Scientists Discover Exoplanet Less Than Twice the Mass of Earth

Snowblindeye writes with this excerpt from the European Southern Observatory: "Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, 'e,' in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star — located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra ('the Scales') — in just 3.15 days. 'With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet,' says co-author Xavier Bonfils from Grenoble Observatory. Being so close to its host star, the planet is not in the habitable zone. But another planet in this system appears to be. ... The planet furthest out, Gliese 581 d, orbits its host star in 66.8 days. 'Gliese 581 d is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material, but we can speculate that it is an icy planet that has migrated closer to the star,' says team member Stephane Udry. The new observations have revealed that this planet is in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. '"d" could even be covered by a large and deep ocean — it is the first serious "water world" candidate,' continued Udry."

Comments

Good news

[KingPin27]

"could even be covered by a large and deep ocean â" it is the first serious "water world" candidate" .. Good.. I wonder if we can export Kevin Costner.

Call me when we find an auric world.

[Chris Burke]

Water worlds always have the crappiest minerals. Oh look more alkalines. Yay. It won't be worth spending the fuel to land on Gliese 581 d, much less the cargo hold space. Gliese 581 e might have iron and other metals, but being so close to the star it probably has major hot spots. So that's probably not worth landing on either until we meet the Melnorme and buy some tech off them.

Oh well. Eliminating planets to explore is good too. There's a lot of stars in the sky, you know, and only so much time to explore them before the UrQuan return.

Re:Call me when we find an auric world.

[Kell Bengal]

We should check out Vega. Maybe we'll find something interesting.

Re:Call me when we find an auric world.

[Quothz]

We should check out Vega.

No. What happens on Vega, stays on Vega.

Re:Astronomy

[olsmeister]

It's 20 (or so) light years from Earth. According to this article, we've probably already pissed off any inhabitants...

Re:Let's blow this popsicle stand

[Chris Burke]

As in Moonraker, we send the sexy geniuses first, right? Or do we send the Telephone Sanitizers and hairdressers, like in HHGG?

Well according to the travel register, you're booked on the first flight! Take that however you want.

Re:Planets and moons

[American Terrorist]

Only if you eradicate the ewoks first. God those things are annoying. But hopefully tasty.

Re:Extraterrestial life

[nizo]

I think it would be a good idea to send a rocket with a screen and dvd player or something, with a big red button on it that plays it.

Yeah, because if a big thing from another planet lands and I look inside and see a big red button attached to some unknown device, I'm gonna just press that puppy right away :-)

Re:but what about Earth 2...

[camperdave]

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.