Last_Saiyan
Jun 14, 2002, 06:13 PM
Hehe, not really but this is a really good read:
Scientists find possible Earth-like solar system
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By Usha Lee McFarling, Special to the Tribune. Usha Lee McFarling is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune newspaper
Published June 14, 2002
Astronomers searching for worlds around distant stars announced the discovery Thursday of the first Earth-like solar system, boosting hopes that there are other habitable spots in the universe.
"One of the big questions in science is, `Are we alone?"' said Anne Kinney, who directs the astronomy and physics division at NASA headquarters. This "brings us one step closer to answering that."
While scientists did not find an Earth, they found a close cousin: a Jupiter. It is the first planet scientists have found with a roughly circular orbit that is a healthy distance from its star, like many of Earth's neighbors.
"It's got the smell of our own solar system," said Geoff Marcy, the University of California, Berkeley, astronomer who leads the planet-hunting team. "In a sense this solar system is a missing link."
Since the first extrasolar planet was discovered seven years ago, 91 have been discovered. But many have been so odd--many times the size of Jupiter, so close to their suns they would be permanently scorched or on wild, elliptical orbits--that scientists began to wonder if our home solar system is unique. It looks as if it is not.
The planet, a gas giant circling around the star 55 Cancri, is about 41 light-years from Earth. The middle-aged star is about the same size as our sun and is visible to the naked eye.
The new planet is about four times the size of Jupiter and is about the same distance from its sun as Jupiter is from ours. While that planet looks comfortingly familiar, the solar system also contains some strange elements: two other large planets hundreds of times larger than Earth that circle very close to the sun.
Those oddities carry the "wacky stink of some of the strange solar systems we've been finding over the past few years," Marcy said. They underscore that while Earth's orderly solar system is no longer unique, neither is it the norm.
Marcy's team detects planets using a sensitive technique that measures the slight wobbling of stars caused by the gravitational yank of a planet.
The technique has a bias that explains why most findings have been of big, close-in planets, which are easiest to find because they perturb their stars the most. The smallest planet discovered so far, one of 14 others also announced Thursday, is about half the size of Saturn or 40 times the size of Earth.
Planets the size of Earth would not be visible. For example, if the team looked at our own solar system from afar with their technique, they could detect only the two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn.
Astronomers are debating whether a smaller planet could exist in a temperate zone sandwiched between 55 Cancri's three Jupiter-like planets.
The outer Jupiter might serve, as our own does, to absorb the blows of comets and asteroids that could otherwise explode into our planet and wipe out life.
Theories suggest that gas giant planets form in the outer part of the solar system and exist near stars only if they migrate there. Behemoths spiraling toward the core of a solar system could pummel smaller planets out of existence.
But Alicia Weinberger, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said enough dusty material might survive this transit to allow an Earth-size planet to form after the monsters passed by.
Marcy and Paul Butler, also at the Carnegie Institution, have spent 17 years perfecting the process of planet hunting and waited nearly a decade before finding their first planet. Now, their system works so smoothly, "we're actually drowning in planets," Marcy said. Last week, the team had planned to announce 13 new planets at their news conference. They found two more over the weekend.
Given the length of time they have been monitoring some stars, they expect to find more and more "normal" planets in these distant regions from their suns that have never been probed. "We're entering virgin territory," Butler said.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
Scientists find possible Earth-like solar system
E-mail this story
Printer-friendly format
Search archives
By Usha Lee McFarling, Special to the Tribune. Usha Lee McFarling is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune newspaper
Published June 14, 2002
Astronomers searching for worlds around distant stars announced the discovery Thursday of the first Earth-like solar system, boosting hopes that there are other habitable spots in the universe.
"One of the big questions in science is, `Are we alone?"' said Anne Kinney, who directs the astronomy and physics division at NASA headquarters. This "brings us one step closer to answering that."
While scientists did not find an Earth, they found a close cousin: a Jupiter. It is the first planet scientists have found with a roughly circular orbit that is a healthy distance from its star, like many of Earth's neighbors.
"It's got the smell of our own solar system," said Geoff Marcy, the University of California, Berkeley, astronomer who leads the planet-hunting team. "In a sense this solar system is a missing link."
Since the first extrasolar planet was discovered seven years ago, 91 have been discovered. But many have been so odd--many times the size of Jupiter, so close to their suns they would be permanently scorched or on wild, elliptical orbits--that scientists began to wonder if our home solar system is unique. It looks as if it is not.
The planet, a gas giant circling around the star 55 Cancri, is about 41 light-years from Earth. The middle-aged star is about the same size as our sun and is visible to the naked eye.
The new planet is about four times the size of Jupiter and is about the same distance from its sun as Jupiter is from ours. While that planet looks comfortingly familiar, the solar system also contains some strange elements: two other large planets hundreds of times larger than Earth that circle very close to the sun.
Those oddities carry the "wacky stink of some of the strange solar systems we've been finding over the past few years," Marcy said. They underscore that while Earth's orderly solar system is no longer unique, neither is it the norm.
Marcy's team detects planets using a sensitive technique that measures the slight wobbling of stars caused by the gravitational yank of a planet.
The technique has a bias that explains why most findings have been of big, close-in planets, which are easiest to find because they perturb their stars the most. The smallest planet discovered so far, one of 14 others also announced Thursday, is about half the size of Saturn or 40 times the size of Earth.
Planets the size of Earth would not be visible. For example, if the team looked at our own solar system from afar with their technique, they could detect only the two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn.
Astronomers are debating whether a smaller planet could exist in a temperate zone sandwiched between 55 Cancri's three Jupiter-like planets.
The outer Jupiter might serve, as our own does, to absorb the blows of comets and asteroids that could otherwise explode into our planet and wipe out life.
Theories suggest that gas giant planets form in the outer part of the solar system and exist near stars only if they migrate there. Behemoths spiraling toward the core of a solar system could pummel smaller planets out of existence.
But Alicia Weinberger, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said enough dusty material might survive this transit to allow an Earth-size planet to form after the monsters passed by.
Marcy and Paul Butler, also at the Carnegie Institution, have spent 17 years perfecting the process of planet hunting and waited nearly a decade before finding their first planet. Now, their system works so smoothly, "we're actually drowning in planets," Marcy said. Last week, the team had planned to announce 13 new planets at their news conference. They found two more over the weekend.
Given the length of time they have been monitoring some stars, they expect to find more and more "normal" planets in these distant regions from their suns that have never been probed. "We're entering virgin territory," Butler said.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune