A tiny planet found last year might be even smaller than first thought, weighing just 1.4 times as much as Earth. It is thought to orbit a dim red dwarf star (Illustration: ESO)
Posted on 01/19/2009 4:10:58 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The smallest planet around a normal star other than the Sun may be even smaller than first thought. A new analysis suggests the rocky body weighs just 1.4 Earths - less than half the original estimate. Observations over the next few months should test the prediction... MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b... was detected using a technique called microlensing, in which one star passes in front of another as seen from Earth. Light from the background star is gravitationally bent and magnified for a period of days to weeks during the event. But if the nearer star hosts a planet, the planet's gravity can give an added boost to the background star's light for a few hours... Initially, the team believed that this host star was a brown dwarf... But more recent observations suggest the parent star is actually heavier than first thought - a type of star called a red dwarf, team member Jean-Philippe Beaulieu of the Paris Astrophysical Institute reported last week... Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University in Columbus, who is not on the team, says the new measurements "give a much more robust estimate" of the mass of the planet and its host star.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
A tiny planet found last year might be even smaller than first thought, weighing just 1.4 times as much as Earth. It is thought to orbit a dim red dwarf star (Illustration: ESO)
Smallest planet weighs just three EarthsAstronomers have discovered a planet about as massive as three Earths, orbiting an object smaller than our Sun.
by Michael Brooks
2 June 2008
Even smaller exoplanets have been found previously around stellar corpses called neutron stars. But this is the lightest planet ever found orbiting a star in the prime of its life.
In fact, the host star itself is very lightweight, and is thought to be a brown dwarf weighing between 6 and 8% as much as the Sun. Brown dwarfs are more massive than planets but not massive enough to sustain nuclear reactions in their cores, as normal stars do.
"Our discovery indicates that even the lowest-mass stars can host planets," David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame, who led an international team of astronomers to the discovery, said on Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St Louis, Missouri, US.
The chilly planet orbits its brown dwarf parent in this artist's conception (Illustration: Exoplanet Exploration Program/NASA)
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I claim it in the name of conservatives.
At 1.4 earth masses, it will have a diameter about 10% greater than Earth and surface gravity about 16% greater.
Glad someone thought of that.
Guess we’ve got more than four years to save it, then. ;’)
President ‘has four years to save Earth’—More James Hansen Idiocy
The Observer | January 18, 2009 | Robin McKie
Posted on 01/18/2009 1:45:29 PM PST by RightWingConspirator
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2167045/posts
Now, we need a name for the new conservative homeworld.
Limbaugh V
The capitol city? Randopolis?
MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b is truly an historic discovery ~
/mark
New America..
Per Cripplecreek, it is now known as Limbaugh V. ;-)
Suggestions for the name of the capitol?
Randolpolis?
Von Misesberg?
Randolpolis? = Randopolis?
Well, no technological life there.
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