THE TRUE REASON WHY WASP-107b NEWLY DISCOVERED EXOPLANET IS SO FLUFFY

A bunch of astronomers, after a four years long survey, found an exoplanet, orbiting very close to its star, that has an "extraordinarily low density" (P). It has, indeed, a mass 1.8 times that of Neptune, but a Jupiter like radius (and Jupiter radius is almost 6 times bigger than Neptune's one). 

The fluffy planet, which discovery is described in a paper (P) published on The Astronomical Journal, is in the WASP-107 system, and it's called WASP-107b.

WASP-107b's super low density puzzles the astro-brains, 'cause the planet has a core mass smaller than 4.6 times the mass of Earth, that is "significantly lower than what is traditionally assumed to be necessary to trigger massive gas envelope accretion" (P) - meaning WASP-107b shouldn't exist, 'cause its small "seed" shouldn't have been able to attract enough gas and dust to eventually form, well, WASP-107b -.

The researchers have one possible explanation: the planet formed far from its star, in a region of space where the gas is cold enough so that the small core mass could attract it and grow a planet around itself very fast. Then, the fully formed WASP-107b migrated toward the inner part of the system, possibly influenced by the second more massive planet, with "a wide eccentric orbit" (P), detected by the astronomers in the same system.

But this dumb blog, pals, has a different idea on the reason why the fluffy planet is up there. Check out the following cartoon, and you'll find out what it is.

"Space candy cotton"-WASP-107b exoplanet (by @sciencemug)

[Exoplanet pic, by NASA, ESA, and L. Hustak and J. Olmsted (STScI), is a Pubilc Domain pic (source: Wikimedia Commons); the alien's hand pic, is a Pubilc Domain pic (source: pixy.org); all images are adapted by @sciencemug]

Bibliography (P)

P - Piaulet, C., Benneke, B., Rubenzahl, R.A., Howard, A.W., Lee, E.J., Thorngren, D., Angus, R., Peterson, M., Schlieder, J.E., Werner, M., et al. (2021). WASP-107b’s Density Is Even Lower: A Case Study for the Physics of Planetary Gas Envelope Accretion and Orbital Migration. AJ 161, 70.

THE TRUE REASON WHY PLANETS FORM AROUND BLACK HOLES!

Hello dear reader, three Japanese astronomers/astrophysicists just discovered that as "a natural consequence of the elementary processes of dust growth, [...] a new class of planets can be formed around supermassive black holes" (P). 

Basically science just stated that planets, and therefore planetary systems, in theory can naturally form around black holes. 

But this dumb blog has a different story to tell 'bout this...

That's how a planetary system really comes to exist around a black hole according to @sciencemug

[The black hole pic by Event Horizon Telescope is under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (source: Wikimedia Commons); planets pics are Public Domain images (source: NASA via Picryl); golf flag pic is under Creative Commons Zero - CC0/Public Domain License (source: Peakpx); golf club pic is under Creative Commons 4.0 BY-NC License (source: Pngimg). All images adapted by @sciencemug]

NOTE

A "Type III Civilization" is the most advanced type of civilization according to the I to III Kardashev scale.

Nikolai Kardashev was a Russian astrophysicist (1932-2019) author of the paper "Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations" (1) published on Soviet Astronomy AJ in 1964. In the paper Mr. K writes about the "distinguishing properties of artificial sources of cosmic radio-frequency emission" (1): basically the guy describes what are the characteristics needed, in terms of energy availability and type of transmissions, for successful communications to happen between galaxies (and their civilizations).

In his paper Mr. K comes up with a classification of civilizations that goes like this:

- Type I civilization has "a technological level close to the level presently attained on the Earth" (1).

- Type II civilization is "capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star (for example, the stage of successful construction of a "Dyson sphere" * (2)) (1).

- Type III civilization is "in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy" (1) (but apparently it's not in possession of a decent swing, hence, it sucks at cosmic golf...).

