Lava Planet Corot-7b, Earth-like But Too Close to Its Sun

by LarryDeezell | September 16, 2009 at 12:30 pm

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European astronomers have comfirmed that there is an extrasolar planet which is Earth-like. The planets called Corot-7b and it's a firm place to stand, the only problem is that the Lava Planet is too close to the sun. Most of the 300 planets that the scientists were studying outside of the solar system were either gas balls or cannot be proven to be solid.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."

The sun is that close to Corot-7b that the temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahenheit, which is too hot to sustain life. It circles it's stars in only 20 hours, cruising at 466,00 mph. Comparing Corot-7b to Mercury, the planet thats close to our sun, completes it's solar orbit in 88 days.

This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Discovered this year, the planet had been watched by European scientists and has been proven to be rocky like earth, circling a star in the winter sky at 500 light-years away and a light year is 6 trillion miles. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are the known planets that are rocky in the solar system.