Prof. Sam Lawler@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
EVERYONE!! Fomalhaut is at it again!! Crashing its planetesimals together and making dust clouds!!!!
I am very excited because I and others wrote papers saying that this would happen: if Fomalhaut b (the first directly imaged "exoplanet" oops) was actually a dust cloud, it should fade away and another one should appear on ~decade timescales.
I love being right about science predictions that don't involve destroying the night sky or atmosphere or Kessler Syndrome!
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.15861
Prof. Sam Lawler@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
I learned about this from a planetary journal club at UBC that I had time to run to (while still mic'd) between filming. The journal club was led by my PhD supervisor, who I wrote a paper with on Fomalhaut planetesimal collisions back in 2015!
Damn it's fun to do some real science in between all the depressing stuff.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.1129