Three Neptune-sized Planets Found Nearby

WillAffleckUW writes "CNN reports the discovery of three Neptune-sized planets found in orbit around a sun 41 light years away. The star they orbit is similar to our Sun, and the planetary distribution is probably similar to our Solar System. Recent observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope last year revealed that HD 69830 also hosts an asteroid belt, making it the only other sun-like star known to have one. No word on if they have habitable moons, or monoliths yet."

Comments

for those of you complaining about "nearby"

[no reason to be here]

Nearby, like many words, is not an absolute term. It is relative to the scale of the things involved. No, 41 lightyears is not nearby if you're talking about the distance from your house to the nearest gas station, but when you are talking about interstellar distances, 41 lightyears is much more near our sun (i.e., nearby) than say a star on the opposite side of the Milky Way.

Think of it like this. We'll use another word whose meaning is varaible in a similar way: close. A scafolding platform collapses and a pile of bricks comes within one foot of crashing down on you. You might say, "Wow! that was close." You throw a pitch in a ball game and you throw wide one foot left of the strike zone. No one would call that close. You'd need to be in a range of, say, a centimeter from the plate for a pitch to be called close.

But ...

[Micah]

Yeah, some might consider this a possible life site. But how can we know the planets are indeed distributed as they are in our Solar System, with a rocky planet with the right elements located in zone around the star that can support liquid water for billions of years?

Also, three Neptune sized planets probably would not protect such a terrestrial world against frequent life-exterminating collisions as our Jupiter and Saturn (and to a lesser extent Uranus and Neptune) have done. Neptune is no where near Jupiter's size, and Jupiter has almost certainly saved us from death.

Re:What's the point of all this?

[LurkerXXX]

Yeah? And I'd like to know why this country spends HUNDREDS of billions of dollars on unnecessary wars. One gains knowledge for all mankind, the other pisses off the rest of the world and generates more enemies for us to have to fight down the road. I'd say the billions for space study is much more worthwile than many of the other things we do.

How is it like our Solar System?

[R3d M3rcury]

The setup is similar to our own solar system in many ways: The outermost planet is located just within the star's habitable zone, where temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water to form

Okay, I'm missing this. How is this like our solar system?

Assuming we can spot Neptune sized planets, if we were looking at our Solar System, we would see four planets well outside the "habitable" zone. Here we see three big rocky planets where only one is "just inside" the habitable zone--and I rashly assume it's just within the too-hot side (the outermost planet has a year of 197 days, compared to Venus's 224).

How is this "similar"? Seems pretty different to me...

Re:Let's use some familiar units people!

[eonlabs]

It's close enough that someone could hypothetically send a message and expect to hear a reply in their lifetime.

Re:What's the point of all this?

[Khaed]

We spend more on foreign aid in the US than we do on NASA. And I'm not counting any of the goings on in Iraq or wars as foreign aid, either.

Space travel is a fraction of the budget. The RIAA makes more money every year than the NASA budget for any given year. And they've contributed nothing to man kind like NASA research has. Just, you know, for some perspective: We waste more money on shitty music than the government spends on NASA and research.