From Wired News:
In the astronomical equivalent of meeting someone who reminds you of yourself, scientists have discovered a planet outside the solar system that weighs just twice as much as Earth.
The relatively small size of the new planet, dubbed Gliese 581e, prompted Grenoble Observatory astronomer Xavier Bonfils to call it "the least massive exoplanet ever detected" in a press release.
That seems an odd reason for celebration until one considers the behemoth sizes of other exoplanets.
The largest, named TrES-4 and found — quite appropriately — orbiting a star in the Hercules constellation, is roughly twice the diameter of Jupiter, which itself could house 1,000 planet Earths. Corot-7b, the previous smallest-exoplanet designee, is twice the size of Earth and about five times as heavy.
Read more ....
No comments:
Post a Comment