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Space

Alpha Centauri Has an Earth-Sized Planet 152

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have announced that the nearest star system in the sky — Alpha Centauri — has an Earth-sized planet orbiting one of its stars. Alpha Cen is technically a three-star system: a binary composed of two stars very much like the Sun, orbited by a third, a red dwarf, much farther out. Using the Doppler technique (looking for very small changes in the velocities of the stars) astronomers detected a planet orbiting the smaller of the two stars in the binary, Alpha Centauri B. The planet has a mass only 1.13 times that of the Earth, making it one of the smallest yet detected.However, it orbits the star only 6 million kilometers out, so it's far too hot to be habitable. The signal from the planet is extremely weak but solidly detected (PDF), giving astronomers even greater hope of being able to find an Earth-like planet orbiting a star in its habitable zone."

Comment Re:there's more (Score 1) 3

The struck though text would stay readable forever. Readers would understand that the mod down was for the part that was struck out. The poster would understand that first impressions count and that the first mod stands. Of course this means that everyone would have to learn how to "read" the original post by reading the stuck through parts and skipping the bracket parts. The part where everyone would have to learn something is the weak part of the plan.

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