Gliese 581 gets the smallest planet ever discovered

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MeteorWayne

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Now it has an "e"

SDC article: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... lanet.html

The lightest exoplanet yet discovered — only about twice the mass of Earth — has been detected, astronomers announced today.


"With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet,"said Xavier Bonfils of Grenoble Observatory in France, a member of the team that made the discovery, which was announced at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.


The planet was found in the famous system Gliese 581 and has been dubbed "Gliese 581 e." It was detected using the low-mass-exoplanet hunter HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6-metre ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.


Measurements with the telescope also helped to refine the orbit of the new planet's solar system sibling, a planet called Gliese 581 d, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist.


"The holy grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone' — a region around the host star with the right conditions for water to be liquid on a planet's surface," said Michel Mayor from the Geneva Observatory, who led the European team that made the finding.


Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star — located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra — in just 3.15 days. Being so close to its host star, the planet is not in the habitable zone.
 
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nimbus

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A global sea thousands of kilometers deep. How cool would that be ? :)
 
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MeteorWayne

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Not so much if you need to (and can't) swim. To quote Bill Cosby quoting God to Noah...

"How long can you tread water?" :)
 
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nimbus

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Hehe.. A truly beautiful thing even if you only skim the surface from your ship.
 
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dragon04

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At 7 Earth masses, your ship better have some serious engines. Escape velocity would be a tad high. ;)
 
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nimbus

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Well, I console myself with the thought that we'll probably have that one figured out by the time we make it over there to poke at the water with our toes :)
 
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dragon04

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nimbus":o8qvw2kr said:
Well, I console myself with the thought that we'll probably have that one figured out by the time we make it over there to poke at the water with our toes :)

Depending on the mass of 581d, that could be a rather dangerous endeavor.
 
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