, we show that quasar
microlensing provides a means to probe extragalactic planets in the lens galaxy, by studying the
microlensing properties of emission close to the event horizon of the supermassive black hole of the
background quasar, using the current generation telescopes. We show that a population of unbound
planets between stars with masses ranging from Moon to Jupiter masses is needed to explain the
frequent Fe Kα-line energy shifts observed in the gravitationally lensed quasar RXJ 1131-1231 at a
lens redshift of z = 0.295 or 3.8 billion light-years away.
Kind regards and happy crunching
Martin