Posted on 01/21/2012 3:25:21 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Three studies released Wednesday, in the journal Nature and at the American Astronomical Society's conference in Austin, Texas, demonstrate an extrasolar real estate boom.
San Diego State University astronomers, along with a team of scientists, have discovered two more planetary systems with two suns. Before, it was believed planets could only orbit a single sun, because a double sun, also known as a double star, would make the system too chaotic...
The two new planets, Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b, are gaseous Saturn-size planets. Kepler-34 b orbits its two sun-like stars every 289 days, and the stars themselves orbit and eclipse each other every 28 days.
Orosz said the discovery confirms it's not a fluke of nature...
Confirmed planets outside our solar system -- called exoplanets -- now number well over 700, still-to-be-confirmed ones are in the thousands.
NASA's new Kepler planet-hunting telescope in space is discovering exoplanets that are in a zone friendly to life and detecting planets as small as Earth or even smaller. That is moving the field of looking for some kind of life outside Earth from science fiction toward plain science...
The gravity of two stars makes the area near them unstable, Welsh said. So astronomers thought that if a planet formed in that area, it would be torn apart.
Late last year, Kepler telescope found one system with two stars. It was considered a freak. Then Welsh used Kepler to find two more. Now Welsh figures such planetary systems, while not common, are not rare either.
Orosz said now that they know what they're looking for, it opens up a whole new world of astronomy.
(Excerpt) Read more at kpbs.org ...
I’ve already decreed that there will be no property taxes. The only tax will be a 5% sales tax applied equally across the board and all it will fund are vital infrastructure like a minimal system of roads and a few bridges.
So far there are only about 20,000 people in an explored area of less than 1000 miles of a planet only a little smaller than earth.
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