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Oldest Planet Ever Discovered

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the brand-new-old-stuff dept.

crymeph0 writes "NASA has found the oldest known planet in a globular star cluster in the constellation Scorpius. At 13.7 billion years old, it's just slighly (~1 billion years) younger than the universe itself. Get more info from HubbleSite"

1 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Detecting planets. by asciimonster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a pity that we still have to detect planets by there gravitational pull on the suns they orbit. This will only alow us to "see" gaseous giants (like jupiter) who have lotsa mass. The earth-like planet have much too little mass to ever see with this method.

    I know people are tring to detect the reflection of the stars (of it's sun) light, but that's pretty hard since you have to filter it out from the light directly recieved from that star. But if we would really try and be lucky, could we see the planet directly when another planet is blocking our view of the star?

    Just my $0.02. $0.04 with inflation correction and VAT.