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Published online 15 December 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1307
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Finding distant Earths faster
Habitable extrasolar planets could be found easier than ever thanks to new technology.
Nearly a decade after astronomers first detected an extrasolar gas giant moving across the face of its parent star, a team of astronomers report that a new camera is giving them the sensitivity they need to spot planets nearly as small as Earth.
The team observed a planet — WASP-10b — around three times the mass of Jupiter orbiting the star WASP-10, about 300 light years from Earth and measured precisely how much the star dimmed as the planet passed in front of it.
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Whether wet super-Earths will be habitable is a puzzler. They'll, in all probability, be wetter than Earth and thus have very limited dry-land, and probably thick mantles of high-pressure ice. What will sustain nutrient circulation in such vast planetary oceans? Most of Earth's oceans are very nutrient poor and most nutrients come from continental run-off. Submarine volcanism unlike anything seen on Earth will be a major feature of the geophysics - Granitic diapirs rising through thick layers of Ice-VII? Or thick carbonate beds overlying the Ice-VII? Super-fluid CO2 bubbling up through ice? Sulfur dioxide flows? Centuries from now we might find out.