New, Earth-like Planet Found

[beeseven 0]

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11013519/?GT1=7538

Astronomers have found a new planet that they say is the smallest known planet not in our solar system. It's about 5.5 times bigger than Earth and its sun is about 1/5 the size of ours. It's also 28 000 light-years away. The article does not say whether they think that it could have any kind of life.

[TeK FLaShOv3R 0]

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11013519/?GT1=7538

 

Astronomers have found a new planet that they say is the smallest known planet not in our solar system. It's about 5.5 times bigger than Earth and its sun is about 1/5 the size of ours. It's also 28 000 light-years away. The article does not say whether they think that it could have any kind of life.

224148[/snapback]

wow thats sick im goin on vacation there also less gravity = fun!

[WoLf9015 0]

Not to be rude but wheredid you get this information and i really dont think thats very likely. I know over the years we have discovered new planets but i doubt we have discovered one that far away

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

The source was mentioned on the opening post of this thread! It's only in plain sight. Try squinting and bobbing your head - maybe you'll see it. It's the only underlined text in his post.

The planet was probably found using the Terrestrial Plant Finder, which is a powerful array of telescopes that are devoted to finding planets similar to Earth.

[beeseven 0]

Yes, WoLf, sometimes things on the internet are hoaxes. MSNBC, though?

Also,

wow thats sick im goin on vacation there also less gravity = fun!

Not all other planets have less gravity than Earth. If the mass of this one is 5.5 times Earth's, then the gravity would be considerably more.

[hitmanpimp31 0]

man that planet is small

Notice from jlhaslip:

Small ... like your postings ... but the newly found Planet is 5 and a half times bigger than the earth.Warned by PM to improve your postings to around 5 and a half times bigger than this one, please.

Edited February 1, 2006 by jlhaslip (see edit history)

[Dooga 0]

It doesn't seem likely for humans to actually discover a planet far away. They can't even see the starts properly... lol!

[DeveloperX 0]

it's very far....Guyz! We never living on this planet...28000 light-year.... very long distanse..."star wars" forever!!!!!

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

man that planet is small

Did you even pay attention? It has been said twice in this thread already that the planet is 5.5 times the size of Earth. Now, if you have gotten past third grade, you should know that "times the size" means it's LARGER, as in BIGGER, as in NOT SMALL. Just because it's the smallest planet found outside our solar system doesn't mean the planet is small.

It doesn't seem likely for humans to actually discover a planet far away. They can't even see the starts properly... lol!

I don't know what decade you are from, but here in the early 21st century, scientists have found over 100 extrasolar planets, the first having been found in 1995. Read more here. Furthermore, scientists can see the stars VERY well. Those gigantic orbital telescopes and massive Earth-based mirrors aren't just for show.

[wild20 0]

Not bad. That is quite a bit larger than earth. But of course, it is in comparision smaller than most other planets. Out of our solar system, most planets, or floating masses, are much larger than anything here. The gravity on this planet would be great though. It would be more thana noticable difference and I think it would be interesting to see if this would impact heart functionability. You certainly wouldn't be able to run for very fast for very long, you would feel like you had weighted shoes on. Hmmm. I don't know, but it seems cool. Nice that they found it. Haven't seen it on the news though. Thanks for the nice post Cerebral.

[ongnoai 0]

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11013519/?GT1=7538

 

Astronomers have found a new planet that they say is the smallest known planet not in our solar system. It's about 5.5 times bigger than Earth and its sun is about 1/5 the size of ours. It's also 28 000 light-years away. The article does not say whether they think that it could have any kind of life.

224148[/snapback]

Hey,

 

From what I caught, the surface temperature of this planet has been estimated to -200 Degrees Celsius, which is rather uncomfortable for any kind of life form to survive, especially ours.

 

Cheers folks

[lodd 0]

It seems that a lot of people are wondering how they managed to see a planet from so far away. Well, normally, you wouldn't be able to see it coz of all the other light sources (stars) in between and in the way. Think of trying to look at the moon in the middle of the day. Its tough right? That's because the sun is in the way and gets in your eyes.But what these brillant people did was to use a telescope that could record (digitally) all the frequencies of light that it receives. This includes all that other light that you cant see (that's not in the visible spectrum) like ultra-violet light. This helps them get a clearer overall picture of what the planet/start looks like.But there's still a problem of all that glare. So then they use a computer to filter out most of the light in order to get a good view of the planet, akin to using sunglasses to block out most of the sun to see the moon. But it can still only see a planet based on the light reflected off it. As far as I know, that's the reason that the smallest planet they can find is 5.5 time the size of earth. (They can only find planets big enough to reflect a lot of light). Hope that explained it and correct me if i'm wrong.Ciao

[alfredglenstein 0]

What an awesome discovery! I still think that if any planet is the answer, it will be Mars. I'm not about to argue that Mars does support life, but it sounds reasonable to argue that it can be made to. But perhaps we should just make the most of this planet, and not destroy it? That would be a very good solution also.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

This is going out in a completely different direction, but terraforming Mars would take centuries, and even then, it may not be warm enough to support life as we know it.And I'm not completely sure we are "destroying" our planet. Sure, there's all this talk about destroying the enviroment and such, but just a decade it was all about "Global Warming" and now it's all about "Global Cooling", as if the minds that be cannot decide which to complain about. Maybe we should all start whining about a "Global Medium."

[sniperkiller 0]

before we start thinking about living on other planets, lets first imagine how we would live therewe can't make space stations yet (i'm leaving the nasa ones for biostuff and observation away), but a seriously big oneif we can make such stations, then interplanetary travel will be an optionnow it already takes almost a week to go to the moon, imagine travelling to marsanother thing that we need to improve => the rocket engines, they are way too weak to travel at a faster speedbut rocket engines are another topic ^^also what would we grow there for food ? terraforming might be a consideration, but as "cerebral statis" tells us, it will take a century to terraform that planetif i could influence some decisions on earth, i'd consider to start terraforming a small piece already and then expand on time, or just test if terraforming would work on that planet, you never know what happenssince no one ever tried it before, the terraforming process, how would we know if the ground is properly formed for colony civilisation?? growing plants might be an option but another problem then, NO AIR ?unless they start thinking about building an outpost or space station, they will never know how to make stuff properlyit will take billions of cash to create such things, and to get them into space, including fitting them together and proplery checking for any holes or misplaced thingshaving the thoughts of an outpost / space station keeps the human race dreaming, but if it will ever happen, thats for the future... now we can only create the beginning of a new timejust in case our planet says "screw you" and decides to kick us off the surface by all kinds of natural disasterswell i hope nasa or other space companies are already thinking of planetarial stations and housing (just in case ^^)if they are, hopefully they do some testings soon... else we're gonna get bored afterall