Astronomers Find Smaller Extrasolar Planets

SABME writes "NASA has announced the discovery of a new class of extra-solar planets. Here's a link to the NASA news release. These planets are only 10-15 times bigger than Earth; how far off are we from discovering Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars? Future NASA missions aimed at broadening these discoveries include Kepler, the Space Interferometry Mission and the Terrestrial Planet Finder. More info available at NASA's Extrasolar Planets webiste.

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Comments

Anyone else laughed at the art?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Artist impression of what? NASA hasn't detected the planet. It has detected the influence of the planet. Doesn't even have to be a planet. It could be a really heavy asteroid. Or a cloud of them. Or something entirely different. Maybe some stars just like to wobble.

All they detected is that it looks like the suns in question have something spinning around them. When they actually photograph them or detect the planets themselves THEN and only then can we start to speculate what they look like. For now it is pure speculation that they are in fact planets.

Re:Class M?

[gnarly]

Yes, but are they Class M ?

Actually, yes. The star that is. What is remarkable is that one of these neptune-mass planets orbits a Class M star, the smallest and faintest in the standard stellar classes OBAFGKM. It is only the 2nd M star to harbor planets, even though hundreds have been studied.

I just read about this on the NYT...

[drinkypoo]

...with a little help from bugmenot. One thing in their article that struck me as unexplanatory is the statement that finding these planets suggests we will be finding some earth-mass planets one of these days soon. Guess I should've submitted the story, eh? Especially since the assignment was on writing summaries.

The NYT article doesn't say the planets are smaller than neptune or jupiter, as the NASA article does, but neither article explains why these planets are signs of Earthlike planets. Can someone fill me in?