* Dude, if you don't know what a Dyson sphere be, well, you definitely don't like Star Trek or sci-fi in general... Anyway, Freeman J Dyson (born in 1923) is a British-American physicist who, in a paper published in 1960 on Science, writes that if "extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist and have reached a high level of technical development, one by-product of their energy metabolism is likely to be the large-scale conversion of starlight into far-infrared radiation" (2) and that it is reasonable to suppose that "within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star" (2). Finally dude Dyson concludes that the "most likely habitat for such beings would be a dark object, having a size comparable with the Earth's orbit, and a surface temperature of 200 deg. to 300 deg. Kelvin [(T-Kelvin=T-Celsius + 273.15... Oooh for The Mighty SI System Sake! Ok, ok, T-Kelvin=(T-Fahrenheit + 459,67) / 1,8 )]. Such a dark object would be radiating as copiously as the star which is hidden inside it, but the radiation would be in the far infrared, around 10 microns wavelength."(2).

There you go pal, that's the Dyson sphere.

Bibliography

P- Wada, K., Tsukamoto, Y., and Kokubo, E. (2019). Planet Formation around Supermassive Black Holes in the Active Galactic Nuclei. ApJ 886, 107.

1- Kardashev, N.S. (1964). Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations. SvA 8, 217.

2- Dyson, F.J. (1960). Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation. Science 131, 1667–1668.

KEPLER, SANTA BERNARD AND THE XMAS TALE (PT2/2)

KEPLER, SANTA BERNARD AND THE XMAS TALE
-A COSMIC XMAS TALE-

(Part2/2)

(Part 1/2 is here)

(The Podcast)

in Eng?ish

"There's a storm, in a bottle of light. The light shouts something that nobody can hear, and cries, for a reason nobody can understand. And its cry becomes a wind, of sparkles. That nobody can feel. The sparkles devour their gods, and build up a fight, made of shivers, and of a river of foam. Then comes the waterfall's laugh, that cracks the bottle. And the storm breathes [by @p300p1]" and the alien-'he/she/it' whose name is Santa Bernard snorts wondering why a recipe for the space-eggnog had to be so damn cryptic before realizing that

 

Santa Bernard vs the eggnog (by sciencemug)

that was not a recipe for the space-eggnog [indeed it was the one for Gramash, a sort of... Oh forget it, it's too odd&alien to even try to render it into human terms. But it's tasty!] and that he/she/it needed to buy a new pair of lenses and/or to drastically reduce the amount of space-eggnog knocked back per time unit. And while Santa B ponders about all these things, here it comes the first kinda chirp [kinda] from the dozen little creatures, the 'jellies', which are waking up from their little starry nap.
Santa Bernard- Well, well, well, look who's back...
The jellies kinda yawn and stretch [kinda]
SB- So, my chubby little pumpkins of cosmology, are you ready to hear the rest of the story?
js- Uh uh.
SB- Good. Where were we at? Ah yes, yes! Spacecraft-Kepler was checking 100,000 stars to find the perfect Xmas planet ball to put on the Cosmic Xmas Tree as its ultimate and most precious decoration. Right?
Jellies now are almost completely awake and one of them, Penelope, says- Yes Santa Bernard, and Kepler was using the winking/“transit method” to find the planets and it was living around its grandpa-Mr. Sol-The Sun, and away form its grandma-Earth and its mama-NASA and it had plenty of siblings and cousins that had already put a looot of Xmas planet balls and galactic lights and stuff on the Xmas Tree of the universe...
SB- Exactly right Penelope, very well!
-Thank you- kinda giggled Penelope [kinda]
SB- So Kepler grew older checking the sky, and it worked very hard on its quest. During the first five years of its life Kepler found hundreds of extra-grandpa-Sol planets and spotted thousands of possible ones [974 confirmed exoplanets and 4175 candidates] and it proudly called them the "Kepler Object of Interests (KOIs)". But Kepler felt that none of the KOIs was the one. None of them, in spite of their beauty and uniqueness, was special enough to be the ultimate decoration for the Cosmic Xmas Tree.
js- So what Kepler did, Santa B?
SB- Oh, it simply kept peeping, jellies. It kept peeping with its photometer till one star caught its attention. It was a very old star, about ten billion years [11+/-2] of nuclear reactions that old star had seen and done. Its name was KOI-183, and it was more or less 2300 light years away from Kepler's grandma-Earth. Kepler liked KOI-183, 'cause it looked alot like grandpa-Sol. KOI-183 was indeed a G4 dwarf with an effective temperature, Te(eff), of about 5300 °C (the Sun's one was of about 5500 °C) and a mass about 0.85 times and a radius about 0.94 times the ones of Mr. grandpa-Sol.
So Kepler kept an eye on KOI-183 constantly, for four long years [13 May 2009 to 11 May 2013]
js- Oooooohhh!
SB- Yes my space-time monkeys, and it saw KOI-183's winking!
js- Yeeeeeahh...

