New Worlds on the Horizon: Earth-Sized Planets Close to Other Stars
Abstract
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfills an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. Recent advances in instrumentation and new missions are extending searches to planets the size of Earth but closer to their host stars. There are several possible ways such planets could form, and future observations will soon test those theories. Many of these planets we discover may be quite unlike Earth in their surface temperature and composition, but their study will nonetheless inform us about the process of planet formation and the frequency of Earth-like planets around other stars.
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This manuscript is a result of discussions at a session of the 210th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute. E.G. acknowledges support by the NASA Terrestrial Planet Finder Foundation Science Program. N.H. is supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute under cooperative agreement no. NNA04CC08A. S.R. is supported by the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the University of Colorado Astrobiology Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities through a contract with NASA. The contribution by J.R. is on behalf of the PRVS team.
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Science
Volume 318 | Issue 5848
12 October 2007
12 October 2007
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American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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