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'Super Earth' 40 lightyears away discovered
by Jaspreet Virk - December 17, 2009 - comments
Though the planet is Earth-like, it is not exactly Earth’s twin. GJ 1214b is 2.7 times larger and about 6.5 times more massive than Earth. It orbits its star once every 38 hours at a distance of only 1.3 million miles
New York, December 17 -- Inching closer to finding a planet outside our solar system that can sustain life, the astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet ever.
The ‘super Earth’ dubbed GJ 1214b, has been found orbiting a star just 40 light-years away from Earth.
Similar to Earth, yet different
Though the planet is Earthlike, it is not exactly Earth’s twin. GJ 1214b is 2.7 times larger and about 6.5 times more massive than Earth. It orbits its star once every 38 hours at a distance of only 1.3 million miles.
It’s made up of three-quarters liquid water with a core of nickel and iron and atmosphere of hydrogen and helium--somewhat similar to Earth.
But despite these similarities, GJ 1214b is enveloped with dark fog of superheated steam and other gases, too hot to sustain life. The astronomers estimate the temperature to be 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Further, the planet is composed mostly of water.
“If you want to describe in one sentence what this planet is, it’s a big, hot ocean,” said David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Though the planet is not habitable, it is much smaller, cooler, and more Earthlike than any other known exoplanet, stated Zachory Berta, a graduate student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was the first to hint at the existence of the planet.
Discovery result of ground-based technologies
The latest discovery comes from a small fleet of 40cm telescopes, highlighting that the ground based equipments are capable of finding Earth-like planets.
The use of such technologies also points to the fact that anyone with a similar telescope and a good quality CCD camera can easily detect the new planet.
The discovery has been published in the Dec. 17 issue of the journal Nature.
GJ 1214b is the latest discovery under the MEarth Project, which studies stars that change brightness. The aim is to find a planet that crosses a star, thus blocking a portion of star’s light and making it dimmer.