Spanish discovered the smallest extra-solar planet

Posted in science

Extra-solar planets became a major subject of scientific in the mid-19th century. Now this subject is one of the most interesting for the whole world. Astronomers detect in the 1990s since 2000, more than 15 per year and in 2007 were detected 61 planets.

A planet beyond the Solar System was detected by Spanish astronomers on 2th Wednesday. Named “GJ 436T”, the extra-solar planet has a mass five times the size of Earth, which makes it the smallest extra-solar planet among the roughly 300 identified so far, Ribas announced. “GJ 436T” rotates in 4.2 earth days and orbits its star every 5.2 days.

As we can remember “Gliese 436c” was the smallest extra-solar planet discovered by now (its orbit is 5 days, its rotation is 22 days).

The discovery of extra-solar planets made us wondering if it might support extraterrestrial life.

I want to believe that it do exist another “life” somewhere in this galaxie, but I don’t want people to find it!

Extraterrestrial life is the subject of astrobiology, and its existence remains yet hypothetical. Astronomers have captured enough light from different planet or extra-planets to reveal details, marking a new phase in the search for extraterrestrial life.