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By: Seth Borenstein 6/17/2008
European astronomers have found a trio of planets with characteristics similar to those of Earth orbiting a star who once figured had nothing orbiting it, demonstrating that planets in the most unexpected places.
The discovery, announced Monday, is the first time three planets close to the size of Earth orbiting a single star, said Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz. He was part of a Swiss-French team using the European observatory in La Silla in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
The mass of the smallest of the three planets is about four times the size of the mass of Earth. That may seem like much, but the difference is much smaller in size and likely composition to Earth than there is with the giant planets of our solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They are too hot to support life, Queloz said.
Scientists are more interested in the broader implications of the finding: The universe has many more planets than previously thought.
Using a new tool to study more than 100 stars once thought they did not have planetary systems the Swiss-French team found that about one third had planets that are slightly larger than Earth.
That was the way in which the star with three super-Earths, 42 light years away. The European team began their second look with a relatively new instrument that measures tiny changes in the wavelengths of light and is so sensitive that it has to be put in a precise position and locked up in a special room below the observatory in Chile. And the key is kept in Switzerland, the scientists said.
The discovery is "really showing that we live in a crowded universe," said astronomer Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who was not part of the discovery team.
"Planets are out there. They're everywhere."
That means more chances that there is life elsewhere in the universe, Boss and Queloz said.
La Silla observatory is operated by the European European Southern Observatory (ESO), known in English as the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO).
is composed of Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Holland, Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom, Czech Republic Sweden and Switzerland.
Online: European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO): http://www.eso.cl/
Source:
WASHINGTON long time know that there are sectors of the universe with nothing, one of which is near our Milky Way, just two million light years.
But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, was a gap far greater than ever imagined. "This is a thousand times larger than what we had hoped," said astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the report to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. "It is not clear yet have the precise term. This is a real surprise." Rudnick was examining a survey celestial National Observatory Radio Astronomy, which essentially takes radio pictures of a vast expansion of the universe.
But one sector of the universe had radiophotos suggesting up to 45% less than material, Rudnick said. The rest of the field could be explained as stars and other cosmic bodies from the place of observation and void, which is between 5,000 and 10,000 million light years away.
Rudnick then checked observations of radiation from cosmic microwave background and found a cool place. The only explanation, he surmised, is that no matter.
could be a statistical paradox, but that is less likely a giant hollow, said James Condon, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Condon was not part of Rudnick's team but is following the investigation.
"It looks like something that should be taken into account," said Brent Tully, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii and member of the team either, but studies the void closer to Earth.
Tully said astronomers may find a few cosmic structures in the gap, but that would be nearly empty anyway.
Holes in the universe probably occur when the gravity from areas with more gravity pulls matter from less dense areas, Tully said. After 13,000 million years "are losing the battle to the major concentrations of matter," he added.
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Finally Tell the Truth Mr. Bush jr. and Mr. Bush sen. (Former head of the CIA)!
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On the Net:
Rudnick paper: http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/0704.0908
National Radio Astronomy Observatory: http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/coldspot/
Associated Press 2007
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