| Title | Total of Four Earth-Sized Planets Detected Around Tau Ceti | |
| Date | Thursday August 10 2017, @06:54AM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the get-your-tickets,-now! dept. | ||
Astronomers have refined estimates of exoplanets around Tau Ceti, finding four rocky planets around the Sun-like star:
A new study by an international team of astronomers reveals that four Earth-sized planets orbit the nearest sun-like star, tau Ceti, which is about 12 light years away and visible to the naked eye. These planets have masses as low as 1.7 Earth mass, making them among the smallest planets ever detected around nearby sun-like stars. Two of them are super-Earths located in the habitable zone of the star, meaning they could support liquid surface water.
[...] According to lead author Fabo Feng of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, the researchers are getting tantalizingly close to the 10-centimeter-per-second limit required for detecting Earth analogs. "Our detection of such weak wobbles is a milestone in the search for Earth analogs and the understanding of the Earth's habitability through comparison with these analogs," Feng said. "We have introduced new methods to remove the noise in the data in order to reveal the weak planetary signals."
The outer two planets around tau Ceti are likely to be candidate habitable worlds, although a massive debris disc around the star probably reduces their habitability due to intensive bombardment by asteroids and comets.
Color difference makes a difference: four planet candidates around tau Ceti
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printed from SoylentNews, Total of Four Earth-Sized Planets Detected Around Tau Ceti on 2024-04-20 04:27:09