MessageToEagle.com -
It is every astronomers' dream to find an Earth-like with liquid water and perfect conditions for life, as we know it.
This is why the recent discovery is so exciting.
An international group of astronomers have detected a new exoplanet that appears to be very similar to Earth. Could life exist there?
Located about 22 light years away from the Earth, orbiting a red dwarf, the exoplanet called Gliese 667Cc lies in the habitable zone,
which means life could actually exist there.
Red dwarf stars are the most common stars in the neighborhood of the sun. Usually they host planets called gas giants which are not
primarily composed of rock matter.
Guillem Anglada-Escudé from the University Göttingen, Germany, is one of the main astronomers,
who helped to confirm the existence of Gliese 667Cc which is a solid planet with approximately 4.5 times the mass of the Earth.
The scientists have calculated that Gliese 667Cc receives 10 % less light from its red dwarf star than the Earth from the Sun.
Nevertheless most of the light is in the infrared area.
Therefore, the new planet receives nearly the same amount of energy as the Earth.
This means water on the planet could be liquid and the surface temperatures are expected to be similar to those of the Earth.
Artistic impression of an Earth-like planet somewhere in the Universe. Image credit: NASA
Steven Vogt is an astronomer from the University of California, Santa Cruz, whowas involved in the discovery of Gliese 667Cc,
said: "It's the Holy Grail of exo-planet research to find a planet orbiting around a star at the right distance so it´s not too close where
it would lose all its water and not too far where it would freeze. It's right there in the habitable zone - there's no question or discussion about it.
It is not on the edge. It is right in there."
About twenty years ago scientists were still arguing about the existence of planets beyond our solar system.
But the search for extrasolar planets has made giant leaps: in 1995 Michel Mayor and his partner Didier Queloz have published the discovery of the
first extrasolar planet, which orbits around a Sun-like star, called 51 Pegasi b. This discovery was a milestone in astronomical research.
Since then astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 760 planets beyond our solar system; only four of them are believed to be in a habitable zone.
Astronomers now believe that habitable planets could be much more common in our universe than previously assumed.
That means life as we know it could also be widespread across the Universe.
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MessageToEagle.com -
It is every astronomers' dream to find an Earth-like with liquid water and perfect conditions for life, as we know it.
This is why the recent discovery is so exciting.
A supermassive black hole is not the best place to live. However, there are
physicists who consider the possibility of life existing in such extreme places and probably already inhabited by some most advanced races - super aliens.
This exoplanet has a mass of 6.5 Earth-masses and a radius of 2.7 Earth-radii, and it orbits a small M-dwarf star (its diameter is only 21% of the Sun's).
They used the Hubble infrared spectrometer to observe the planet as it transited across the face of the star; as it did so,
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A team of astrophysicists from Germany, France and Italy have discovered in the constellation Leo is an old star.
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The coldest class of stars have temperatures as cool as the human body.
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Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
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