Astronomers hunting alien Earths - USATODAY.com: "Alien worlds beckon to us Earthlings today, promising visions of a sister planet to our own orbiting a nearby star.
NASA's Kepler space telescope team this month unveiled the first indisputable detection of a rocky planet spotted in another star's solar system. The find lifted hopes that planets with rocky cores like Earth fill many stars' solar systems. Mission scientists led by William Borucki of NASA's NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., promise to report on hundreds of more planetary candidates next month.
Dubbed 'Kepler-10b,' the recently-announced rocky planet roasts in an orbit far too hot for life, circling less than two million miles above its sun-like star. 'You have to see this as a warm up for Kepler, literally,' says mission team scientist Sara Seager of MIT, however, pointing to expected future finds.
But will we be looking in the right places when the time comes to hunt for another Earth?"
Sunday, January 30, 2011
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