Astronomers Announce 5-Planet System 145
An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers have detected a record-breaking 5th planet orbiting the star 55 Cancri, 41 light years distant. This planet orbits within the 'habitable zone,' where water could presumably exist, but it's probably another gas giant like Saturn, so any liquid water would have to be on a moon. There's still a big gap between this planet and the outermost planet where no planets have been detected yet, so there could yet be a rocky planet in the system. The lead researcher said he's optimistic that 'continued observations will reveal a rocky planet within five years.'"
What Record? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Record? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Record? (Score:5, Insightful)
To a very, very close approximation, we're missing all the extrasolar planets. We've yet to discover a single one outside our own Galaxy :-)
Re:SETI, and contact them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Curious But Meaningless (Score:3, Insightful)
Come to think of it, I will never meet you in person, so I guess you're meaningless too.
Re:SETI, and contact them? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll see your what if, and raise you one:
What if 50 years from now we receive a tight-beam laser transmission inviting us to join the galactic survival club and, BTW, whatever you do, don't send out radio signals to random planets, the neighborhood has been littered with alarms by the berserkers.
Uh-oh, the captcha is "deaths".
Re:SETI, and contact them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Downside, they're judging us all by William Shatner.
Extrasolar simply means beyond our solar system (Score:2, Insightful)
The Milky Way galaxy (ours) contains ~200 billion stars, each one a potential solar system.
Obligatory wikipedia article listing some of the discovered extrasolar planets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet [wikipedia.org]