Solar System Look-Alike Found

SpuriousLogic writes "Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a distant star which looks much like our own. They found two planets that were close matches for Jupiter and Saturn orbiting a star about half the size of our Sun. Martin Dominik, from St Andrews University in the UK, said the finding suggested systems like our own could be much more common than we thought."

Comments

Dupe

[jdb2]

Here's the original from February 14 :

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/14/223241

jdb2

Re:A bit of a reach

[Otter]

I think the idea is that since we can only examine such a small fraction of the universe, anything we find must be reasonably "common". (Earth itself being exempt from that logic because of the anthropic principle.)

Re:rocky planets

[pe1rxq]

Actually if you read the article (I know this is slashdot....) you would know that the current techniques are at the level that an earth like planet could be detected with gravitational lensing.
Just not at the distance of this system.

An earth size rock could be detected any day now.

Re:A bit of a reach

[CorSci81]

Actually, considering the range of sizes stars can have, a factor of 2 is pretty damn close in the astronomical world.