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Astronomers Find Smaller Extrasolar Planets

Posted by timothy on from the spaceporn dept.

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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6 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone else laughed at the art? by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

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  2. Re:Class M? by gnarly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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  3. I just read about this on the NYT... by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...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?

    --
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    1. Re:I just read about this on the NYT... by astroboscope · · Score: 4, Informative
      neither article explains why these planets are signs of Earthlike planets

      I think they're just pleased that they've found a couple of sub-Saturn sized planets. i.e. planets at least as big as Jupiter were first and easiest to be found, then came Saturns, and now, as they hoped, the trend has continued to Neptunes, buoying their aspirations to find even smaller planets.

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  4. It will be a long time . . . by kalidasa · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Before they find a genuinely earth-like planet with this technique - with the radial velocity technique you find big close planets first, later big distant planets and medium-sized close planets, etc., and small close but not too close planets last. Not a criticism of the astronomers; it's amazing that they can find even a very close Neptune-sized planet with this. . .

  5. Re:why does size matter? by stevelinton · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Planets much larger than Earth will inevitably be either

    a) much hotter than Earth (which is the case with these ones, I think)

    or

    b) mostly made of hydrogen and helium, like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune

    At our temperatues, a massive planet would captuse lots of hydrogen and helium from the initial nebula and never lose them.

    In either case, no life remotely like us could exist. Of course one cannot rule out life based on some exotic chemistry, but the absence of evident life on Mercury or any of our own gas giants is a small piece of negative evidence.