Solar System Like Ours Found

[Picturesque Orion]

Solar System Like Ours Found

The discovery of a Jupiter-like planet and another about the size of Saturn has astronomers suggesting that solar systems like our own may be common.

The newfound worlds both appear to be gaseous and are about 80 percent the sizes of Jupiter and Saturn, the astronomers said today. They orbit a star that is about half the size of our sun and is dimmer and much cooler.

"This is the first discovery of a multi-planet system that could be analogous to our solar system," said research team member Alison Crocker, a Dartmouth College graduate now studying at Oxford University.

For more please go to Space.com

Edited February 18, 2008 by Waspie_Dwarf

[Torgo]

This is awesome!!

All our theories of star system formation require large gassy worlds to form in a band several AUs away from their parent star. Largeish ice giants like uranus and neptune are believed to form further out and rocky worlds like the terrestrial ones are believed to be able to form only close in. The presence of so many star systems with huge planets right next to their parent stars, where the terrestrial planets are found in our own solar system, suggest that drag in the protoplanetary disc and other mechanisms (there are many possibilities) tend to move planets inwards towards their parent stars during solar system formation. The presence of this star system, similar in setup to our own, suggests that we are not as much of an anomaly as we thought.

These sorts of systems are harder to detect than ones with large planets close in, so it's POSSIBLE that the scarcity of systems resembling ours is just because we cant detect the ones like ours well. However, this is the first real EVIDENCE that systems like ours aren't the rare exception.

[clem]

i guess you figure this is true anyway.. but fascinating to learn .

thanx for the post.

clem

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Alex01, please familiarise yourself with the rules on copyrighted material:

2. Post content

Please read and understand the following before posting:

2c. Copyrighted material: If you quote text from another web site then please properly credit the source. Not doing so constitutes plagiarism, always include a source link with quoted material. Members are asked to copy only as much as is necessary when quoting copyrighted material from other web sites, do not copy and paste entire articles or web pages.

As the article you posted is the copyright of Space.com I have edited it so that it complies with the sites rules nd added the source link.

[Picturesque Orion]

I'm sorry, I did not notice I didn't add a source link.

Anyhow I asure you I have read the rules, and know them perfectly.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Alex01

[Alondro]

It's not only solar systems like ours that may harbor life.

Multi-Jupiter-mass planets have been found nestled directly in the center of the habitable zones of some stars. These planets are large enough to keep Earth-size moons in stable orbits around themselves. And, as we know from Jupiter and Saturn's moons, giant planet moons often have copious amounts of water and organic material, not to mention they also have a high frequency of geological activity due to constant gravitational tidal interactions, thus such huge moons located in the habitable zones would be prime real-estate for life forms (as long as they're far enough away from their parent planet's powerful radiation belts!).

Edited February 19, 2008 by Alondro

[stevewinn]

its great news, but then the disappointment hits you, we have no chance of travelling there, why does space have to be so vast,

[Legatus Legionis]

its great news, but then the disappointment hits you, we have no chance of travelling there, why does space have to be so vast,

Ain't it a let down, we can't travel there in our lifetime.