Rocky world a hot find
February 4th 2009 03:47
A small, rocky, not to mention bloody hot, planet has been discovered orbiting a distant star.
Reports today say it was discovered by the French space telescope Corot (left).
Christened Corot-Exo-7b it is a rare find as it is one of only a handful of planets with a mass similar to our own.
Believed to in fact be the smallest planet detected outside of our solar system, it is almost twice the diameter of Earth.
But, it is nowhere near the size of most of the now 337 so-called 'exoplanets' (those outside our solar system) so far catalogued, which are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn.
Nothing can live on Corot-Exo-7b though, as its temperature is believed to range between a whopping 1000 and 1500 degrees celsius.
It sits so close to its parent sun, it makes a complete orbit every 20 hours. The years really do go by so fast on Corot-Exo-7b.
"It could be a rocky object like Earth and covered with liquid lava," Daniel Rouan, one of the French discoverers, was quoted as saying
"It could also belong to a predicted class of planet consisting of half water and half rock. In that case, it would be a 'sauna planet', considering its extremely high temperature."
LINKS:
BBC News
Science News
wikipedia
IMAGE COURTESY:
http://astrobiology.nasa.gov
Reports today say it was discovered by the French space telescope Corot (left).
Christened Corot-Exo-7b it is a rare find as it is one of only a handful of planets with a mass similar to our own.
Believed to in fact be the smallest planet detected outside of our solar system, it is almost twice the diameter of Earth.
But, it is nowhere near the size of most of the now 337 so-called 'exoplanets' (those outside our solar system) so far catalogued, which are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn.
Nothing can live on Corot-Exo-7b though, as its temperature is believed to range between a whopping 1000 and 1500 degrees celsius.
It sits so close to its parent sun, it makes a complete orbit every 20 hours. The years really do go by so fast on Corot-Exo-7b.
"It could be a rocky object like Earth and covered with liquid lava," Daniel Rouan, one of the French discoverers, was quoted as saying
"It could also belong to a predicted class of planet consisting of half water and half rock. In that case, it would be a 'sauna planet', considering its extremely high temperature."
LINKS:
BBC News
Science News
wikipedia
IMAGE COURTESY:
http://astrobiology.nasa.gov
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