Slashdot Mirror
First Rocky Exoplanet Confirmed
Matt_dk writes "The confirmation of the nature of CoRoT-7b as the first rocky planet outside our Solar System marks a significant step forward in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. The detection by CoRoT and follow-up radial velocity measurements with HARPS suggest that this exoplanet has a density similar to that of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth, making it only the fifth known terrestrial planet in the Universe. The search for a habitable exoplanet is one of the holy grails in astronomy. One of the first steps towards this goal is the detection of terrestrial planets around solar-type stars. Dedicated programs, using telescopes in space and on ground, have yielded evidence for hundreds of planets outside of our Solar System. The majority of these are giant, gaseous planets, but in recent years small, almost Earth-mass planets have been detected, demonstrating that the discovery of Earth analogues — exoplanets with one Earth mass or one Earth radius orbiting a solar-type star at a distance of about 1 astronomical unit — is within reach."
By the time we actually got to one of these planets, would it still be able to sustain life? Should we be looking for planets that are in their early, less habitable stages?
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Looks like this little guy is only 0.002 AU away from it's parent star. I wouldn't expect to find any life there, but still, this is an amazing discovery. As these methods get fine tuned it's only a matter of time before we start finding planets roughly Earth-like not only in form, but also in relation to the habitable zone around their star. I don't think we'll ever get a probe, much less a person, to any of them within my lifetime, but at least we'll have an interesting list of spots to visit when we do reach that capability :).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Meanwhile, as scientists on an outer planet look our way:
"Rocky planets like the one recently discovered are turning out to be quite common throughout our area of space. Given a dense enough atmosphere, this planet could even support life like ours, although it's hot enough to kill all but the most tolerant extremophiles known. Spectroscopic analysis, though, reveals its deadly nature: much of its surface is covered with molten hydroxic acid, which forms toxic clouds and then falls as corrosive rain. If life-giving ammonia was ever present on the surface, it's long since combined with the abundant free oxygen in the atmosphere. Our chemists are still uncertain what could produce so much free oxygen; fantasists have speculated on forms of life that would metabolize oxygen in the same way that we metabolize hydrogen, but the analogy breaks down quickly as you look more closely at the chemistry involved."