A University of California-led research team has discovered 28 new planets deep in the Milky Way, circling stars not unlike our own - leading them to conclude that our solar system may not be so special after all.
"The sun and Earth is not a rarity," said Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy at UC-Berkeley, estimating that there may be at least 20 million to 30 million solar systems within the Milky Way galaxy. "A family of planets orbiting a single star is a very common occurrence."
If that is the case, then the likelihood of other Earth-like planets becomes greater.
The newly found planets, reported Monday at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, increase to 236 the number of known planets outside our solar system, called "exoplanets."
That brings the total found so far to 236 planets outside our own solar system.
Awesome
"Would you mind not standing on my chest, my hats on fire." - The Doctor
Brent wrote:Another really cool website, has a catalog of all known exoplanets - http://exoplanets.org/
Hey Brent, I just forwarded this to my brother and his children who LOVE this stuff. IT is really amazing to think about..and sure beats thinking about daily grind. Hey I saw on the news last night that a bunch of people saw UFO's in Texas. The government said it was F14's doing a practice drill, but other people said YES they saw the F14's also.....chasing the UFO's. HA.. I guess as long as they keep denying it it will continue to be false. I dont know where I stand on the whole UFO stuff. I guess if I were a UFO I would see no reason to be so secretive.
When you look into the sky, you only see a small portion of space, and yet, the stars are uncountable. To think that we are the only planet with life is not logical. I have always thought that the problem was the ability to travel the vast distances...
Ken wrote:When you look into the sky, you only see a small portion of space, and yet, the stars are uncountable. To think that we are the only planet with life is not logical. I have always thought that the problem was the ability to travel the vast distances...
I like telling people that it is like a vast field the size of earth if not larger and only 1 seedling ever growing, just doesn't make sense. Im sure everyone has seen the deep hubble shot where they pointed it into a patch of sky (1 tenth the diameter of the moon as viewed from earth) and got this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field
Respectfully, Donna
