mlimber writes “The NYTimes has up a story about the discovery of a solar system that is analogous to ours. Of the 250 or so exoplanets found thus far, ‘few of them are in systems that even faintly resemble our own. In many cases, giant Jupiter-like planets are whizzing around inside the orbit of Mercury,’ whereas in this new system, ‘a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star about half the mass of the Sun, at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun.’ The researchers used gravitational microlensing to detect the planets, and two of the lead authors of the paper to be published in Science are amateur astronomers, one of whom describes herself as ‘an ordinary New Zealand mom.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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