Detailed data about the smallest planet ever found outside our solar system suggest it is a rocky “super-Earth” world very like our own, European astronomers said on Wednesday.
The so-called exoplanet, whose initial discovery was announced in February, has a mass five times that of Earth, which when combined with its radius suggests it has a solid surface and a density similar to our terrestrial home.
“This is science at its thrilling and amazing best,” said Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz, the leader of the team that made the observations.
About 330 exoplanets have been found orbiting other stars besides the Earth’s sun, most of which are gas giants with characteristics similar to Neptune, which has a mass 17 times that of earth.
But the planet at the center of Wednesday’s study — called CoRoT-7b — is different. It orbits only 2.5 million kilometers from its star once every 20 hours and has a high temperature between 1,000 and 1,500 Celsius, meaning no life could survive there. Its radius is about 80 percent greater than Earth’s.
In a report in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, the scientists said their findings put CoRoT-7b into the category of “super-Earth” exoplanets.
About a dozen such “super-Earths” have been detected, but this is the first time that the density has been measured for such a small exoplanet, they said.
The findings are important because they represent the first solid evidence about the mass and density of such a small planet.
To get their measurements, the astronomers used what they dubbed “the best exoplanet-hunting device in the world,” called a high accuracy radial velocity planet searcher (HARPS) — which is a spectrograph attached to the European Southern Observatory’s telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile.
“Even though HARPS is certainly unbeaten when it comes to detecting small exoplanets, the measurements of CoRoT-7b proved to be so demanding that we had to gather 70 hours of observations,” said Francois Bouchy, another of the European-wide group of scientists who conducted the study.
Fellow astronomer Artie Hatzes said the work represented a “tour de force” of astronomical measurements.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other