Lowest Mass Exoplanet Ever Directly Imaged. Probably. 43
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers announced today that they have taken a direct image of the lowest mass exoplanet ever seen. HD 95086 b has a mass about 4 to 5 times that of Jupiter, and orbits a star 300 light years away that is slightly more massive and hotter than the Sun. The planet is not 100% confirmed, but it appears very likely to be real. If so, it's a hot gas giant, still cooling from its formation less than 20 million years ago. The picture, taken in the infrared, clearly shows the planet, making it one of fewer than a dozen such planets seen in actual telescopic images."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't science wonderful? (Score:4, Insightful)
Twenty years ago, I though that there were relatively few exoplanets - only perhaps one in every few hundred systems having them - and even if there were one nearby, the chances of detecting it, ever, were small. Now we are knee deep in exoplanets, we know that large numbers of stars can have them, and we can even see them (probably). What I thought would never happen is fast transitioning from surprising to mundane.
Which just goes to prove the to Clarke's law, that almost nothing is impossible, in due course. Once we couldn't see them. Now we can see them, but fear we will never visit them. But history shows that visiting will come, in time - provided we have enough time.
Re:Probably pretty cold (Score:3, Insightful)
Being stuck in the outskirts of the unfashionable arm of the milky way does reduce our chances of being wiped out by gamma ray bursts, black holes etc though. You wouldn't want to live near most of the "interesting" parts of the galaxy.
Sublight self-replicating probes could explore the galaxy for us (eventually), although without FTL comms it would largely be a one-way message to any other intelligent races out there.