Kevin's Watch

www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996329

The new planet, orbiting the star mu Arae, is 14 times the size of earth - the same size as Uranus, the smallest of our system's gas giants - but orbits at a tenth of earth's distance from the star. It was discovered by a team observing stellar pulses.


Edit - Tom C posted a topic about it while I was still writing this one, but it looks like he's deleted it - since his article was much better than mine, here's the link he gave:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5819006/?GT1=4529

Better pack some sunscreen if you want to live there tho and a super massive air conditioner. At a tenth of earth's distance from the sun its bound to be just a tad warmish.

Murrin wrote:www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996329

The new planet, orbiting the star mu Arae, is 14 times the size of earth - the same size as Uranus, the smallest of our system's gas giants - but orbits at a tenth of earth's distance from the star. It was discovered by a team observing stellar pulses.


Edit - Tom C posted a topic about it while I was still writing this one, but it looks like he's deleted it - since his article was much better than mine, here's the link he gave:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5819006/?GT1=4529

I'll bet Dick Cheney has already wondered how much oil it has.

I thought this was very cool news indeed. It is amazing that we were able to find such a planet given the techniques at our disposal but I predict we will now see many more "terrestrial" type planets being discovered.

TOM C wrote:I thought this was very cool news indeed. It is amazing that we were able to find such a planet given the techniques at our disposal but I predict we will now see many more "terrestrial" type planets being discovered.

The coolest thing about it is that it is in the so-called "goldilocks" or life zone.

A Gunslinger wrote:

TOM C wrote:I thought this was very cool news indeed. It is amazing that we were able to find such a planet given the techniques at our disposal but I predict we will now see many more "terrestrial" type planets being discovered.

The coolest thing about it is that it is in the so-called "goldilocks" or life zone.

I totally agree. We are making discoveries that take us step by step closer to confirming all the theories about the existence other inhabitable planets in the universe. Once we have a sampling of these kinds of planets a probability equation will be fomulated about the real number of these worlds and I predict the number will be staggering.

Dont you wish Sagan were alive to see this stuff?

A Gunslinger wrote:Dont you wish Sagan were alive to see this stuff?

Oh yeah! He'd be saying. "I told you guys, but would you listen to me? Hell no. I've been going on about billions and billions of stars for years. Nya nya nya!"