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Astronomers Announce 5-Planet System

Posted by kdawson on from the looking-for-something-rockier dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers have detected a record-breaking 5th planet orbiting the star 55 Cancri, 41 light years distant. This planet orbits within the 'habitable zone,' where water could presumably exist, but it's probably another gas giant like Saturn, so any liquid water would have to be on a moon. There's still a big gap between this planet and the outermost planet where no planets have been detected yet, so there could yet be a rocky planet in the system. The lead researcher said he's optimistic that 'continued observations will reveal a rocky planet within five years.'"

5 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How far has our reach extended? by newgalactic · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's a cool website that has some of the brightest stars within 50 Light years. Here's to getting a signal in 30 or so years. http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html

  2. Re:more planets to come! by MMatessa · · Score: 4, Informative

    The java program to analyze wobble data is called Systemic and can be found at http://www.oklo.org/.

  3. Re:What Record? by evwah · · Score: 2, Informative

    population of the universe: none

  4. Re:How far has our reach extended? by Tsuki_no_Hikari · · Score: 2, Informative

    The 1936 Olympics were 71 years ago, 60 when Contact came out.

    Television and radio signals are both part of the EM spectrum, all of which travel at C with varying levels of refraction depending on the medium it passes through.

    That gives us a range of 71 light years for a civilization to have received the signal at all, and 35.5 light years if we would expect to hear a response from a civilization tomorrow.

  5. Re:How far has our reach extended? by ChrisA90278 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let's set, radio travels at the speed of light. In one year light travels (get's out calculator.) one light year. If there are any people there listening to Earth they are hearing what we heard in 1956.

    When did we first build powerful transmitters? Comercial radio started in the 1920's so almost 90 years ago. Higher frequency VHF got beg after the war in the lat 40's when TV got popular.

    Could they hear it? Only if they have invested in VERY sensitive receivers MUCH more sensitive then anything we have. Our current receivers could only hear a signal if it were from a very powerful beacon aimed right at us.

    We do not currently have a system then could detect our own signals if they were coming from another star.