The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
A candidate for direct observation
Super-Earths have been spotted in other stars' habitable zones before. For example, a team using NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope announced the discovery of the potentially habitable world Kepler-22b in December 2011.
Kepler-22b lies 600 light-years away, which is not terribly far considering that our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years wide. But HD 40307g is just 42 light-years from us — close enough that future instruments may be able to image it directly, scientists say.
"Discoveries like this are really exciting, and such systems will be natural targets for the next generation of large telescopes, both on the ground and in space," David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire, who was not involved in the new study, said in a statement.
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13 Comments
Add CommentCurious...not sure what 'direct imaging' means at 42 light years. But, does the luminosity of the parent star have a big impact? Is it better if the star is more bright or less bright than our Sun?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first thing that struck me was what the gravity would be like on the surface of such a large planet, and how that would affect the evolution a whatever life existed if it does.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWonder if " Paul " stopped there for a top-up on his eventual encounter with our planet, and subsequent presumed "Guest" status at Area 51.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwo planets are reserved for us earthlings.Don't expect that we will be allowed to take over the galaxy ,as implied by Star Trek.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt depends on its size and density. If it's big and fluffy enough, surface gravity could be quite confy even with the 7x mass estimation. Other 'perks' on there, like atmosphere, magnetic shielding, etc. would probably not be as nice, though, for fluffy planets. Then again, it's not like we've seen tons of these, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuper - Earth - bla bla bla .....imaginations at work, we dont know even what is life in its fundamental reality
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*theatrical sigh*
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalan, you are clearly mentally unstable. Please stop commenting here and trying to convince us of the veracity of Nostradamus.
Excellent article. Now we just need warp drive and the Enterprise, and we can go find Ricardo Montalban in outer space.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(sorry, I'm a big Khan fan).
Seriously, though, wouldn't it be possible for the new planet to be a small gas giant, and for it to have a habitable moon? That would be one heck of a find, and more likely to be habitable.
Does tidal locking of a planet or satellite means lack of spinning? Does'nt moon spins around its axis while revolving around earth due to tidal locking with earth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, but one side of the moon always faces Earth, while the dark side always faces away. In the same way, tidal locking would keep a planet always facing its sun in the same way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn case of Moon, only one side always faces earth since spin ( rotation) period of Moon around its axis and orbital period around earth are same at about 29 days. In case of an exo planet also, with only one side facing its star, are spin ( rotational) period and orbital period same? How equality of spin period and orbital period linked to tidal locking? What does the term "tidal locking" signifies exactly?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm assuming the "two" planets you speak of are Earth and Mars. Am I correct? But theoretically speaking it could be three planets if we are able to terraform Venus in the future. Just sayin...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIntelligent discussion (mostly,) although (a) to b/t/d/geek, as I'm sure you realize, there is no "dark side" of our tidal-locked moon (only a "Far Side, ala Gary Larson) and (b) to r-bozo-V: Yes, Virginia, we DO know what life is "in its fundamental reality": the Chemistry of Replication.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd although it's been quite a while since Copernicus then Darwin then Einstein reminded us that there's nothing special about us or our place in the universe, we still think ethno/geo-centrically as reflexively as we say "dark side." Yes, Newton tells us the intrinsic gravity of a planet EIGHT times that of Earth (a little more massive than HD40307g) would be EIGHT times that of Earth. But there's an "r-squared" in the denominator of that same Universal Law of Gravitation, so for a rock/iron planet of roughly the same average density a Earth, (~5.54 g/cm^3,) one EIGHT times as massive would have EIGHT times the volume or TWICE the radius, hence that mass factor of EIGHT would be divided by FOUR (i.e., TWICE-squared) and the SURFACE gravitational force would be only 8/4=TWICE as great.
Could creatures evolve to handle a perpetual 2gs? I think so, particularly since in the suggested liquid water, neutral buoyancy would make it irrelevant (why whales had to return from land to the ocean to reach their current size.) Even on land, since volume & mass decrease as size-cubed but surface area/musculature decrease only as size-squared, smaller creatures could readily handle double gravity: ants can lift ten times their own weight and birds are flightless at much over Condor-weight for the same reason.
As always, it's all in the numbers.