A major discovery has revealed a stunning planet 40 light-years away that sports a striking resemblance to Earth. Dubbed GJ 1214B, which isn’t the most marketable name I’ve seen, is 2.7 times larger than Earth and is loaded with water to the tune of 75% of its mass with a solid core of iron and nickel, an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Sound familiar? It should, as those specs are very close to to our little home here on Earth, giving credence to the theory that there are probably billions upon billions of Earth-like planets spread across the universe.

But in most other ways, the planet is a “very different beast” from our home world, the researchers say.

“It’s basically one big ocean,” said study leader David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“There are no continents of rock floating on top or peaking up through the water.”

Moreover, GJ 1214b is hotter than Earth and its atmosphere is ten times thicker than our own, the study authors say.

This would make things difficult for life as we know it. For starters, the atmospheric pressure on the planet’s surface must be immense, and very little light would be able to penetrate the haze to reach the oceans.

Source

The discovery of a rocky planet outside of our solar system may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s the first time such an object has been detected. While most astronomers instinctively knew such planets must exist in the universe, one must always have proof before an idea becomes fact. Such proof has emerged.

While it is highly doubtful the planet, called Corot-7b, can sustain life thanks to the blistering 3,600 degree Fahrenheit temperature, it does validate that rocky planets exist in the universe and, more importantly, exist in great numbers. With great numbers comes the ever-increasing odds that life is out there in great numbers.

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The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It’s in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

In addition, the planet is about as close to Earth in size as any other planet found outside our solar system. Its radius is only one-and-a-half times bigger than Earth’s and it has a mass about five times the Earth’s.

Now that another rocky planet has been found so close to its own star, it gives scientists more confidence that they’ll find more Earth-like planets farther away, where the conditions could be more favorable to life, Boss said.

“The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe,” Boss said.

Astronomy has a way of confronting you with cosmic head-scratchers that defy all logic. Such is the case with the newly discovered planet Wasp-18. It is 330 light-years away, which is close enough to be considered our neighbor. What’s the problem? It orbits its host star in less than an Earth day, which is so incredibly fast it makes your head spin. By comparison, it takes Earth 365 days to circle Sun. But that isn’t the only thing unusual about Wasp-18. It gets stranger:

From the L.A. Times:

Of the more than 370 exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than our sun — discovered so far, this is just the second with such a close orbit.

The problem is that a planet that close should be consumed by its parent star in less than a million years, say the authors at Keele University in Britain. The star Wasp-18 is believed to be about a billion years old, and because stars and the planets around them are thought to form at the same time, Wasp-18b should have been reduced to cinders ages ago.

“This planet should spiral inwards on such a short time scale that the likelihood of seeing it is very low,” said Coel Hellier, an astrophysicist at Keele.

“That’s a paradox,” said Douglas P. Hamilton, an astronomer at the University of Maryland who wrote a commentary accompanying the report. He said there were a variety of possible explanations, none of them very satisfactory.

“It’s like going to the scene of the crime and not finding the weapon,” he said. “Something’s happened, but a key piece of evidence is missing.”

The Spitzer Telescope has unveiled its most important discovery to date: a planetary collision 100 light-years away. Astronomers determined the strange readings they observed could have only come from one specific event, namely, a planet the size of Mercury slammed into another planet the size of our moon.

Astronomers didn’t detect the explosion since it happened perhaps a few thousand years ago, but they did see the aftermath and what a sight it must be in person: millions of pieces of dark glass were formed in the resulting explosion that now orbits the young host star.

Why is this event so important? It’s exactly what led to the formation of Earth and the Moon. It is strongly believed that Earth would not have formed a life sustaining environment without a hefty collision. Think of it as a kick-start. And now that we know this process happens elsewhere then it is ever more likely that this is how the universe works.

NASA Animation of Event

Source: NASA.gov