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Astronomers Identify 45 New Planets

nytimes.com — The newly identified planets range in mass from slightly bigger than Earth to about twice as massive as Neptune.

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  • yargthepirate, on 06/17/2008, -1/+2Sorry Pluto, you weren't one of those planets.
  • sleepyjjk, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1To add to the article:

    What they are doing is quite phenomenal - because they are able to measure changes in the Sun's velocity to a few meters per second, and doing so at such a great distance is extremely hard. Even if you do know what to look for, the data is hard to decipher all the time. And like the article said, they measure the sun's velocity to detect if there are any planets. Right now, it's harder to find the smaller planets because the smaller planets do not "tug" on the sun as much as the bigger ones do.

    Their strategy is to identify first if there are relatively small (super-earth) planets out there first because they cannot see these planets yet, so they detect it indirectly.
  • hugoguzman, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1The number of newly discovered planets will begin to increase exponentially, and it's only a matter of time before they start to find some actual "earths"
  • Innisskillin, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1Dr. Seager compared the quest to a giant Sudoku game. “Every time we fill in a key number,” she said in an e-mail message, “we take a big step towards finishing: finding the habitable planets and understanding how rare or common our solar system actually is.”

    Now we know what those astronomers do when their fancy automated telescopes do their jobs for them.

    "Oooo, found another planet! I will name it Mahjongg."
  • inactive, on 06/17/2008, -1/+0I'm still mourning the loss of our beloved Pluto.
  • pirlok, on 06/17/2008, -2/+1Great! Any of them support life? Oh, yeah. The astronomers don't know that yet. But they will, soon! One step closer of finding aliens or to invent some.
  • inactive, on 06/17/2008, -1/+0one more laborious step closer to getting offa this crazy rock. dibbs on the first planet with no oil or gold!
  • MapShatter, on 06/17/2008, -6/+2Hey MrBabyman are you one of the planets they discovered?

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