Greenies may find this news interesting. Astronomers using European Southern Observatory telescopes have announced that they have discovered 32 more planets, outside of our solar system. This brings the number of planets to more than 400. What is fascinating is that this gives evidence to theorists who say that there could be life outside of Earth. Most of these new planets are bigger than Jupiter, which is of course a larger planet than ours.
The planets were discovered by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher. The way this massive telescope works is, it looks for wobbling in the movement of a star; the wobbling would be created by the tug of a planet’s gravity. Pretty cool!
Astronomer Stephane Udry of the University of Geneva said in a Web-based news conference in Portugal, “I’m pretty confident that there are Earth-like planets everywhere, nature doesn’t like a vacuum. If there is space to put a planet there, there will be a planet there.”
Four of the planets were found, circling around a star, in a design not unlike our own Solar System. Two of these four planets were about the same size as Earth.
Unfortunately, as of now there are no photos available of the new planets…
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