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POPSBATCH OF 50 NEW ALIEN WORLDS DISCOVERED SEE ALSO: Kepler Scientist: 'Galaxy is Rich in Earth-Like Planets' WATCH VIDEO: What does it take to find a planet 63 light-years from Earth? Enter HD 85512b, an exoplanet with a mass 3.6 times that of the Earth. This "super-Earth" is exciting in that not only can it be considered a jumbo-sized Earth, it also orbits its sun-like star (HD 85512) on the inner rim of the star's habitable zone. "This is the lowest-mass confirmed planet discovered by the radial velocity method that potentially lies in the habitable zone of its star, and the second low-mass planet discovered by HARPS inside the habitable zone," said Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany and Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Boston, who is an expert on the habitability of exoplanets. SEE ALSO: Milky Way Stuffed with 50 Billion Alien Worlds
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POPSNeptune May Have Eaten A Planet & Stolen It's Moon "Neptune's peculiar moon Triton may once have been paired with this hypothetical super-Earth, Desch and colleague Simon Porter now say. Triton is larger than Pluto, and it moves through its orbit in the opposite direction to Neptune's rotation, suggesting that it did not form there but was captured instead." Great article...
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POPSNew Exoplanet Is Near Habitable Zone more: If this Jupiter-like planet has a moon, that satellite’s rocky surface could be habitable, says Sara Seager of MIT. But a planetary system closer to Earth would offer a better chance of searching for the tiny gravitational tug of such a moon, Seager adds. “This discovery adds weight to the fact that we know that planets often orbit in or close to the habitable zone, so we should not be surprised when the Kepler or COROT satellites or some ground-based search makes the claim for the first habitable Earth or super-Earth,” comments Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, finding such a planet is encouraging news, Seager says, because “where there is gold dust there might be a gold mine.”
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POPSTrio Of Super-Earths: Harvest Of Low-mass Exoplanets Discovered With HARPS "Clearly these planets are only the tip of the iceberg," says Mayor. "The analysis of all the stars studied with HARPS shows that about one third of all solar-like stars have either super-Earth or Neptune-like planets with orbital periods shorter than 50 days." A planet in a tight, short-period orbit is indeed easier to find than one in a wide, long-period orbit. "It is most probable that there are many other planets present: not only super-Earth and Neptune-like planets with longer periods, but also Earth-like planets that we cannot detect yet. Add to it the Jupiter-like planets already known, and you may well arrive at the conclusion that planets are ubiquitous," concludes Udry.
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POPSThe first planet that could support life as we know it! The newly found "super-Earth," about five times more massive than our planet, is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the sun. As a result, its year lasts only 13 Earth days. It has been named , named 581 c. Astronomers estimate that the world's surface temperature would therefore be between 0 and 40 degrees. Water would thus be liquid...
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