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."

Comments

Re:More Exciting

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, since mass doesn't really have anything to do with life forming. A planet with a similar sized star and distance from it would be much more interesting, since it would mean similar temperatures, and thus more likely to have liquid water and organic molecules, meaning life.

Re:Right

[eln]

Intelligent people (and all people, really) like to work on things they're passionate about. There are plenty of very intelligent people who are passionate about solving the many issues that plague our civilization, and they are working very hard to do so. These particular intelligent people are passionate about finding new planets.

To The Stars, Then.

[bill_mcgonigle]

But long before that happens, life on our planet will have perished and its seas will have boiled away.

Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics,
and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet
agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years,
eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us.
It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly,
and Aristophanes...
all of this... all of this...
was for nothing.

Unless we go to the stars.

- J. Michael Straczynski

I must be in the mood because there's a box sitting at home for me with The Lost Tales inside. :) It's been 10 years since I've seen some good new B5, so I may be a bit giddy today.