Hubble scientists detect new type of planet
FEB 22, 2012
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025894
MSNBC : Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed a so-called super-Earth a mere 40 light-years away. GJ 1214b is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs nearly seven times as much. Most notable, however, is the fact that a huge fraction of its mass is made up of water. Because of its high temperatures and high pressures, GJ 1214b likely has a steamy atmosphere and an interior structure made up of exotic materials alien to Earth, such as hot ice or superfluid water, according to Zachory Berta of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is one of the authors of a paper published online in the Astrophysical Journal. Scientists hope that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may be able to get a better look once it is launched in 2018.
© 2012 American Institute of Physics
