Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 09:06:22 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Satellite images 'show Atlantis'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3766863.stm
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Waterworld planet is more Earth-like than any discovered before Astronomers

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Waterworld planet is more Earth-like than any discovered before Astronomers  (Read 140 times)
0 Members and 120 Guests are viewing this topic.
New Frontier
Full Member
***
Posts: 4



« on: February 07, 2010, 06:34:59 pm »

"It would be very difficult to imagine life as we know it on the surface. It's hot and dark and there are probably no rocky surfaces like we have on Earth," said Charbonneau.

Charbonneau heads the MEarth project, which trains telescopes on a class of star called M-dwarfs or red dwarfs, which are much cooler and dimmer than our own sun. Planets orbiting close to these can lie in what astronomers call the "Goldilocks zone", where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for water to flow and life to flourish.

"We've found this planet in the first few months of MEarth being in operation, so we are either extremely lucky or these kinds of planets are very common," Charbonneau said.

"In time, we expect to find planets that are further away from their parent stars and so are likely to have surface temperatures much closer to those found on Earth," he added.

The latest planet is only a stone's throw away in astronomical terms, meaning scientists will be able to turn the Hubble Space Telescope towards it and analyse its atmosphere, potentially revealing signs of life. Charbonneau's team has already requested time on the space telescope.

"Using the Hubble, we can look at the atmosphere and say not only whether it's habitable, but whether it's inhabited," Charbonneau told the Guardian. "If we find oxygen in the atmosphere things will get really interesting, because on Earth all the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from life."

After spotting GJ1214b in orbit, the astronomers measured tiny movements in the parent star as the planet circled around it. From these wobbles they calculated the mass of the planet to be 6.6 times as great as the Earth's. The most likely composition of the planet is 75% water, with 22% silicon and 3% iron forming a solid core, the scientists report.

In an accompanying article, Geoffrey Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California in Berkeley, said the extrasolar planet or "exoplanet" provides "the most watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth outside our solar system".

Zachory Berta, a co-author on the latest paper, said: "Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a waterworld. It is much smaller, cooler and more Earth-like than any other known exoplanet." Some of the planet's water is expected to be in an exotic form called ice VII, a crystalline form of water that exists under immense pressures.

Astronomers have discovered more than 400 planets beyond our solar system in the past twenty years. Two dedicated space missions, the French space agency's Corot telescope and Nasa's Kepler telescope have been launched to look for Earth-sized rocky planets in stars' Goldilocks zone that could be hospitable to life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/dec/16/waterworld-planet-earth-life
Report Spam   Logged


Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy