Planets Found in Potentially Habitable Setup

Three medium-sized planets of roughly the same mass as Neptune have been discovered around a nearby Sun-like star, scientists announced today.

The planets were discovered around HD 69830, a star slightly less massive than the Sun located 41 light-years away in the constellation Puppis (the Stern), using the ultra-precise HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter La Silla telescope in Chile.

The finding, detailed in the May 18 issue of the journal Nature, marks a first for astronomers because previously discovered multi-planet solar systems besides our own contain at least one giant, Jupiter-sized planet.


www.space.com...





with more and more coming info about this I wonder if something I ones said maybe true ,

recent years there is in a quick succesion info reaching us first they found a planet around a star then a gaslike planet several hundred times bigger then ours and then a rocky ice planet several times larger as ours then now they found planets in a habitable setup.

what will be next ?? it will reach to something important and maybe it will be a major discovery in the coming 6 years .. will be great
I see a patern in it.

Nice find,

I love stuff like this. No pics, but interesting guesstimations.

Here's a link (from the article) to a somewhat related article that talks about all the planets they've found so far.

www.space.com...

More interesting links to related articles on the page.

Again, nice find.

SPiderj

I cant wait to see the day when we can see another habital planets surface with other life forms. Can you imagine seeing what a raptor or a dolphin would look like on a
lazy chair ?...lol

more links to this story



www.eso.org...

news.nationalgeographic.com...

www.newscientistspace.com...


first link is to the ESO which made the discovery.!!

Great Find

I love when we find new tidbits of information out there. I was watching on the Discovery Channel this past week and they were talking about launching a satelite with one of the New uber Telescopes that astronomers are using....not the REAL BIG ONES, they are the ones that use like a whole bunch of mirrors in a hexagonal formation...allowing them to make more pecise measurements....anyways they are supposed to be like a lot more powerful and accurate than anyother kind of telescope, I cant wait till they get that out into space it will blow hubble out of the water...

It will be interesting though to see if our goernments are testing us to see wether they think we are ready for disclosure. I know ive seen atleast half a dozen threads here about how there is more media discussion about UFO's and extra-solar planets/life. While all of this could totally be distractionary, a part of me inside hopes its not...that there is life out there...or that there are other planets that can support life.....while I would hate to think of spreading some of the terrible things that humanity is cabable of....at the same time the irrisitable urge to go and explore is just that....irrisitable.

BTW Has any one else heard about the "Hyper-drive" the military supposedly granted funds too...i know ive seen a couple threads here also read about it in Popsci....something getting to Mars in 90minutes....think about that....that would open up our galaxy to us....we could finally SEE these planets and the interior of our Galaxy....considering we are on the fringe....is it possible that thats where the optimum life area is...on the fridnge...or does life sparatically spring up where conditions allow it too...sometimes in enviroments that seem totally inhospitable.

I dont know jsut some random thoughts.

Great post

even if life is not on one of these planets of neptunes size if one of these planets is in an orbit like our planet , same distance or where the temperatures are the same
(if sun is hotter the planet might be further away and if dimmer planet has to be some what closer to its sun ) one or more of its moons may harbor life like the moons in our solarsystem , Europe , titan ect

if moons are not in the drake equision and we put this factor in it the chances of life outside our own is so great we cannot say that there isn't life outside or with in our solarsystem .

if there are liquids or gasses there might be life. only thing is do we reconize it.

Looking for planets with Earth-like conditions is a good idea, but maybe a planet need not be like Earth in order to support life. We know so little about our own planet, much less about space. Up until recently we didn't even know that there are organisms that live in geysers! Who knows, maybe there are intelligent life that live in planets that are completely unlike Earth.