Astronomers Find New Five-Planet System

A new planet was discovered orbiting a sun-like star 41 light years away, making it the first known planetary quintet outside our solar system, astronomers said Tuesday.

The newfound planet joins four others circling the nearby star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer. Although it resides in the star's so-called habitable zone, a place where liquid water and mild temperatures should exist, it is more like Saturn than Earth and therefore not likely to support life.

Still, scientists have not ruled out the possibility of finding an Earth-like planet within the system as technology improves.

"It's a system that appears to be packed with planets," said co-discoverer Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University.

Ranked fourth from 55 Cancri, the latest planet is about 45 times the mass of Earth and has an orbit of 260 days. It was detected after nearly two decades of observations by ground-based telescopes using the Doppler technique that measures a planet's stellar wobble.

The other planets in the 55 Cancri system were discovered between 1996 and 2004. The innermost planet is believed to resemble Neptune, while the most distant is thought to be Jupiter-like.

Scientists have detected about 250 exoplanets, or planets orbiting a star other than the sun. The 55 Cancri star holds the record for number of confirmed planets. Only one other star is known to have four planets, while several others have three or less.

"We can now say there are stars like the sun that have many worlds around them," said planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who had no role in the discovery.

The research will appear in a future issue of the Astrophysical Journal. It was funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation and the University of California.

The latest discovery shows that our solar system is not unique, scientists said.

"When you look up into the night sky and see the twinkling lights of stars, you can imagine with certainty that they have their own complement of planets," said astronomer Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, who was part of the research.

[fibonacci_]

I highly doubt we are alone.

[rf35]

Someone needs to pull their head out of the "hyperspace cloud."

Seriously, you think the government isn''t looking at ways to cross the vast distances of interstellar space? Get real. They are, and progress is being made. Don''t expect to hear about anytime soon, though...the research is so secret, even the name of the classification level is classified. Not even Bush knows about it. Not that he could understand it even if he were cleared to know.

[enriquecaliente]

To boldly go where, no....Aw forget about it.!

[castile1]

can we all say "we are alone, we are alone"

[random_radar]

Let''s see, 41 light years...those people would be getting signals from Earth featuring Giligan''s Island, the Flintstones, Lost in Space, and Star Trek.

But they are probably grateful that I Love Lucy and Mr. Ed isn''t being transmitted anymore. Hard to tell what they think about Leave it to Beaver.

[talkingham]

I wish these scientists would hurry and go there and stop spending our cash on their little sci-fi dreams.

Whatever happened to the awesome Bush initiative to go to Mars? That went over like a hyper-lead black hole. Of course the Martians will welcome us as liberators!!!

[antoniof123]

Great don''t tell anyone.

[diehardrepub]

Our ships computers got what we call the "hyperspace formula". And its a mile long.. won by many many lives lost.. 100% trial and error. No mathematical logic to it whatsoever. Just all.. some nutbag brave enough to test it. And even now we still get misjumps. But they''re rare..

[diehardrepub]

Ironically, even with standing still space travel, the biggest problem is navigation. When we first invented hyperspace we thought we were done. We thought we''d bought the boom boom.. But far from it. The technology to bend space was the easy part. The really really hard part, and the part that took many many lives, was navigating (knowing where yer going). Hyperspace, because of its unique properties, is capable of putting you and your ship exactly where ya wanna go, and the other side of the universe. And you''d never know the difference until you were there. In the early days "Hyperspace pioneers" would hurl themselves into the unknown.. coming out the other end so far away, they were lost forever.

Yup.. navigation is a big big problem.

[diehardrepub]

Yup.. the hyperspace engine is separate and independent from a ships regular engine. It actually doesn''t even look like an engine at all. But it engages the "Hyperspace Cloud".. a soupy glowey electrical cloud of charged particles that surround the ship, and stay that way for the full journey. Ya don''t get to look out yer window..