I think the technical term for these scientific finds would be “Wow-whee!”:
Two sets of discoveries announced in recent days suggest that the
Milky Way hosts many more sunlike solar systems than previously
believed.One team found a solar system that resembles our
own, although it’s a scaled-down version. The astronomers detected two
planets orbiting a star nearly 5,000 light-years away. The star is only
half as massive as the sun and the two planets are smaller than Jupiter
and Saturn. But after adjusting for these differences, the astronomers
found that the two planets orbit their star at roughly the same
relative distance as Jupiter and Saturn orbit our sun. Their relative
masses are similar. And the estimated temperatures of the new planets
are similar to Jupiter’s and Saturn’s.Led by Ohio State University astronomer Scott Gaudi, the team’s results appear in the current issue of the journal Science.
Another
team says it has found evidence of the formation of rocky planets
around a significant number of sunlike stars up to 163 light-years
away. Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the team found that at
least 20 percent of the 328 stars it observed had dust disks displaying
telltale signs that rocky planets were forming close to the host stars.
“The question is: How common are planetary systems
like our own around sunlike stars in our galaxy?” says University of
Arizona astronomer Michael Meyer, who discussed his team’s findings at
last weekend’s annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in Boston. Given the number of sun-like stars in
the galaxy, the number of sunlike solar systems at various stages of
development could be astronomical.