by sciencemug

[Kepler spacecraft's image is adapted from a Public Domain image by sciencemug (source: wikia.com)] 

SB- And by that winking Kepler learnt that KOI-183 had a candidate planet in orbit around it, the KOI-183b (aka KOI-183.01) wannabe planet.
But Kepler needed to be super sure about this one, because what it got on this candidate planet seemed to be really mesmerizing. So Kepler called for help.
-Who, Santa B, who did Kepler call?- the jellies yell all at once
SB- Well jellies, Kepler asked a favour to the "Nordic Optical
Telescope (NOT) of Roque de los Muchachos Observatory", one of the many eyes human beings had built for the otherwise blind grandmother-Earth.
js- Nor... Nordi...
SB- Let's call it MuchO-eye, ok?
Ooooook!- the jellies say in choir, but Penelope, who's still doubtful, asks- Santa Bernard, what did grandma-Earth's MuchO-eye do for Kepler?
SB- It used one of its parts, the FIbre-fed ´Echelle Spectrograph (FIES) to watch KOI-183.
Pe- Spectralgraph?
SB- Spectrograph, Penelope. It's a tool, a tool which analyzes the light coming from an object by separating it into its component frequencies.
So, thanks to its FIES-spectrograph, MuchO-eye could study for months [June-September 2013] the winking light coming from KOI-183. And you know what?
js- Whaaaaaat?

SB- MuchO confirmed that KOI-183b was indeed a real planet.
js- Yipppeeeeeeee!
SB- And when Kepler and MuchO-eye put together what they learnt about KOI-183b, well, they confirmed the scope of its marvel. KOI-183b was a coreless planet, like one of the gas giants, Jupiter, existing in grandpa-Mr. Sol's garden, the Solar System. KOI-183b had a mass of about 0.6 times that of Jupiter, a radious slightly bigger (about 1.2 times the one of Jupiter) and its density was about a half of Jupiter's.
But do you want to know what really was the astonishing, breathtaking issue about KOI-183b, the characteristic that made it so so precious to Kepler's eyes and made it the chosen one to be the ultimate Xmas planet ball for the CXT?
js- Yeeeeeeeees!
SB- Well, KOI-183b had an albedo of 0.035 [+/- 0.014] a ridiculously low albedo, an albedo that was one of the lowest ever found for a gas giant!

js- Hurraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! 
SB- And this, my dear fluffy theories of mbranes and strings, it's the story of how spacecraft Kepler found KOI-183b, the 'Ridiculously Low Albedo Ball', the most sacred, precious, the ultimate decoration-planet for our Cosmic Xmas Tree! 

