Strange Mini Solar System Found

starexplorer writes "In 1990, Penn State's Alex Wolszczan found the first exoplanets. But he never got much credit from mainstream researchers, because his planets (3 of them, roughly Earth-sized) orbit pulsars and hold no chance for harboring life. Now he's found a 4th object on the outskirts of the system, SPACE.com is reporting. Call it a planet, call it an asteroid, Wolszczan says, but call the setup a dark, eerie twin of the inner half of our solar system. Also in the same story, news of a brown dwarf just 15 times the mass of Jupiter that has a planet-making disk of stuff around it. Together, more problems for astronomers, who still don't have a basic definition for the word planet or a firm idea of what separates planets from stars."

Comments

Mini solar system

[Scott7477]

How can this professor not be considered mainstream?
He's on the faculty at Penn State! Sounds like he must have ticked off the wrong people at some point in his career. Maybe he needs to hire a PR person.
I would say that finding a planet orbiting any star would be significant news, regardless of whether said planet might harbor life.

The definitive definition

[Profane MuthaFucka]

A planet:
-is a non-fusor
-has sufficient mass to be roughly spherical due to gravity
-orbits a fusor
-isn't already referred to as any other type of object by convention
-isn't associated through orbital composition or other general characteristics with another general group of non-planet objects (i.e. Vesta, though spherical, is associated with other objects known as asteroids, which are not massive enough to be spherical, and are therefore not planets. Vesta also is not a planet, because of the previous rule. It is by convention known as an asteroid, therefore it's not a planet.)

My source for this definition is myself, and I deem it sufficient for sparking a major discussion, and possibly for other things as well.