Failed Stars and Super Planets A Report Based on the January 1998 Workshop on Substellar-Mass Objects (1998) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
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and NASA advisory groups on the detection and study of extrasolar planets have concentrated primarily on the study of SMOs as the first step toward detecting Earthlike planets around other stars, the ultimate programmatic goal of NASA s new ~Origins" initiative. Comparatively less attention has been given to the intrinsic value of studies of SMOs for answering high-priority questions in astronomy and planetary science, including those related to the physics of star and planet formation the abundance of luminous and dark matter throughout the cosmos' and the basic physics of matter under extreme .
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The state of the field as summarized at the workshop by 21 invited experts is vigorous: substellar-mass objects are now being detected or characterized, on a regular basis, by roughly a half dozen different techniques, both ground- and space-based, with additional approaches nearing the maturity necessary to conduct successful searches. Much of the activity is a result of individual or small-team, principal-investigator-based, projects, rather than large-scale; missiontype" programs, although some of the discoveries have been made with instruments (e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck telescope)
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In particular, to advance SMO studies in the near term and to optimize the development of space-based facilities, NASA must balance its major space expenditures with adequate funding for the early steps involving ground-based techniques and flight demonstrations. For characterizing individual objects, the technique of choice will continue to be spectroscopic studies.
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To ensure continued progress in this area, NASA and other agencies should foster coordination and collaboration among various search programs to enable ongoing discoveries and to follow up on possible candidate events. Because microlensing groups have different primary goals, the various agencies supporting primary and follow-up microlensing observations should work together to minimize potential disruptions caused by differences in their prime goals.
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The reflex motion resulting from Earth~s orbit around the Sun, for example, causes the trajectory of the background star relative to the tensing object to deviate from a straight line. This parallax effect induces asymmetries in the light curve of microlensino events which should be of order 1% if the lenses lie in tile halo, but negligibly senate if tile lenses are in the Large MagelIanic Cloud.
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