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According to the BBC, the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) in Chile has discovered an alien gas giant, 51 Eridani b, about 97 light years away. An article in Science reports that the GPI is “an instrument designed for direct imaging.”
From the BBC:
The new world, known as 51 Eridani b, is only 20 million years old - a toddler by astronomical standards.
"Previous search methods couldn't find systems like our own, with small, rocky worlds close to their star and large, gas giants at large distances like Jupiter and Saturn," said… James Larkin, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
The new gas giant is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter. Until now, the gas giant planets that have been directly detected have been much larger - five to 13 times Jupiter's mass.
It orbits a little further from its parent star than Saturn does from the Sun and has a temperature of 430C (800F), hot enough to melt lead, but still rather cold compared with other alien gas giants, which reach temperatures above 540C (1,000F).
The W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii reports that they have “confirmed the discovery.” More from the article:
"51 Eri b is the first one that's cold enough and close enough to the star that it could have indeed formed right where it is the old-fashioned way," [Bruce] Macintosh said. "This planet really could have formed the same way Jupiter did – the whole solar system could be a lot like ours."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:48PM
Good. It gives me hope for the future of space exploration when I see that we're starting to find planets around systems that are only a few tens of light years away. It mean that, theoretically, there may be some that will become reachable within a human lifetime (for those waiting back on Earth) without any kind of FTL propulsion. I completely understand that our current and immediately foreseeable propulsion technologies are still only achieving tiny fractions of the speed of light but it's still nice when the scope of what's physically possible for humanity to achieve gets a nice boost.
In a way, finding more and more exoplanets mirrors the revelations in the past that there were other continents beyond the oceans and that they had their own life and then that there were other planets and stars and that we weren't the centre of the universe. I get a kick out of the idea that humanity might be even less unique than many of its members would still like to believe.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.