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Far
Out Findings
In August, SFSU's prolific planet hunters announced their latest discovery:
two of the smallest planets yet detected beyond our solar system.
Adjunct Professor Geoffrey Marcy, previously an SFSU professor of physics
and astronomy for 15 years, alumna Debra Fischer, an assistant professor
of astronomy, and alumnus Paul Butler, staff scientist at the Carnegie
Institute in Washington, D.C., located the planets using one of the
twin Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. All three are California
and Carnegie Planet Search Project team members.
Each of the newly discovered planets is about the same size as the planet
Neptune, which is 17 times the mass of planet Earth, yet tiny compared
with the nearly 100 extra-solar planets that the team has discovered
to date.
What's the big deal about small planets? Statistics suggest that lower-mass
planets like these two newbies occur more frequently. Thus the discovery
may mean there are many more -- and smaller -- planets waiting to be
found. Small planets stand a good chance of being terrestrial, or Earth-like,
rather than gaseous.
"We humans have an anthropomorphic desire to find a place that
seems like home: rocky planets with oceans or liquid water. Those conditions
seem favorable for biological evolution," Fischer says.
Funded jointly by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, the team is credited with discovering the
majority of the known extra-solar planets.
 
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