Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 16 June 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.895
News
Three-of-a-kind planets found
Survey for 'super-Earths' finds worlds like ours may be common.
Astronomers have discovered a family of three planets, ranging from just four to nine times as massive as Earth, orbiting a Sun-like star 42 light-years away. The planets zip around their star incredibly quickly — one does it in 4 days — which means they hug the star too closely for known types of life to be comfortable.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
Given the increasing evidence that a lot of Earth-like planets may exist, the questions of 1)why aren't we hearing from inhabitants in some way (at least radiation emissions, etc) and 2)should we risk letting them hear us? seems to be becoming increasingly relevant. If there is a galactic Empire, it sure is polite and quiet.
I once read a WW II account of some Polish Jewish families being smuggled out of Nazi Germany under some hay in a wagon. As the wagon approached a checkpoint, a woman was holding her infant who was crying incessantly, and she had to smother her own child to death to prevent his cries from causing everyone in the wagon to be killed. It may very well be likely that the Earthlings EMF radiation innocently crying out to anyone nearby, may be the equivilent of an infant crying out under a load of hay.
"...why aren't we hearing from inhabitants in some way (at least radiation emissions, etc)." They all have cable?
Sounding an exciting thing was attracted me. I figure many nations should be cooperative to boost this massive project including communication technique,driving force etc..
Our need to find a new planet is getting much more urgent daily. I fear we are killing our own, and this planet on which we live will NOT be around for our grandchildren's grandchildren.
Or maybe this is Eden (at least for the foreseeable future) afterall. Do you ever marvel at how perfectly our planet Earth is positioned, in the vastness of the cosmos, to develop and sustain life? Food for thought, especially pious reflection.
As to Eden? While there are certainly conditions that make life easier, many different initial conditions are likely to give rise to vastly different strategies of increasingly efficient self replication, that is, life.
You obviously forgot to mention that Professor Queloz is a researcher at the University of Geneva. Had he been a researcher at a UK of US university, you would not have committed the oversight.
Being quiet won't help. It didn't help to save anyone from terrestrial empires such as Alexander the great, Mongols, Romans, European powers in the renaissance, etc. People walk anywhere they want, and serious predators look everywhere. We must not be afraid. I believe ETs (if they exist) are of the evil and friendly kind, with societies as complex as ours, with people debating the same things about us. If they are in fact an evil empire that is going to crush Earth when they discover us because of radio emissions, then let they come, and let's be destroyed without fear!
Rocky Earth-like planets and ordinary meteorites are composed mostly of Fe, O, Ni, Si, S, Mg and Ca - elements with even atomic numbers and high nuclear stability. Extra-solar planets that are made of these products of deep stellar nucleosynthesis will probably be found to orbit close to the supernova remnant, as they do in pulsar planets [1] and here in the solar system [2]. REFERENCES: [1] A. Wolszczan and D. A. Frail, Nature 355 (1992) 145-147; A. Wolszczan, Science 264 (1994) pp. 538-542. [2] O. K. Manuel and D. D. Sabu, Science 195 (1977) 208-209; O. Manuel, S. A. Kamat and M. Mozina, AIP Conf. Proceedings, vol. 822 (2006) pp. 206-225 http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0510001v1