The Ashes

The humanity has a dream: to find extraterrestrial life. But that is hard as first of all we have to find Earth-like planets what are suitable for life and which could house living creatures. Astronomers are having a tough job in finding these planets, but lately they found a bunch of rocky planets that are positioned in the Goldilocks zone. In the constellation Monoceros astronomers found a rocky planet with a structure resembling the Earth structure, however, there are a few downsides of this planet.

The astronomers called it Corot 7b, and they found in February 2009, but they didn’t know the major details about the planet until now. According to the observations, the planet is five times bigger than Earth with a 80% bigger diameter, but its density is very similar to that of the Earth.

The problem with Corot-7b is that it’s not found in the Goldilocks zone (the orbit where conditions are not too hot, or too cold, but perfect for life) and it has been called Dante’s Inferno due to being very close to its parent star located at about 500 light years away from Earth. The measurements and the data was collected using the HARPS instrument which stands for High Accuracy Radial-velocity Planet Searcher, and which can be found at the La Silla Observatory at the European Southern Observatory.

I don’t want to be rude or to sound like a troll, but I don’t think we should look for life at a planet 500 light years away from Earth. I think we should concentrate on planets that are reachable as by the time a human could reach Corot 7b… well, you know what would happen.

via Times Online

Read More On This Topic:

1. Lost Planet 2 Demo Available At Xbox Live, New Trailer Released At GamesCon
2. Google Celebrates 40th Anniversary of Moon Landing With A Special Logo
3. Researchers Develop Carbon Nanotubes That Detect The Entire Visible Spectrum Of Light