This week, Nat Geo featured an article about a solar system
that may have more planets than the sun, making it the most populous solar
system yet found. It’s 127 light-years
from Earth, and likely doesn’t have any planets that could support life.
The sun-like star in the southern constellation Hydrus first
made headlines in 2010 when they confirmed five planets and two more planetary
candidates. Now there are two more
planet candidates, bringing the grand total to nine. Remember when our solar system had nine? RIP
Pluto.
I was hoping to compare this story with other news outlets, but
I actually couldn’t find any American news sources that reported on the new
finds. I found a short 100-word article
on an
Italian website and a slightly longer one on a
French website. Actually as I was writing this, I also found
a story on
Discovery News that appeared a week ago and is great.
Early indications imply that the two new planets are slightly
larger than Earth with rocky surfaces, but it’s too far for us to actually
see. So instead astronomers detected
them by measuring their gravitational tug on the host star.
The planets that they’ve already determined are 12-25 times the
size of Earth, which means that they are probably more like Uranus or Neptune,
making them incapable of supporting life.
One of the newly confirmed planets is 65 times the size of
Earth and the other is 1.3 times the mass of Earth and circles very close to
the star.
The new unconfirmed planets have extremely tight orbits (10 and
69 days) so they’re unlikely to host life.
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