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| Animation Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
Fascinating! However, it's not exactly a planet I'd want our descendants to travel to. I'd be more partial to the planets in the Goldilocks Zone of this particular solar system.
The first super-Earth planet to get its photo taken may be superweird and superhot, and perhaps have super-runny lava in spots on its surface, researchers said.
Astronomers investigated the alien planet 55 Cancri e, the innermost of five known planets orbiting the star 55 Cancri, located about 41 light-years from Earth. This exoplanet is a super-Earth, a rocky world nearly twice Earth's width and eight times its mass. It's the first super-Earth from which astronomers have detected light.
55 Cancri e circles its star about 25 times closer than Mercury does the sun. As a result, the planet whips fully around its star about every 18 hours, while Earth takes a year to complete an orbit.
Charles P. Choi
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