FOR ALIEN LIFE-SEEKERS, NEW REASON TO HOPE
Twinkle, twinkle, all you stars
With your Earths, Neptunes and Mars.
I sing hello across the void
To your Pluto, O.K., Plutoid.
Whatever the name, the laws demand it
You’re a star. Show me your planet.
By NATALIE ANGIER
For those of us who still mourn the demise of the “Star Trek” franchise and its vision of the cosmos as a thrillingly multicultural if occasionally lethal nightclub, the announcement last week that many Sun-size stars in our galaxy are girdled with Earth-size planets was, frankly, transporting.
The newly detected worlds are far too close to their stellar parents to have much chance of harboring even microbial life, let alone anybody capable of looking boss in spandex. Nevertheless, the discovery gave astronomers and alien life-seekers heart. For one thing, the planets are encouragingly compact. In the past decade, astronomers have found some 250 extrasolar planets, but most have been forbiddingly Jovian: celestial gas bags presumed to have no solid surface and hundreds of times the mass of Earth. In the new report, Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory and his colleagues said they had found 45 planets that were only a few times as massive as our beloved blue base, which means that they, like Earth, are probably built of rock.
Click here for complete NY Times article
Also see - Large Planet X May Lay Beyond Pluto
Astronomers Find Batch of “Super Earths”
http://alienufoparanormal.aliencasebook.com/2008/06.aspx
Come visit the Alien Casebook Forum
http://aliencases.conforums.com
And, come and visit the Alien Casebook "Fringe" Website
http://aliencasebookfringe.blogspot.com
And, come and visit the Alien Casebook Frontier Blog
http://aliencasebook.blogspot.com
IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE ME ADD
TO MY BLOG, SIMPLY SEND AN EMAIL TO
aliencasebook@yahoo.com
CLICK THIS LINK TO SEE ALL OTHER 'BLOG' ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE
Comments