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"Earth's Bigger Cousin" Discovered
Smallest extrasolar planet yet detected a rocky world that's relatively nearby
A rocky planet that's the most Earthlike yet has been discovered just 15 light years away.
The planet, 7.5 times as massive as Earth, travels in a nearly circular orbit just two million miles from its parent star, Gliese 876.
"This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," says Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, who helped find the planet. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin."
Team leader Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley says that the planet's discovery helps answer an ancient question.
"Over 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus argued about whether there were other Earthlike planets," he says. "Now, for the first time, we have evidence for a rocky planet around a normal star."
Life support?
The new planet is part of a system known to include two other Jupiter-sized bodies.
The planet is unlikely to harbor life, as it circles its star in two days so closely that its surface temperature is likely 200ºC to 400ºC.
But the ability to detect the small planet's influence on its parent star gives researchers confidence that they can find even smaller rocky planets more hospitable to life.
Butler and Marcy detected the first planet around in Gliese 876 1998 and another in 2001.
Three years ago, data suggested the smaller, third planet orbited the star.
A paper on the planet has been submitted to the The Astrophysical Journal.
The planet's discovery was reported in a press conference at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.
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