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Newfound Planet Has Earth-Like Orbit
Raver32 writes with a link to the Space.com site, and an article discussing an extra-solar planet that looks a lot like ours from a distance. At least, its orbit does. The planet is located about 300 light years away, in the constellation Perseus. It circles its giant red star every 360 days and was discovered by 'looking for wobble', the shift in a star's movement that hints at orbiting planets. "The discovery could help astronomers understand what will happen to our sun's brood of planets when it exhausts its store of hydrogen fuel and its outer envelope begins to swell. When that happens in an estimated 5 billion years, our sun will be so big that it will engulf the inner planets and most likely Earth. But long before that happens, life on our planet will have perished and its seas will have boiled away."
Newfound land.
(it's a province, in Canada, see)
Yeah, I agree. Not nearly enough effort is being directed toward that.
What we really all need to do is sit down and think really hard about that issue.
Somehow I doubt they're interested in studying this so they can come up with survival strategies for when our Sun goes all Red Giant on us. I think everyone is pretty much in agreement that when the time comes, a Bruce Willis and nuclear weapons based solution will present itself.
This sort of discovery is really more useful in a "science for science's sake" sort of way. Plus, as we continue to improve our abilities to spot distant planets, we improve our chances of finding an Earth-like planet that may harbor life, particularly hot green space-babe life. Such a discovery would certainly propel space exploration back into "top priority" status.
so does that mean i can skip work on Monday?
:-(
woohoo!
5 billion years you say?
ffs
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
In an unexpected turn of events, scientists have discovered that the universe is round and we were actually LOOKING AT OURSELVES through the massive telescope!!!
Who cares? The people of Omicron Persei VIII, rulers of the galaxy, will destroy us in about a thousand years from now.
That will be the next great "bad physics" movie: The sun has run out of hydrogen! We must drive a giant drill into the center of the SUN to explode twelve hydrogen bombs or America will be destroyed!
why are we really looking at this?
Hey, I always see things I want to study in greater detail when I'm hanging out "looking for wobble".
We are all just people.
That movie came out on July 27. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/