Smallest Planet Outside Our Solar System Found

mikkl666 writes "Following the recent story about the discovery of the youngest planet outside our solar system, Spanish researchers now report that they found the smallest exoplanet observed so far. The planet, known as GJ 436c, was found by analyzing distortions in the orbit of another, larger planet, and its radius is only about 50 percent greater than the Earth's. The scientists are confident that their new method will lead to a series of further discoveries: 'I think we are very close, just a few years away, from detecting a planet like Earth.' You can also reference the the original paper online for further details."

Re:Make up your mind

[calebt3]

Nevermind... need to read summaries better.

Bearing in mind...

[localroger]

...from this distance and with this technique, Venus would qualify as "a planet like Earth." It would truly suck to be the person who hiked 50 light-years to find that out.

just goes to show how crazy science is

[jollyreaper]

I remember watching my Star Trek and seeing them fly their starships right up to star systems because that was the only way to explore them. Shit, I suppose you'd still have to put sats in orbit and probes on the surface to do detailed science but holy shit, detecting planets from lightyears away, even making guesses as to habitability by looking at star type, planetary orbit, even getting spectrographic readings from the atmosphere. I never would have believe it in a book. Yeah, hyperdrives I could buy but not this. Reality is stranger than fiction. Heh, it's just like all of the scifi guys assuming that ambulatory robots would be the easy part and making them think fast and speak well would be the tough part.

Re:Whats the use

[hansraj]

Do you honestly believe that all technology either should develop "all at once" or should follow your chronology? Besides the point of looking deep into the space is not entirely to find a place for humanity to go. Just understanding the universe is a goal worth pursuing. At least that's how some other people view science and fortunately I should say.

Re:just goes to show how crazy science is

[geekoid]

If we could bounce around from star to star within a week, that's how we would do it to.

Re:The article is wrong

[Kjella]

This, ladies and gentlemen is why people don't RTFA. There's much better and accurate information in the comments. Can this mean that if the mass is higher but the density much lower, there could be earth-class gravity there? Would sound like a pretty good start to me...

Re:Hal Clement

[Toonol]

Remember, if you hold density constant, an increase in radius translates to a power of three increase in volume, because it's expanding through three dimensions. A 50% increase in radius would result in a (1.5 ^ 3) 3.375 increase in mass. So, a five-fold increase in mass isn't that unreasonable; it's only a 48% increase in density. That's a lot, but you don't have to resort to white-dwarf style matter densities.

At 5x mass and 1.5x radius, I believe the surface gravity would only be about 2.2 g's.

Re:Question for rocket scientists

[iNaya]

I'm sure we'd have no problem with that sort of technology by the time we actually reached that planet.

Re:Question for rocket scientists

[cjsm]

Well, besides humans, this would also aply to any intelligent life that might evolve on such a planet. Would rocket technology be sufficient to get off a planet with two or three times the gravity of earth? At point would the gravity be too great for rocket technology to work?

I'm sure we'd have no problem with that sort of technology by the time we actually reached that planet.

Well, that's sort of a meaningless answer, since your talking about technology that doesn't exist either in reality or in theory. Why not talk about flying unicorns to solve the problem? Its just as unreal. No offense to you, but I'm mystified your answer was modded insightful. I've got news for the mods. WARP DRIVE DOESN'T EXIST, AND MAY NEVER EXIST. Just because its on Star Trek doesn't make it real. Warp drive violates the known laws of physics, and is likely impossible.