KOI-183b snapshot (by sciencemug)

The jellies start kinda jumping [kinda] around all excited and joyful clapping their kinda hands [kinda], all of them but one, Solomon, who looks terribly sad instead.
SB- What is it Solomon, why are you so upset?
So- Because Kepler is still out there in the space, alone, and now that it has found what it was looking for it will feel purposeless [yep, space alien kids know words, big ones, ones that Earth-bound smartphoned kids can barely google for] and lonely and lost...
SB- Oh no no, Solomon, no. It's true that Kepler faced harsh times after the events I told you*, in fact it broke one of its most important pieces and therefore couldn't stare at its beloved Cygnus-Lyra piece of sky anymore...
-See, I was right, it is in pain!- Solomon stammers with its eye full of tears [yeah, tears are something humans and aliens, and blogs too, have in common. Those and armits (and therefore the need for effective deodorants).]
SB- It has been, yes Solomon, for a while. But now it's fine, I promise you.
Solomon kinda sniffs [kinda] and stops crying while the other jellies stop jumping and dancing to listen too
SB- Mom-NASA fixed it, and now Kepler is very happy, on its brand new mission, K2, looking for wonders and- Santa Bernard ends in a whisper looking the jellies with their little pretty serene kinda snouts [kinda] attentively pointed toward him/her/it- as mama-NASA diary says- "enabling observations of scientifically important objects across a wide range of galactic latitudes in both the northern and southern skies [of grandma Earth]..."

THE END & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

*"The Ridiculously Low Albedo Ball Cosmic Xmas Tree Story" told by Santa Bernard is inspired by the "KOI-183b: a half-Jupiter mass planet transiting a very old solar-like star" account of adventure written by nineteen human beings (the first of whom was called Davide Gandolfini) in a book of tales of human epic entitled "arXiv.org"

 

 

2021 update: wanna see cool exoplantes. Click here?

KEPLER, SANTA BERNARD AND THE XMAS TALE (PT1/2)

KEPLER, SANTA BERNARD AND THE XMAS TALE
-A COSMIC XMAS TALE-

(Part1/2)

(Part 2/2 is here)

(The podcast)

in Eng?ish

Stardate 4223.13: the sky's pitch black, the universe is even more ancient, the sidereal cold's famished. A shy glow on a bare thirsty spot of land tries to fight darkness. It's helped by its allies, the strange sounds coming from a dozen creatures. There's a bigger one, name's Santa Bernard, emitting lower notes. In front of him/her/it, the rest of 'em, kinda cooing [kinda], crouched down in a semicircle.

 

Santa Bernard and the jellies (by sciencemug)

