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New Technique Puts Exoplanets on the Scale
Meet Kepler-22b, an exoplanet with an Earth-like radius in the habitable zone of its host star. Unfortunately its mass remains unknown. Image Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Astronomers constantly probe the skies for the unexpected. They search for unforeseen bumps in their data — signaling an unknown planet orbiting a star, a new class of astronomical objects or even a new set of physical laws that will rewrite the old ones. They are willing to embrace new ideas that may replace the wisdom of years past.
But there’s one exception to the rule: the search for Earth 2.0. Here we don’t want to find the unexpected, but the expected. We want to find a planet so similar to our own, we can almost call it home.
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Read the rest of New Technique Puts Exoplanets on the Scale (519 words)
© Shannon Hall for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: Astronomy, Extrasolar Planets, mass
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/109196/new-technique-puts-exoplanets-on-the-scale/
