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.