ASTRONOMERS DISCOVERS MEGA-EARTH

Boston (U.S.) – Astronomers have discovered a new type
of rocky planet beyond the solar system that weighs
more than 17 times as much as Earth while being just
over twice the size, scientists said.
The so-called “mega-Earth” circles a very old star called
Kepler-10, which is located about 560 light-years away
from Earth in the constellation Draco.
Physicist Dimitar Sasselov, the Director of the Harvard
Origins of Life Initiative, said the discovery, announced
at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston,
U.S., was a surprise since big planets were believed to
be mostly gas, not solid rocky bodies like Earth or Mars.
Sasselov told reporters at a news conference in Boston,
U.S. that the scientists do not yet understand how the
planet, known as Kepler-10c, formed, with a diameter of
about 18,000 miles (29,000 km), 2.3 times greater than
Earth’s.
“A mega-Earth is a lot of solids concentrated in the
same place without any gas. That is a problem because
our understanding of how planets form requires the
solids to get together in an environment where almost
99 per cent of the mass is hydrogen and helium,’’ he
added.
He explained that smaller solid bodies like Earth or
Mars, believed to form from leftover materials, take
less time to pull themselves together, with longer
incubation time.
He added that large planets should gather up massive
amounts of gas in the process – or so scientists thought.
“However the mega-Earths are formed, the discovery of
another type of rocky world augurs well in the search
for life beyond Earth,’’ Sasselov added.
He stressed that “as far as we know – and we know very
little about origins of life – we think the emergence of
life from geochemistry occurs on solid planets.’’
Related research shows that about 75 per cent of the
planets found with NASA’s Kepler space telescope are
less than four times Earth’s diameter.
In the solar system, there is nothing between the size
of Earth, the largest rocky planet, and Neptune, the
smallest gas giant with a diameter nearly four times
Earth’s.
“We really want to know about these planets,”
astronomer Lars Buchhave, with the Harvard-
Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, told reporters.
(Reuters/NAN)

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