Community | September 16, 2009 | 8 comments

Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090916/ap_on_sc/us_sci_rocky_planet

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Mobius2012
WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."
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8 comments // Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system

  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  

    • What is life anyways? Consciousness? How can we prove or disprove consciousness exists without communication with it?

      I tend to believe that there is life all around us that cannot be seen because it reflects light in a spectrum outside the ability of our eyes to see it.

    • 2 years ago
  • 24French
    • 0
      24French  

    • We too are likely nonsolid gas balls in deep space beyond our solar system. Who needs a rocky planet when you're a fluid flowing vapor expanding indefinitely?

    • 2 years ago
  • GoodGodGuy
    • 0
      GoodGodGuy  

    • It would be as difficult to find one specific grain of sand on a beach as to believe that we are the only life in the universe.
      Asimov.

      It would also be that difficult to find one.
      Big Place

    • 2 years ago
  • Vierotchka
  • Vierotchka
    • 0
      Vierotchka  

    • Stephen Hawking gave a talk last night here in Geneva. We tried to go to it, and even went half an hour before they opened the doors, but there were too many people and we didn't get to attend. The day before, he answered a few questions from a local journalist. Here is his answer with regard to life in the universe. :)

    • 2 years ago
  • Chique
  • Chique
    • 0
      Chique  

    • Yes. It's intriguing to think we may be looking at things and see nothing because we're trying to relate to our own reality.

    • 2 years ago
  • Vierotchka
    • 0
      Vierotchka  

    • Scientists are defining life according to life as we know it. This doesn't mean that there aren't other forms of life that are neither water/carbon based nor dependent on light and oxygen. There may well be other life forms totally unlike what we define as life. :)

    • 2 years ago
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