Using an armada of telescopes, an international team of astronomers has found the smallest planet ever detected around a normal star outside our solar system.
The extrasolar planet is five times as massive as Earth and orbits a red dwarf, a relatively cool star, every 10 years. The distance between the planet, designated OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, and its host is about three times greater than that between the Earth and the Sun. The planet’s large orbit and its dim parent star make its likely surface temperature a frigid minus 364 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 220 degrees Celsius). This temperature is similar to that of Pluto, but the newly found planet is about one-tenth closer to its star than Pluto is to the Sun.
Its detection, however, opens a new window in the search for Earth-like worlds.
“This finding means that Earth-mass planets are not that uncommon,” said Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., and a founding member of the Probing Lensing Anomalies Network team (PLANET) that helped detect the new planet. “If we found one, there must be more.”
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I hope Kristen reads this. I think we should go to OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb on the family vacation.
That temp is close to absolute zero, so how it is that planets/space are not a giant frozen locked down system?
think I drank some electric kool aid before thinking about this.
What’s weird is yesterday Sam said, “What if there’s another planet just like Earth.”
i guess that 53 degrees c make a difference!
Yeah. Good morning folks. It’s a toasty 53 C today with slight molecular movement. Might be looking at some cool gusty winds this afternoon dropping the evening temp to somewhere around 40c. Time to stock the firewood. Looks like tomorrow will be another scorcher with temp soaring to the high 50’s. Celcius that is, dropping to an overnight low of 0. That means if you leave the dog out tonight, you’ll have to carry him back in tomorrow morning. No molecules moving there.
Still sounds like a great place for the family vacation.
that would be 53 K, but who’s counting?
oh yeah. i felt like something was wrong there. I haven’t taught 5th grade for a long time.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/lascool4.html
Here is a good link that goes into all this and then they flip into light color slowing down atoms to get to within a 1/10,000 of absolute zero in the lab, it is amazing. Maybe God at the end will just stop all atomic movement and the physical world will cease to be, revealing the spiritual universe of His pure energy of being.
Interesting theory. I kind of like it.
The main thing that I thought was interesting about this was that this was the first planet that they found that was this similar to the earth (in terms of distance from its sun), but they speculate that this means there are many more, and with the number of stars out there, chances are there is one which has more favorable conditions.