The Hindu : International : Life-sustaining planet found?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 01, 2004

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International

Life-sustaining planet found?

London: European scientists have found a planet circling a distant star that could be home to life. The planet, the first detected so far that is sufficiently Earth-like for life to develop, orbits a star called mu Arae in the southern constellation Altar. The planet — astronomers call such things exoplanets — is only 14 times the mass of Earth and, like Earth, could be composed of rock and support an atmosphere. No planet beyond the solar system has been seen by optical telescopes. But astronomers can infer the presence of a dark orbiting companion. Almost all the 120 exoplanets discovered so far have been Jupiter-sized or bigger: gas giants far too big to support life. But the planet that orbits mu Arae every 9.5 days lies at the threshold of the largest possible rocky planets. The discovery, across a distance of 50 light years, was possible only because of the accuracy of an instrument called Harps, a spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla in Chile. With this tool, researchers can measure changes in the radial velocity of a star to an accuracy of a metre a second. Any such cyclical changes are evidence of the gravitational tug of an invisible companion.

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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