Santa Bernard- Well jellies [pet name for alien 'kids' which are the human equivalent of a mix of a mutant squid, a bag of dirty socks and a fatter version of a crimson Shrek seriously addicted to napalm] this is the story of how the Cosmic Xmas Tree was finally decorated with its most precious ornament, the 'Ridiculously Low Albedo Ball'.
The jellies kinda make [kinda] a loud- Oooohhh... - and then- Santa Bernard?
SB- Yes?
js- What does albedo mean?
SB- Well, little bunch of atoms and quantum stuff, when light hits a celestial body, be it a planet, a comet or an Emily Ratajkowski, a fraction of that light's reflected by that body. The albedo is the ratio of the reflected light to the hitting (incident) light. The lower the albedo, the darker the celestial body. Gotcha?
js- YEEEES!-
SB- Good. Now...
One of the jellies, Bob, rises one of its... extremities[?] and- Santa Bernard...
SB- Yes Bob?
Bo- What's an Emily Ratajkowski?
SB- It's both a hot celestial body of a distant galaxy and a universal measure unit for a 1 to 14 aH (Astral Hottness) scale, where 1ER means a Sacha Baron Cohen in a tiny tiny micro-bikini (and before you ask, the answer is: a nasty nasty thing) and 14ERs mean, well, Emily Ratajkowski. Ok? Can I start telling the story now?
Jellies kinda nod [kinda]
SB- Good, listen up then. Once upon a time, in a planet far far away, a baby spacecraft was born from its mama-NASA. The baby probe name was Kepler and Kepler at its birth weighed 1052.4 kilograms [yup, aliens are smart, hence they use the SI] and was about 2.7 meters in diameter and 4.7 meters high. Besides, thanks to its 10.2 square meters wide panels, Kepler could feed on what its grandad (the star of that system, Mr. Sol AKA the Sun) was giving it: a slice of the electromagnetic radiation cake.
Kepler was a solitary kid-probe, indeed it left [March 6, 2009] grandma planet-Earth (with its mama-NASA's blessing) at its birth, and went to live around Mr. grandpa Sol. I mean, literally around the Sun: Kepler was loitering in a Sol-centered orbit and its year was 371 days long.
One of the jellies kinda squeal [kinda]- Santa Bernard, wasn't Kelper scared to be all alone?
- Kepler Charlotte, its name was Kepler - Santa Bernard answers the question with what can be considered an alien grin (or the manifestation of a slight stroke in association with a violent rash caused by an almost lethal exposition to a gamma ray burst and/or a "Lord of the Ring" marathon) on what can be considered an alien face (or a battlefield where nightmares of endless generations of seriously deranged werewolves fought a raging war against cholesterol and silver bullets budding from a parallel universe where they were garlic coated square donuts) - and no dear, our little spacecraft wasn't scared to be all alone out in the space, on the contrary, it was very happy like that. And I'll tell you why.
Since ever, Xmas had been the happiest part of the years for Kepler, of its own and of its grandma-Earth's. Therefore Kepler's deeper and most secret desire had always been to find the ultimate piece of ornament for the Cosmic Xmas Tree, the ultimate space Xmas ball. And Kepler needed to be alone, in a quiet place, to better concentrate for its mission. Because this mission was a very very, very difficult one, since our kid-probe had to face the competition of the other members of its extended family of human made space objects. 

