By TOM CALLIS
By TOM CALLIS
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Scientists are perplexed as to how a ring of dusty debris around a nearby star has vanished into thin air — or space, for that matter.
The Gemini telescope in Chile, sister to the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea, noted the disappearance on May 1, about 29 years after the debris was first discovered.
“It’s like the classic magician’s trick: now you see it, now you don’t,” said Carl Melis of the University of California San Diego in a press release. “Only in this case we’re talking about enough dust to fill an inner solar system, and it really is gone!”
Ben Zuckerman of the University of California Los Angeles, who co-authored a report on the disappearance with Melis, compared it to finding that Saturn’s rings had vanished.
The debris was visible through infrared light created by the material absorbing energy from its star and re-emitting it as infrared radiation.
Peter Michaud, Gemini Observatory spokesman in Hilo, said the debris was last seen about 2.5 years ago.
“We’ll be looking at (other debris fields) to see if they will be demonstrating similar behavior,” he said.
The star is about 10 million years old and is located 450 light years from Earth.
Melis said there is “really no satisfactory explanation” for the debris vanishing.
“The disappearing act appears to be independent of the star itself, as there is no evidence to suggest that the star zapped the dust with some sort of mega-flare or any other violent event,” he said.
Melis said it’s possible that gas produced from the impact that created the dust dragged the particles into the star. Another explanation could be that dust particles from another impact instigated “a runaway process where small grains chip into oblivion both themselves and also larger grains,” he said.
Michaud said other “instruments” confirmed the dust cloud’s disappearance.
Such debris fields are the leftovers of the formation of planetary solar systems and the collisions of objects like comets and asteroids.
Major debris regions in our own solar system include the asteroid belt and another disk beyond the orbit of Neptune.
NASA’s infrared astronomical satellite first discovered debris fields around other stars nearly 30 years ago.
Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.