:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 6.15.2005 ::

:: "'Rocky' Earth-Like Planet Discovered" ::

It May Be First Such Body Scientists Have Found Outside Solar System
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 14, 2005; Page A03

Astronomers said yesterday they have discovered what could be the first "rocky" Earth-like planet found outside the solar system. It is a lifeless, oven-like world about 7 1/2 times the size of Earth, orbiting a small star in the constellation Aquarius.

The team detected the new "extra-solar" planet by observing a tiny wobble induced in the star by the planet's gravity. The team made more than 150 observations over three years with precision measuring instruments before announcing its findings.

"This new technology has revealed the most terrestrial planet ever found," said team leader Geoffrey W. Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley. "For the first time, we are finding our planetary kin among the stars."

Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington said he, Marcy and other team members began close observations of the star Gliese 876 several years ago. Gliese 876 is 15 light-years from Earth, an "M-dwarf" star about one-third the size of the sun. M-dwarves are the most common stars in the galaxy.

In 1998, Marcy and Butler reported detecting a "gas giant" planet about twice the size of Jupiter orbiting Gliese 876. Three years later, they reported a second gas giant about half the size of Jupiter. Astronomers do not "see" extra-solar planets; they deduce their presence by measuring the wobble.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:21:00 AM [+] ::
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