Kepler and grandpa by sciencemug

And they were so many. And so good at their jobs...
There was his big brother, for a start, the beloved Hubble telescope (or was it a cousin, Kepler wasn't quite sure since Hubble had gotten space-DNA straight from both mama-NASA and aunt-ESA) which had collected the stunning lights for the CXT in the shapes of nebulae and galaxies since nineteen years before Kepler's birth. His bro Cassini-Huygens (or cousin, again, Kepler didn't know for sure since C-H got spacecraft-genes straight from mama-NASA, aunt-ESA and aunt-ASI) had spent ten years providing wonderful silvery rings and Saturn and Saturn's moons balls to the CXT. The dead sibling Galileo, may it rest in peace, had passed away six years before Kepler's birth, but only after a fourteen years long life during which it had decorated the CXT with amazing Jupiter reddish-orange balls and even provided fireworks made out of a comet crash onto the giant planet-ball. And, then, the other brother, spacecraft Messenger, that for more than a decade had been an authentic maker of Mercury balls. Another young sibling, Curiosity, in just two years had dug all the martian stylish red dust that was usually spread on the CXT to embellish it. Not to mention the heroic cousin, Rosetta (aunt-ESA's most famous daughter) and its son Philae: after a ten years trip and a three years hibernation/coma, they had just catched the SHOOTING STAR* to put on top of the Cosmic Xmas Tree!
Ah, definitely, so many of them. And so so good at their jobs. And just think, these ones were only a fraction of Kepler's family.
Jellies look saddened- Poor Kepler, it's not going to make it, it won't find the perfect ornamental ball for the Xmas tree of the universe before the others- they kinda whine [kinda] all together
SB- Well, my sweet collection of nuclear forces and probabilities, Kepler thought otherwise. It was a very driven kid-spacecraft and it knew it would have found the perfect space Xmas ball if it had kept following its machine-soul, its programming, and looking for exoplanets...
js- Whaaaat?
SB- Planets outside Kepler's grandpa's garden, the Solar System. Kepler searched for these extrasolar planets peeping the Cygnus-Lyra region, a piece of Kepler's grandma-Earth's northern sky stuffed with stars and therefore potential planets. And therefore potential perfect CXT's balls. Kepler couldn't help but staring at that spot of the universe, observing 100,000 stars at the same time, stars that were from few to thousands of light years far away. It did it constantly, restlessly, stubbornly, since its birth. And Kepler chose to live in a specific solitary orbit around Mr. Sol not only to easily concentrate, but also because it had so gained a clean view of its adored chunk of cosmos. In that orbit, in fact, nothing (neither Mr. Sol, nor grandmother Earth or great aunt Moon) could hinder Kepler observation. Not even for a microsecond.
Jellies cheer up a bit now and get closer to Santa B. But one of them, Solomon, is a bit hesitant, and SB notices it
SB- What's up buddy?- asks with a whistle-like sound
So- I don't get it, Santa B. You said Kepler was looking for planets, but you also said that it was observing stars... How could it find planets by staring at the stars?
SB- Aaah, this is a very good question pal. Excellent! - Solomon kinda blush [kinda] - I'll let you hear the answer directly from a page of mother-NASA's diary: "[Kepler] simultaneously measures the variations in the brightness of more than 100,000 stars every 30 minutes, searching for the tiny "winks" in light output that happen when a planet passes in front of its star." Before you ask, Solomon and jellies, Kepler could perceive and quantify those tiny winks thanks to its only inner organ-instrument, the photometer (or light meter). But let's go back to mom-NASA's diary: "The effect [of the winks] lasts from about an hour to about half a day, depending on the planet’s orbit and the type of star [...]  [and Kepler is born] to detect these [winks, these] changes in the brightness of a star when a planet crosses in front of it, or “transits the star.” This is called the “transit method” of finding planets".
Got it? 
js- YEEEES!
SB- Good, little loaves of hadrons. Now it's nap time.
js- Noooooooo, we want to hear the rest of the story, please Santa Bernard!
SB- Shush shush. Time to rest...

Merry Xmas from Santa Bernard and sciencemug

*Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

THE ROGUE PLANET

The rogue planet: a short science "crime" story 

(written in Eng?ish)  

Listen to the podcast episode
on Itunes
on Podcast Machine

The place: Sheriff Cosmo's office. 

The characters: cop1 (Sheriff Cosmo); cop2 (Agent McSpace); cop3 (Agent 'CSI' Stern); the rogue planet (CFBDSIRJ214947.2-040308.9); the gang (AB Doradus moving group). 

The background: a group of concerned good citizens – a bunch of astronomers from France and Canada - has reported to the authorities the presence of a suspicious planet which is roaming alone in the interstellar space something like 80-160 light years from Earth. The international group of geeks has snitched last september when its members published a research paper on the journal 'Astronomy&Astrophysics'.
After a long chase, Scheriff Cosmo's men have apprehended the rogue planet, the charge being vagrancy and possession of a false ID card. 
The scene: Agent McSpace and Agent 'CSI' Stern are reporting to Sheriff Cosmo.

The rogue planet (by sciencemug)

[The picture is adapted from a Public Domain image by sciencemug (source: Wikimedia Commons)]

Agent McSpace- ... It was wandering as reported, besides the suspect had an ID card which stated that it is a brown dwarf, but that's false... 
Sheriff Cosmo- If it's not a brown little cosmic body – I think they prefer to be called like this, McRude – what is it our prisoner? 
Agent 'CSI' Stern- It is probably a 4−7 Jupiter mass free-floating planet with a temperature of about 700 K and a log g of about 4.0, Sheriff. 
SC- Translate for the non-brains, please... 

