SCI/TECH: Two New Planets Found.

Some very exciting news for all the space lovers out there. Two new Neptune-sized planets have been discovered. This is definatly a breakthrough in the search for other Earths and for life in space. What these planets hold will remain a mystery, for now.



While these planets are alot like the Earth sizewise (only 14 times the mass of Earth), they do have these differences. These planets orbit around their stars (sun) at very high speeds. Taking only a couple days to complete a "year".

The front side of the planets is extreamly hot, while the backside is extreamly cold. the region in between could have moderate temperatures between 0 and 100 degrees Celsius. At the extreams, it would seem impossibe for humans to survive.

There is a possibility that these planets could have an rock core. This could mean that they have may be small enough to have a solid surface and possibly temperatures conducive to life.

"This is a real breakthrough"

[edit on 8-31-2004 by Valhall]

Wow, that's pretty cool, any word on what they will be named? I hope they are unique ones as opposed to some textbook "XLP-1 and 2" type of names.

Yes... I'm tired of seeing names for things like AKoD3734298324 and crap. Why can't they name an Asteroid like Bob or something?

They can't name an asteroid "Bob"... that's my pute's name! And, yes... it does fly sometimes (lol!)

Seriously, this is pretty kewl. I have a feeling we'll be hearing of alot more planetary discoveries within the next year or 2... all conspiracy theories aside, that is.

There are literally millions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, conataining billions of planets... We'd run out of names if we tried that anyway. Personally, I like the way they do it in the 'Star Trek' universe -- the star gets a nice, formal name, then the planets orbiting the star are roman numeraled in their order of orbiting around it.

For example, the formal name for our star is "Sol"... so, Mercury is Sol I, Venus is Sol II, Earth is Sol III, Mars is Sol IV, etc.

And moons around planets get alphabet letters after it. So, Earth's one moon (whose formal name is Luna), would be Sol IIIa, Mars's two moons, Phobos and Demios, would be Sol IVa and Sol IVb, and so on...

When we start meeting alien species from other solar systems, we can start altering our tentative star charts to reflect what the aliens call the objects in their own solar neighborhood.

The aliens are already here and have already got us to change the name of one of our planets. It was called (phonetically) "Your anus" its now called "Yura nus". Well it is on UK TV.

regards,

Malcolm