Another Earthlike Planet Out There?

Astronomers say that they have found a star like our sun that hosts five planets nearly 127 light-years away. The European Southern Observator telescope in Chile used the radial velocity method. This method looks for periodic shifts in the sky that are caused by gravitational pulls of other worlds. They found five strong wobbles corresponding to planets between 13 and 25 times Earth's mass orbiting the star HD 10180. What’s surprising about this discovery, however, is that this system may look almost exactly like ours, in terms of numbers and layout. There may be a possibility of there being 2 planets that look like Earth and Saturn. The Saturn-like planet would be far out but the Earth-like planet would be closer than the rest. However, if there really was this “earth” planet, then it would be too close to the sun and would become something like Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Lo. Plus this system does not have a planet like Jupiter.

This article relates to science/ biology concepts because it studies what other stars and planets are out there that we haven’t yet discovered yet. This also relates to science because scientists are still out there trying to find more and more stars and planets out there. We are still trying to find if there are really extraterrestrial beings out there. Also by learning how other stars and planets are formed, we can learn more about our own solar system and how our earth came to be.

The discovery of this is very important because the observations of the interactions between other stars and planets can give us information about our own solar system. “Scientifically, the find highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research: the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets. Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the system,” says team leader Christophe Lovis.

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/breakingorbit/2010/08/new-solar-system-planets-harps.html