I saw Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory, the most famous hunter of extraterrestrial planets.
Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory is the most famous hunter of extraterrestrial planets orbiting other stars for the first discovered in 1995 near the star 51 Pegasi. Now Mayor and his team of astrophysicists make another major leap in this frontier of astronomical research, certainly the most fascinating.
THE DISCOVERY - Mayor has in fact found around the star Gliese 581 is a planet named "Gliese 581" which is the smallest yet discovered having a size that is just the double of our Earth. But the group also scored another major redesigned the neighborhood of the star located 20.5 light years of Earth in the constellation Libra. Already, around it, were identified in the past three planets and one of these, 'd' in 2007 was re-calculated position discovered which is closer than previously believed placing in the "habitable zone", that is a fair distance from the parent star getting a fair amount of energy. All the others are closer to abstraction and then heated too. The closest of all is its just spotted the new ('e').
THE TWIN EARTH - "It's the smallest planet yet detected - specify the co-author of research Xavier Bonfils of the Observatory of Grenoble - and it is very likely to be a rocky planet." To make a complete turn around the same in 3.15 days. But the attention given to "Gliese 581 d 'seven times more massive than Earth and a revolution around the star of 66.8 days has produced great results. At the time of the discovery in 2007 was considered an icy planet. Now is expected to be migrated to the star where positioning was measured recently. So being in the "habitable zone" where water can be liquid, "it becomes the first serious candidate to be a world of water," said Stephane Udry, of the research team. Therefore the most likely twin of Earth. But the sense of progress in these years gave Michel Mayor, "Gliese and is eighty times smaller than I had found Pegasi b in 1995. In 14 years we have made a tremendous jump refining our techniques and our abilities to this point. " Overall, the extrasolar planets discovered are about 350 today.
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