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Astronomers believe that a new planet detected outside our It is not too hot and not too cold, and astronomers believe that a new planet detected outside our solar system may have a temperature that is just right to support life. The planet orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese-581g, and appears to be three times the mass of the earth, the team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has said.
The team found it using indirect measurements from a telescope in Hawaii, which has been used to scrutinise Gliese-581g for 11 years and has spotted other potential planets orbiting it. "We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone — one too hot and one too cold — and now we have one in the middle that’s just right," said Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common," Vogt said in a statement. The planet, called Gliese-581g, is 20 light-years away from the earth in the constellation Libra, according to the paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. A light-year is the distance light can travel in one year at a speed of 1,86,000 miles (300,000 km) a second, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km). The researchers use an indirect method radial velocity to detect planets. As a planet orbits, it makes the star wobble, and this can be measured. "There are now nearly 500 known extrasolar planets," Vogt’s team wrote. "Our findings
offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet,"
Vogt said. They estimate temperatures on the planet average from –24
to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees C). The planet is locked
facing the sun, like Mercury; so one side would be extremely hot, and
the other perpetually cold, with the liveable range being at the edge
where dawn and dusk would be on a spinning planet like earth’s. If
it was rocky, like earth, it could have gravity similar to earth’s,
and it would be possible for liquid water to be on the surface, they
said, although they have not detected water on Gliese-581g. — Reuters
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