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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday April 30 2017, @12:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the does-he-have-a-wingman? dept.

An extremely cold and relatively small exoplanet has been discovered using gravitational microlensing. The planet orbits an ultracool red or brown dwarf at a distance of around 1.16 AU:

Scientists have discovered a new planet with the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at the same distance that we orbit our sun. The planet is likely far too cold to be habitable for life as we know it, however, because its star is so faint. But the discovery adds to scientists' understanding of the types of planetary systems that exist beyond our own.

[...] The newly discovered planet, called OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, aids scientists in their quest to figure out the distribution of planets in our galaxy. An open question is whether there is a difference in the frequency of planets in the Milky Way's central bulge compared to its disk, the pancake-like region surrounding the bulge. OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is located in the disk, as are two planets previously detected through microlensing by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Popsci press couldn't resist calling it "Hoth", although it would be even less hospitable.

Also at CNN and Scientific American (Space.com).

An Earth-mass Planet in a 1 au Orbit around an Ultracool Dwarf (open, DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa6d09) (DX)


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:59AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:59AM (#501791)

    I doubt NASA is honest, and believe they intentionally misreport space.

    My hypothesis is that they cannot really go to space, and same applies for the other space agencies. That's why they keep talking with big words about space, to keep alive the impression that they are experts in something impossible to verify, until recently.

    They promote "we humans evolved and we started exploring space 70 years ago" but does the place you live in look like a space-age place? 70 years, really?

    Indicators of NASA trying to discharge their bill include the "bubbles in space" incident, forcing them in retreat. NASA sells this as "private initiative will take over" giving the stage to "people on Mars" and "drones mining asteroids", even though the actual real-life machinery and labs do not look as convincing as the accompanying artistic impressions of machinery and labs. This is the only constant element for the 70 years of humanity's golden space age.

    "Going to space" is a gold rush that involves acquiring a huge strategic potential and unlimited resources, and swarms of space plumbers, engineers, colonists, navigators, craftsmen, healers and more in the most epic mobilization humanly performed.

    Human pioneering is an unstoppable urge. If it was possible for a space rush to ever happen, it would have, because humans have been ripe for this for 70 years now. Instead, humans only get a handful of bad pictures. NASA never went to space, and now with the internet it is becoming impossible for them to back their claim that they "go to space" and this is becoming more and more obvious.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @06:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @06:14AM (#501802)

    Does the place you live in look like a space-age place?

    I've never lived in a "space-age" place before, so I wouldn't know. What should a "space-age" place look like?

    I have a PADD (tablet) acting as an aux display for my main computing device. I can ask the ship's computer (Wolfram Alpha) lots of stuff, and it will calculate the answer and show me its work, not even just for mathematical subjects, either. I carry a communicator (cell phone) that can operate on most of the Earth's surface. I can load up the global information network and access comms about the news (Soylent). I can do my grocery shopping without leaving my house, and buy just about anything else I'd need just by sending out a comm.

    That's a lot of space-age stuff! So I'm pretty sure that a spage-age place looks a lot like this. What were you expecting?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:03AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:03AM (#501804) Journal

    does the place you live in look like a space-age place?

    Let's see …

    • People pointing satellite dishes to the sky? Check.
    • People using satellite signals for navigation? Check.
    • Visible satellites on the sky? [heavens-above.com] Check.

    So yes, it does look like a space-age place.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.