European experts have discovered the smallest planet so far, 14 times the mass of Earth, but much smaller than the gas giants that make up most of the population of planets discovered so far * At the same time, a 10 cm diameter telescope discovered a planet the size of Jupiter 500 light years away. "This is a new era in the study of Kuch
Avi Blizovsky
Below are also updates from a collection of sources from the date 1/9/04 - in which the entire Israeli media joined the news published on the Hadaan website almost a week earlier:
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/extra260804.html
European scientists recently discovered what they describe as the smallest Earth-like planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. The star, however, has a mass 14 times that of the Earth but is much smaller than the gas giants that make up most of the population of the planets discovered so far. It is also close enough to its sun that it is probably not full of ice.
Dr. Nuno Santos Santos from the University of Lisbon, says that the new planet is super Earth-like. He spoke at the Euroscience Open Forum conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. Santos claims that the discovery provides a new record as the smallest planet discovered so far around a Sun similar to our own. "And further deepens Europe's leadership in this field." said.
The discovery was made using the Harps sensitive spectrograph at the Southern European Observatory - in a 3.6 m diameter telescope at La Silla. The discovered planet orbits the star Mu Arae in the southern constellation Altar. This is the second planet discovered around this star and it completes its orbit around its sun in 9.5 days.
Mu-Ara is also recognized as the parent star of a Jupiter-like planet that orbits it for 650 days. Previous observations led to the conclusion that besides the big planet there is also at least one other planet.
According to François Bouchioff of the Laboratory of Astrophysics in Marseille, "Not only did the HARPS measurements confirm what we had previously believed about the star, but they also showed that there is also another planet in a much shorter orbit." According to him, this makes Mo-Era a particularly interesting solar system.
"twins" were found for Neptune and Uranus; Is Earth next?
By Yuval Dror, Haaretz, 1/9/04
The twinkling dots we see in the night sky are stars, not planets; Except for the planets in our solar system. These points are suns, similar to our hot sun. But life cannot be sustained on the Sun, so in the last decade scientists have been concentrating on the search for rocky planets, of the Earth's type. The problem is, these planets are tiny in cosmic terms and hard to notice.
The first breakthrough in finding rocky planets was announced last week, after a group of scientists from Europe announced that they had discovered the smallest planet discovered outside the solar system. Last night, NASA reported on two other groups of scientists, who discovered two new planets, and announced that for the first time, the equivalents of planets of the type Neptune and Uranus were found in solar systems other than our own. "These discoveries bring us closer to being able to answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe," said Anne Carey of NASA.
Until a decade ago, the task of locating the planets was considered almost impossible. However, in recent years there has been significant progress in methods of detection. This progress led to the discovery of a rocky planet, the holiday around the star Mu Arae, by scientists from the European HARPS team. Astronomers were able to locate it after discovering that its star was "oscillating" or "vibrating" due to the gravitational pull of the planet orbiting it.
This planet is not small at all. Its mass is 14 times greater than that of the Earth and for this reason it was called "Super Earth". It is 13 million km from its sun, which it orbits every 9.5 days. Hence, the planet is close to its sun in a way that would not allow life on it. Despite this - and considering the fact that it is 480 trillion kilometers and 50 light years from Earth, and that so far astronomers have only been able to locate planets of the type of the gas giant "Jupiter" - its detection is considered an impressive achievement.
Yesterday, at a press conference, Jeff Marcy from the University of California and Barbara McArthur from the University of Texas, who were the leaders of the two groups of scientists from the USA, reported on the detection of two additional small planets, which are apparently made of ice or rocks, and whose mass is 20-15 times greater than that of Earth. One of the planets is part of the solar system, which includes three other planets. According to the scientists, this is the first time that astronomers have managed to locate a solar system consisting of four holiday planets around the sun. Following the discoveries, according to them, it can now be estimated that the Milky Way galaxy alone has about 20 billion solar systems.
"We are interested in planets whose properties resemble the Earth for two reasons," explains Dr. Shai Zucker, from the University of Geneva, who is participating in a similar study to locate planets. "The first is the search for life. The second is our ambition as scientists to understand the evolution of our solar system and within it, the Earth."
Marcy said that the building blocks that build life in the universe are everywhere like the water molecule. "Now we find that the sites on which life forms, the rocky planets, are also in the universe. It is possible that already in our lifetime we will find out if there is life on those rocky planets, which resemble the Earth."
