This artist's impression shows sunrise over CoRoT-7b, the smallest-known exoplanet. The world is about 70 percent larger than Earth. Now, a team led by Brian Jackson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center finds that the planet may be the rocky remains of a gas giant planet whose atmosphere was evaporated by close proximity to the star. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Jan. 10, 2010) — The most earthlike planet yet found around another star may be the rocky remains of a Saturn-sized gas giant, according to research presented January 6 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington.
"The first planets detected outside our solar system 15 years ago turned out to be enormous gas-giants in very tight orbits around their stars. We call them 'hot Jupiters,' and they weren't what astronomers expected to find," said Brian Jackson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Now, we're beginning to see Earth-sized objects in similar orbits. Could there be a connection?"
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