From Time Magazine: Super Earth: Newly Discovered Planet May have Water.
Very cool.
Quote:
| Back in the mid-1990s, when astronomers were just beginning to find new planets around distant stars, nearly every new discovery got front-page headlines. Today, with the extrasolar-planet count up to about 400, it takes something extraordinary to make news. But extraordinary may be too understated a descriptor for the discovery reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature: an international team led by Harvard astronomer David Charbonneau has spotted a "super-Earth," a planet 2.7 times bigger than Earth, circling a dim red star called GJ 1214, just 40 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. "It's spectacular," says Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, who is the world's most prolific planet hunter and is credited with discovering 70 of the first 100 exoplanets. "It's a top-of-the-top discovery in the quest for Earth-size planets." While the new planet, dubbed GJ 1214b, is too big to be considered Earthlike, it comes pretty close. But GJ 1214b's relatively compact size — smaller than the vast majority of planets identified so far — is only one reason for astronomers' enthusiasm. Another is GJ 1214b's likelihood of bearing the stuff of life: water. |
