Astronomers find Earth-like planet, 15 light years from Earth

U.S. astronomers have revealed that they have stumbled upon the most Earth-like planet outside of the solar system. But the downside is that it appears to be too hot to support any life on it.

The as yet unnamed "extra-solar" planet is orbiting a small star in the constellation Aquarius and is almost 7 1/2 times the size of the Earth. Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington led the team that is credited with this amazing discovery. This is the pair's 107th planet and could turn out to be the most important one as well. Geoffrey Marcy, said, "It took 150 observations of this star to glean the existence of this Earth-like planet. This will definitely be one of our favorite stars from now on."

The pair have worked with new precision measuring instruments for over three years before feeling confident enough to release information about it's existence, "This new technology has revealed the most terrestrial planet ever found. For the first time, we are finding our planetary kin among the stars," Mr. Marcy said.

"The whole planetary system is sort of a miniature of our solar system. The star is small, the orbits are small, and in close is the smallest of them, just as the architecture is in our own solar system, with the smallest planets orbiting inward of the giants. For the first time, we are beginning to find our planetary kin among the stars," he added. His partner, Paul Butler added, "This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets. It’s like Earth’s bigger cousin."

This cousin orbits the star Gliese 876, which is a small, red star known as an M dwarf. The star is about 15 light-years from Earth; one light year being the distance that a beam of light travels in a year. It is roughly estimated to be about 6 trillion miles. Eugene Levy, Rice University's Provost and a professor of astronomy, said, "One of the deepest questions we can ask ourselves is whether the environment in which we live is common or rare. Ultimately, are we alone in the universe? This is a quest as much as anything to understand in a very deep way our place in the universe."

Kevin L. Luhman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said, "But there's this huge range of sizes and distances that we haven't seen yet, and with the upgrades at Keck, this team is probably going to find a large number of them. They're going to have to go back and do the same stars all over again. But I bet they won't mind that." The astronomers have submitted a paper for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

Besides Mr. Marcy and Mr. Butler the team comprised astronomers from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Lick Observatory at UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco State and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

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