Astronomers have discovered small planets outside the solar system
A team of researchers has discovered two planets - the smallest ever discovered - orbiting sun-like stars. The mass of the planets is similar to that of Neptune and Uranus, and discoveries encourage the scientists, who expect to discover a planet similar in its conditions to Earth
Tal Eitan and the agencies
The discovery of a new type of planets orbiting stars outside the solar system excites astronomers. This is a significant leap forward in the search for planets similar in composition, size and nature to Earth, some of which may even have life.
"We have not yet been able to detect Earth-like planets, but we have been able to observe their big brothers, and we hope to be able to find the smaller planets soon," said Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, who co-discovered them.
The two discovered planets have a mass 15 to 20 times greater than the mass of the Earth, similar to the mass of Neptune. The diameter of the discovered planets is 2-3 times larger than the diameter of the Earth, said the people of the American space agency, NASA.
In this way, these bodies differ from all the planets that have been observed by scientists so far. Most of the celestial bodies that we see with the naked eye are stars similar in composition to the sun around which the earth revolves. Due to their relatively small size, and their distance from Earth, astronomers had difficulty observing the planets orbiting the same suns.
So far, the planets that the researchers have been able to identify, more than 100 in number, had a very high mass much greater than that of the Earth. For the most part, the average mass of the planets discovered outside the solar system was similar to the mass of Jupiter, which is 318 times greater than the mass of the Earth, and the researchers estimate that these are huge planets composed mainly of gas, so that there is no possibility of life, as we know it, on their surface.
But the newly discovered planets open up new hope for the discovery of smaller, solid-ground planets that might allow life to exist on their surfaces. The astronomers noted that the planets discovered so far are similar in size to the planets Neptune and Pluto, and although they are different from Earth, the very discovery raises hope for the discovery of other, smaller planets in the future.
Living in space?
An Earth-like planet may be a focus for various studies, to test its composition and nature. It is estimated that the discovery of a planet similar in its conditions to Earth will open the door to research into the chances of life developing on its surface, and to deciphering one of the greatest research questions of the human race - are we alone in space, or is there other life, somewhere outside the solar system?
Most of the planets outside the solar system, even the largest ones, were discovered by observing the behavior of distant stars, which was affected by the planets that orbit them. These stars have a characteristic oscillation, which indicates the existence of one or more planets, which revolve around it and influence its movement in space. Astronomers look for stars with a strange oscillation, and examine whether it arises as a result of the influence of planets orbiting the star in a peripheral orbit.
The first new planet discovered is similar in size to Neptune and revolves around a small star located in the constellation Leo. It is less than 30 light years away from us - a small distance in astronomical terms. The second planet was discovered by Barbara MacArthur from the University of Texas, and is about 40 light years away from Earth. Both planets orbit their sun in three days or less, in an orbit smaller than Earth's orbit around the sun.
A tiny telescope discovered a huge, distant planet
Voila system!
25/8/04
A tiny telescope has been able to spot a giant holiday planet orbiting a distant star, using a technique that could usher in a new era of space exploration, scientists said last night.
A telescope with a diameter of about 10 cm - about the same size that home space enthusiasts might use - followed the gradual dimming of light from a bright star 500 light-years away. A light year is the distance that light travels in a year - about 9.6 trillion kilometers.
The dimming suggested the presence of a large planet that regularly blocks the light on its way from the star to Earth. Later observations made with the huge KC-1 telescope in Hawaii, which was 10 meters in diameter, confirmed the finding.
Over 100 exoplanets, the holidays around stars outside our solar system, have been discovered in the past decade, but most were discovered by spotting stars that leave a characteristic wobbly signature, indicating a planet is nearby.
Close to its star, very fast and very hot
The tiny telescope that found this latest planet is part of a network of instruments known as the Transatlantic Survey of Outer Planets, or TreS. This grid is specifically designed for finding the holiday planets around bright stars. This is according to scientists, who responded to Reuters news agency's questions via email.
In one of the statements, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Ectrophysics, it is written that the new find, discovered using such a small telescope, "illustrates that we are on the brink of a new era in the discovery of planets." Guillermo Torres from the Harvard Astrophysics Center, one of the authors of the study on the find, said that "this discovery proves that even modest telescopes are capable of making a huge contribution to the search for planets."
The new planet, known as TRS-1, is a gas giant about the size of Jupiter, located in the star system "Lyra" (Hecatros). It orbits its star about once every three days from a distance of only about 6.5 million kilometers, much closer and faster than the planet Hema orbits our sun. Proximity to the star gives the new planet a temperature of about 815 degrees Celsius.
The team that discovered TRS-1 includes scientists from the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands, the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Lowell Observatory and the California Institute of Technology. More information, including an illustration of the new planet, can be found on the Harvard Astrophysical Center website, attached below.
