More like this
New Earth-like planet may be key in search for life
Corot-9b, 1,500 light years away, is bound to become the ‘Rosetta stone’ in search for alien life
Scientists have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a distant sun which is being hailed as the "Rosetta stone" in the search for other places in the galaxy where life could be supported. Named Corot-9b, the planet is the size of Jupiter, with an orbit comparable to Mercury's – and what has been dubbed a "temperate climate".
The newly-identified planet is just one of 400 'exoplanets' – planets which orbit their own sun, not ours – so far discovered by astronomers. Like dozens of those, its temperature is broadly similar to that of planets in our own solar system.
Corot-9b is important, though, because it is the first temperate exoplanet which can be studied in depth – as it just happens to be aligned with the Earth in such a way that, from our perspective, it passes across the face of its sun every time it makes an orbit.
The new planet's sun is a star in the constellation Serpens, 1,500 light years away from earth – making Corot-9b our near neighbour in a galaxy with a diameter of 100,000 light years. Corot-9b orbits its star every 95 days, giving astronomers three or four opportunities to measure its geological make-up and temperature every Earth year. Each 'transit' (passage across the face of its star) lasts for about eight hours on Earth.
The discovery, revealed in the latest issue of the science journal, Nature, was made by a team of 60 international scientists using the European satellite, CoRoT, and then confirmed by telescopes including the European Southern Observatory. An astronomer there, Claire Moutou, said: "This is a normal, temperate exoplanet just like dozens we already know, but this is the first whose properties we can study in depth. It is bound to become a Rosetta stone in exoplanet research."
Research into earth-like exoplanets, sometimes also called extrasolar planets, has been described by the European Space Agency (ESA) as "one of the most exciting goals in modern astrophysics". While nobody is claiming that Corot-9b might support life, the ESA does cite the "detection of biomarkers", i.e. signs of life, as one of its ultimate aims. ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
So much fakery in science today. It's one thing to give an artist's impression, but this is an artist's impression of a view through a camera lens close to the star as you can 'see' the lens flare and reflections of the iris in the lens elements and chromatic aberration. The whole image is completely fake, but some readers might actually believe that such images are real, or possible. It reminds me of the fakery in Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' - use of Hollywood CGI fooling viewers into thinking they were seeing something real. No-one, no telescope, and no camera has ever visually imaged an exoplanet, or a transit across a star's disk since disks can't be resolved.