New Planet Discovered Orbiting Nearby Star

[hippiechick]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050613/ap_on_sc/new_planet

(Apologies if dupe, I didn't see it posted here yet)

Mon Jun 13, 2:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON - A planet that may be Earth-like — but too hot for life as we know it — has been discovered orbiting a nearby star.

The discovery of the planet, with an estimated radius about twice that of Earth, was announced Monday at the National Science Foundation.

"This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington said in a statement. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin." Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, added: "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." (emphasis added)

Though the researchers have no direct proof that the new planet is rocky, its mass means it is not a giant gas planet like Jupiter, they said. They estimated the planet's mass as 5.9 to 7.5 times that of Earth.

It is orbiting a star called Gliese 876, 15 light years from Earth, with an orbit time of just 1.94 Earth days. They estimated the surface temperature on the new planet at between 400 degrees and 750 degrees Fahrenheit.


more ...

[Dover]

1. Cool!.....or rather...........HOT!

So if we lived there we'd have wear bikinis and hiking boots.
That does sound like the most 'hospitable' climate yet discovered.

So this is not in our galaxy? We might have to rework our astrological tables to include one more planet. That would throw everything off....the music of the spheres and all.

[NEOBuckeye]

2. I think 400 to 750 F is much too hot even for bikinis and hiking boots!

Cooking dinner might work though, if you could set up a means to transport your meals to and from the surface before they burn up!

This is indeed an interesting find, however. This is the first rocky planet that scientists have been able to locate outside of our own Sol System. I think there are countless quadrillions and quadrillions of rocky, "earth-esque" planets out there, and some that would even be habitable for life of many kinds, both similar to and very different from what we know.

Did you know that some scientists believe that there are possibly thousands of earth-sized planets in orbit beyond Quaoar and Sedna? Even if they are cold and frozen, finding one would be a revolutionary discovery.

[jokerman93]

3. This is the smallest

This is the smallest extra-solar planet yet to be discovered. It is only 15 light years away:


The world's preeminent planet hunters have discovered the most Earth-like extrasolar planet yet: a possibly rocky world about 7.5 times as massive as the Earth.

This hot "super-Earth," just 15 light years away, travels in a nearly circular orbit only 2 million miles from its parent star, Gliese 876, and has a radius about twice that of Earth.

All the nearly 150 extrasolar planets discovered to date that are orbiting normal stars have been larger than Uranus, an ice giant about 15 times the mass of Earth.

"This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," said team member Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050614001211.htm