paging Dr. Alcubierre, paging Dr. Miguel Alcubierre.
Posted on 04/08/2012 12:09:45 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In 2010, a star 127 light-years away stunned the world -- it had become the largest star system beyond our own, playing host to five, possibly seven, alien worlds. Now, the star (called HD 10180) is back in the headlines; it may actually have nine exoplanets orbiting it.
Interestingly, HD 10180 is a yellow dwarf star very much like the sun, so this discovery has drawn many parallels with our own Solar System. It is a multi-planetary system surrounding a sun-like star. But it is also a very alien place with an assortment of worlds spread over wildly different orbits.
It is believed that one of HD 10180's exoplanets is small -- although astronomers only know the planets' masses, not their physical size or composition. The smallest world weighs-in at 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it a "super-Earth."
When it was first revealed that HD 10180 was a multi-planetary system, astronomers of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) detected six exoplanets gravitationally "tugging" on their host star. Using the "radial velocity" exoplanet detection method, the astronomers watched the star's wobble to decipher up to seven worlds measuring between 1.4 to 65 times the mass of Earth.
Five exoplanets were found to be 12-to-25 times the mass of Earth -- "Neptune-like" masses -- while another was detected orbiting in the outermost reaches of the system with a mass of 65 Earth masses (a "Saturn-like" world), taking around 2,200 days to complete one orbit.
But now, in addition to verifying the signal of the small 1.4 Earth-mass world, there appears to be another two small alien worlds.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Good Lord those Star Trek ships are slow - Culture ships routinely do over 90 lights and hour ...
I wonder what they'll think of "The Village People"?
paging Dr. Alcubierre, paging Dr. Miguel Alcubierre.
Not exactly!
I think it will be funny when in 200 years or so, everything accepted today as science fact will be demolished as foolish and dangerously stupid.
Sun's twin may be home to 9 alien planets -- ANI -- Washington, May 01, 2012
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