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An Earth-like planet is discovered in our solar system
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by Amy Judd | April 21, 2009 at 07:35 pm
1244 views | 54 Recommendations | 7 comments
Scientists in Hatfield, England, have discovered what they say is an 'Earth-like' planet. Scientists were looking at two planets, one that is the same size as Earth and one that is in the right place to support life. The one that is the same size is called 'Gilese 581 e' and the other is called 'Gilese 581 d' and is capable of supporting life say the scientists.
"The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone,'" said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland.
Other scientists have called the find 'extraordinary'.
Gliese 581 e is very small; it's only 1.9 times the size of Earth and it is situated too close to a nearby star so the planet would be too hot to support life. It is 20 1/2 light years away from Earth.
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Gliese 581 d however could support life as water could exist as a liquid on the surface. Scientists think that it is too large to be made only from rocks and has been called "the first serious water-world candidate".
While Gliese 581 e is too hot for life "it shows that nature makes such small planets, probably in large numbers," Marcy commented. "Surely the galaxy contains tens of billions of planets like the small, Earth-mass one announced here."
Other planets have been discoverd, but for different reasons they were all found unlikely to support life forms.
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Amy Judd
Vancouver, Canada
Recommendations (54)
Suranee
Ratnapura, Sri Lanka
Uwe Paschen
Narita, Chiba, Japan
Rhonda J Mangus
North Tonawanda, New York, United States
danesller0127
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Mary Richard
Toronto, Canada
Karl Gotthardt - albertacowpoke
Redwater, Alberta, Canada
mudricky
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (7)
at 19:49 on April 21st, 2009
Lets hope we can not reach it any time soon, so it may stay alive.
at 19:56 on April 21st, 2009
Good point
at 20:59 on April 21st, 2009
Aw, you mean galaxy? You got my hopes up. : P
at 03:13 on April 22nd, 2009
Super cool.
at 03:17 on April 22nd, 2009
Thank you for this amy. Good post.
at 04:16 on April 22nd, 2009
I like this story as well. I agree with Paschen and that we should not arrive there soon.
at 07:15 on April 22nd, 2009
I'm a believer! we're not alone.... as scientist told us many times... there is'
Thanks Amy, for sharing this 'extraordinary' discoveries .... :D