CSI- Essentially it's not a brown dw... little cosmic body, Sir, but a ball of gass 4 to 7 times more massive than Jupiter, thus 1300 to 2200 times more massive than the Earth, but anyway 4200 to 7300 times less massive than the Sun. 
SC- Ok, in short a big guy among planets and a loser among stars. 
CSI- More or less Sir. 
SC- Go on, what about all those strange parameters you mentioned. 
CSI- What, the temperature and the log g? 
SC- Yeah, that stuff. 
CSI- Well, Sir, the surface temperature of the prisoner is about 700 Kelvin... 
SC- Hey CSI, I'm a Fahrenheit guy... 
CSI- Sorry Sir, it means a bit more than 800 °F. 
McS- Ahem... 
SC- Yes Agent McSpace? 
McS- I'm european on my mother's side, Sir... 
SC- So? 
McS- Well, Sir, I was born and raised according to the SI system... 
SC- Oh for Newton's sake... ok, Stern, convert that Kelvin thing into... what is it McSI? 
McS- Celsius Sir, thank you Sir. 
Stern looks at McSpace and, with a hint of condescension, says- It's a bit less than 430 °C, McEuropean. This means that our prisoner's surface temperature is 8 times lower than our Sun's one, while it's similar to that of Mercury and about 5 times higher then the Jupiter's one. 
SC- What about the log g 4 matter? 
CSI- Oh, right Sir. Log g 4 means that the prisoner's surface gravity is about 10 times higher than Earth's gravity, Sir. 
SC- Gotcha. Anyway, how come that we made acquaintance with this hobo full of gas?

McS- We were 'introduced' each other by Doc Delorme...

SC- Who?

McS- You know him Sir, remember? He's the guy who organized the surveillance initiative we authorized a while ago, the 'Canada-France Brown Dwarfs Survey which searches the sky also in the infra-red wavelenght (CFBDIR)'. He and his pals full of good will contacted us because, during one of the patrols in their space-block, they spotted a cosmic body that was floating alone.

SC- Aah right, right... So our prisoner was, is that body. I see... Well, nothing like a fistful of zealous astronomers to keep our asses informed about the sky, don't you think?

McSpace and Stern smile while nodding.

SC- Anything else gentlemen?

McS- Yes Sir. The prisoner could be affiliated with a gang, the 'AB Doradus moving group'.

CSI- Actually there's an 87% probability of such an affiliation, Sir – points out Stern pretending not to notice McSpace's eye-rolling.

McS- The gang is formed by about thirty co-moving stars. Its leader's a physco, it's been diagnosed with a personality disorder, it's infact a trinary star* (1)... Full name's 'AB Doranus' but everybody calls it 'AB Dor'. It and its other fellas have been spotted for the first time in 2004.

SC- By who, still nosy civilians?

McS- Yes Sir, three space-voyeurs from USA and Australia... They gave us the information in exchange of a one-year free supply of donuts, a pile of autographed pictures of Stephen Hawking and a paper published on 'The Astrophysical Journal'**.

SC- Uhm, fair deal, I'd say... Ok then, these gangsta-moving stars, where do they usually hang out?

CSI- Many of the AB Dor's group members can be found in the northern hemisphere. They are about 15-20 parsec (48-65 light years) away from us, Sir, partially surrounding our Sun (1-2).

SC- Do you think they can become a problem?

McS- No Sir, they're just some random 50-120 million years old youngsters (1). Basically it's only a small flock of star-kids who waste their time loitering around together in the universe.

SC- And our prisoner, how old is it?

CSI- Well, its ID card says it's 20-200 million years old. Anyway it must be 50-120 million years old too, since it's most probably one of the AB Dor's affiliates and they accept only people of their age. 
Sheriff Cosmo stops swinging on his chair and stands up- Alright gentlemen, take the spectral fingerprints of this spherical cosmic little fart, take its mugshot too and file it as 'CFBDSIRJ214947.2-040308.9'. Once the paper work's done, kick the tramp out of here with a warning, there's no point in keeping it in at the expense of the state.

McS- Yes Sir.

CSI- Indeed Sir...