Posted on 06/16/2008 1:12:39 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A newfound extrasolar planet is the smallest yet discovered orbiting a star smaller than our sun, astronomers announced today. The find may increase the chances of finding life-supporting "exoplanets," they added... The planet, dubbed MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, is just three times more massive than Earth and orbits what is most likely a brown dwarf -- a "failed" star that is so small its core may not be massive enough to maintain nuclear reactions for very long. The planet is 3,000 light-years from Earth and has a close-in orbit similar to Venus's. But because the newfound body's parent is so much cooler than our sun, MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb is most likely to be even colder than Pluto... The record-breaking planet -- the only smaller one has been found orbiting a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star -- was announced Monday at an American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis, Missouri... "The fact that we're finding outer planets around low-mass objects is an indication that planets are forming in these low-mass systems," the University of Notre Dame physicist said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
The newfound planet MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb is illustrated orbiting a low-mass star. In this artist's depiction, the star is assumed to have a mass of 9 percent of that of our sun, which would make the star a red dwarf. The discovery of the planet around such a star increases chances of finding life-sustaining worlds, astronomers say. -- Illustration courtesy NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program
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I still say that we need to start naming these planets because “MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb” is a bit of a mouthful. Even calling it “Skippy” would be better than an alphanumeric jumble that looks like an access code.
Skippy, the planet of the Peanut People...
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