Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son,
whom he hath appointed heir of all things,
by whom also he made the worlds;
Hebrews 1:2
More uniqueness in the Kepler solar system. Besides the planets already covered in this blog, including the recent finding of 2 "water worlds" in Kepler, another unique planet can be added to the list.....In evolutionary cosmology the fact that each planet is unique in our solar system is known as the "uniqueness problem"...(such as shape, size, color, geological makeup,etc.).....but apparently the problem of unique planets isn't unique to just our solar system...."News flash! This just in: a star is round!
As a rule, stars, planets, and other celestial objects spin, and as they whirl they bulge out along their equators, meaning they’re shaped more like squat onions than perfect spheres. Rotational forces
So astronomers were intrigued to now find a star that’s round to within 0.0002% — a shape so uniform, the authors called it “the most spherical natural object ever measured.”
Gizon’s team was able to measure KIC 11145123’s shape by modeling sound waves as they bounced off the star’s surface and back into its interior. If you pluck a guitar string, only a certain number of waves can vibrate along the string depending on its length; similarly, only certain frequencies can vibrate within a star depending on its shape. By measuring the frequencies of different modes, the astronomers could determine the star’s radius at different latitudes.
The result, an equator that bulges only 0.0002% more than the poles, is only one-third as squat as astronomers expected, given the star’s rotation. The authors suggest that a weak magnetic field may surround the star’s equator like a girdle, keeping the star in trim spherical shape.
If we limit the comparison to other stars, then the answer — for now, at least — becomes more straightforward: yes, this is the roundest star known... but thousands of transitless stars are a treasure trove waiting for curious asteroseismologists." Sky&Telescope
