Posted by Davin Flateau on 13 Jun 2005 at 6:53 pm.
Filed under Astronomy.
Up to now, just about every planet discovered around other stars has been a big gas giant - Jupiter, and Neptune sized or larger. But the big prize seemed beyond our current technological reach: Earth-like planets that are miniscule in comparison to their more massive cousins. The technological limts were redefined today, as a team lead by veteran planet hunter Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkley announced the discovery of a planet just 7.5 times the mass of the Earth, and orbiting a normal star. Marcy:
“Over 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus argued about whether there were other Earth-like planets. Now, for the first time, we have evidence for a rocky planet around a normal star.”
The planet orbits very close to its star - a year lasts only 2 days! And at only a mere 2 million miles from the solar surface, the planet is surely baked to a nice golden crisp; life as we know it probably could not survive there. But we’re a lot closer to someday finding that planet at the right distance around the right sun, with the right conditions for liquid water, where life could develop.
