Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

cIclops · 2007-11-06 14:07:04

Record Fifth Planet Orbiting Nearby Star

WASHINGTON - Astronomers have announced the discovery of a fifth planet circling 55 Cancri, a star beyond our solar system. The star now holds the record for number of confirmed extrasolar planets orbiting around it in a planetary system.
55 Cancri is located 41 light-years away in the constellation Cancer and has nearly the same mass and age as our sun. It is easily visible with binoculars. Researchers discovered the fifth planet using the Doppler technique, in which a planet's gravitational tug is detected by the wobble it produces in the parent star. NASA and the National Science Foundation funded the research.
"It is amazing to see our ability to detect extra-solar planets growing," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "We are finding solar systems with a richness of planets and a variety of planetary types comparable to our own."
The newly discovered planet weighs about 45 times the mass of Earth and may be similar to Saturn in its composition and appearance. The planet is the fourth from 55 Cancri and completes one orbit every 260 days. Its location places the planet in the "habitable zone," a band around the star where the temperature would permit liquid water to pool on solid surfaces. The distance from its star is approximately 72.5 million miles, slightly closer than Earth to our sun, but it orbits a star that is slightly fainter.
"The gas-giant planets in our solar system all have large moons," said Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University and lead author of a paper that will appear in a future issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "If there is a moon orbiting this new, massive planet, it might have pools of liquid water on a rocky surface."
Fischer, University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Geoff Marcy and a team of collaborators discovered this planet after careful observation of 2,000 nearby stars with the Shane telescope at Lick Observatory located on Mt. Hamilton, east of San Jose, Calif., and the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. More than 320 velocity measurements were required to disentangle signals from each of the planets.
"This is the first quintuple-planet system," Fischer said. "This system has a dominant gas giant planet in an orbit similar to our Jupiter. Like the planets orbiting our sun, most of these planets reside in nearly circular orbits."
"Discovering these five planets took us 18 years of continuous observations at Lick Observatory, starting before any extrasolar planets were known anywhere in the universe," said Marcy, who contributed to the paper. "But finding five extrasolar planets orbiting a star is only one small step. Earth-like planets are the next destination."
The planets around 55 Cancri are somewhat different from those orbiting our sun. The innermost planet is believed to be about the size of Neptune and whips around the star in less than three days at a distance from the star of approximately 3.5 million miles. The second planet is a little smaller than Jupiter and completes one orbit every 14.7 days at a distance from the star of approximately 11.2 million miles. The third planet, similar in mass to Saturn, completes one orbit every 44 days at a distance from the star of approximately 22.3 million miles. The newly discovered planet is the fourth planet. The fifth and most distant known planet is four times the mass of Jupiter and completes one orbit every 14 years at a distance from the star of approximately 539.1 million miles. It is still the only known Jupiter-like gas giant to reside as far away from its star as our own Jupiter.
"This work marks an exciting next step in the search for worlds like our own," said Michael Briley, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation. "To go from the first detections of planets around sun-like stars to finding a full-fledged solar system with a planet in a habitable zone in just 12 years is an amazing accomplishment and a testament to the years of hard work put in by these investigators."

publiusr · 2007-11-09 11:39:48

I love to visit that system--if only I could.

Terraformer · 2007-11-10 07:17:46

You will be able to visit if you are currently less than 70 so you won't die before we develop the tech to get within a fraction of lightspeed.

cIclops · 2007-11-10 08:08:08

It will be a very fast visit (about 1 hour) unless this new tech is able to slow the spacecraft down as well as accelerate it close to light speed - 41 LY is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way.

Terraformer · 2007-11-10 12:41:41

Easy. Get up to speed and start deceleration half way there. If only it was possible to alter gravity so we could accelerate hyper fast without worrying about the Gs...

Martian Republic · 2007-11-11 08:47:53

Easy. Get up to speed and start deceleration half way there. If only it was possible to alter gravity so we could accelerate hyper fast without worrying about the Gs...

For us to do that, we would have to discover new physical laws of the Universe and be able to control them. We would also have to discover new fuel supplies that could be used to push a star ship to the speed of light or faster so we could get there in a timely fashion to visit that star system. So that would mean that we would have to have a crash development program to develop all the technologies that would have to go into building that star ship like artificial gravity, the power to restrain rest mass to light speed and from light speed back to virtually a rest mass in the other solar system. Then have an energy supply to power the whole thing. At the present time, that not possible with what we know about the Universe and those physical laws that we would have to deal with to do that.

Larry,

Terraformer · 2007-11-11 10:57:26

We wouldn't have to discover new laws of physics; just learn how to control. If the Heim drive idea's correct we could nuetralise the gravity effect caused by accelerating at 1000s of Gs. If objects gain mass as they approach light speed, we'd convert that into energy and use it to propel ourselves even faster. Wait till I'm a physicist, read my sig.

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#1 2007-11-06 14:07:04

Re: Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

#2 2007-11-09 11:39:48

Re: Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

#3 2007-11-10 07:17:46

Re: Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

#4 2007-11-10 08:08:08

Re: Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

#5 2007-11-10 12:41:41

Re: Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

#6 2007-11-11 08:47:53

Re: Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

#7 2007-11-11 10:57:26

Re: Fifth planet discovered around nearby star system

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