I'll drink to that. :-)
Posted on 04/21/2009 11:23:19 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
HATFIELD, England – In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place.
European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life.
...
An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet "extraordinary."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
cool
afp has a piece out as well.. snip of it follows.. its actually pretty close.. a little over 20 light years
Scientists find most Earth-like exoplanet ever
AFP - Marlowe Hood and Julien Vinzent
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090421/tsc-scientists-find-most-earth-like-exop-50a9c9d.html
The new findings, slated for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, were obtained using the most successful low-mass-exoplanet hunter in the world, the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6-metre ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.
Gliese 581, located some 20.5 light-years distant in the constellation Libra, falls into the category of low-mass, red dwarf stars, around which low-mass planets in the habitable zone are most likely to be found.
One light-year is roughly equivalent to 9.5 trillion kilometres (6 trillion miles).
Distant planets, even big ones, are too small to be directly observed, and can only be detected by measuring their impact on the movement of the stars they orbit.
The first exoplanet — 51 Pegasi b — was detected in 1995. Almost all those discovered to date are large gas giants.
“Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /28/2/92/84/2845292840097948545AwfFTH_ph.jpg on this server.”
This is what the sci-fi movies have known about for years ... “The Forbidden Planet” Many movies I believe.
I call dibbs on 20 acres of beachfront ...
and D which is the right zone, could be a water world??
How soon can we emigrate?
No CO2 will be allowed, per Algore.
I'll drink to that. :-)
28 New Exoplanets and Four
Multi-Planet Systems
Gliese 436: A Density of 2 grams/cc, Indicating Water
from 2007,, odds are there’s a wet one or two out there.
Bounty of 28 new planets, 7 new brown dwarfs reported.
By California, Carnegie Team
http://exoplanets.org/aasjune07s/pr_280507.htm
Honolulu, Hawaii — The world’s largest and most prolific team of planet hunters announced today (Monday, May 28) the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, increasing to 236 the total number of known exoplanets.
University of California, Berkeley, post-doctoral fellow Jason T. Wright and newly minted Ph.D. John Asher Johnson reported the new exoplanets at a noon media briefing at the semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Honolulu. The findings, also reported today in poster sessions at the meeting, are a result of the combined work of the California and Carnegie Planet Search team and the Anglo-Australian Planet Search team.
The planets are among 37 new objects – each orbiting a star, but smaller than a star –discovered by the teams within the past year. Seven of the 37 are confirmed brown dwarfs, which are failed stars that nevertheless are much more massive than the largest, Jupiter-sized planets. Two others are borderline and could be either large, gas giant planets or small brown dwarfs.
Wright said the research teams have become much more sophisticated in their analyses of the stellar wobbles caused by orbiting planets, enabling them to detect the weaker wobbles caused by smaller planets as well as planets farther from their parent stars.
How soon can we send all liberals there?.....
Well there is NO intelligent life here on earth...at least in the former USA.
These exoplanet guys are DESPERATE to find some evidence that Earth isn’t special.
Get a grip, guys: Gliese 581 is a FLARE STAR. (Look it up, Freepers.) When it gets a wild hair and throws off a big ‘ol CME, it’s going to KILL any life in its circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ)! Stop looking for “Earth-like” planets around unstable stars. Waste of government money.
oh you spoil sport you, they waste but a pittance ecploring the skies, and here they were just getting the ‘wobble’ effect thingy down to a fine art too..
We were gonna bill it as a liberal getaway resort planet too. They’re like cockroaches they can survive almost anything. ;-)
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