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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. MORE cuts!?!? by Nerdposeur · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I first saw this headline, I gasped. They already eliminated Pluto - what ELSE could they disqualify!?

  2. more planets to come! by wizardforce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    55 Cancri has produced "a rat's nest of radial velocity data," Fischer said. "We probably still don't have all the planets. We are pulling out one thread at a time, disentangling all these orbits, and it has taken a lot more data and time than we predicted.


    by the sounds of it, the wobble on this thing is just a mess- probably a lot like what our solar system's wobble looks like from the outside.
    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  3. SETI, and contact them? by newgalactic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I already assume SETI takes finds like these into account when listening. However, is there a program around who's not intent to just listen? What if we developed a database of systems most likely to contain life, and we started a program to send the top candidates high powered radio signals. Far fetched, but maybe it'll produce some results in 100 years.

  4. Re:What Record? by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Insightful
    That shouldn't be too hard considering we're probably missing over half of the extrasolar planets with our current detection threshold.

    To a very, very close approximation, we're missing all the extrasolar planets. We've yet to discover a single one outside our own Galaxy :-)

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  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.