Pack your bags -- Astronomers find 'super-Earth'

by Stevie Smith - Dec 17 2009, 05:25

Not that we’ll be visiting any time soon, but stargazing astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a distant Earth-like planet that shares similar qualities with our own world, such as an abundance of water.

Labelled as “super-Earth” although technically known as planetary designation “GJ 1214b,” the newly discovered world is situated in another solar system approximately 42 light years away from our own and is thought to have a surface area some 2.7 times the size of Earth, more than 70 percent of which is covered in water.

According to a statement issued by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, GJ 1214b is composed of “about three-fourths water and other ices and one fourth rock… [and] there are also tantalising hints that the planet has a gaseous atmosphere.”

However, before we all don our best bikinis ahead of an intergalactic package holiday, the statement also notes that the planet’s surface temperatures range between 248 and 536 degrees Fahrenheit – which pushes some way beyond current sun cream factor technology and certainly ranks as too hot to sustain life as we know it. 

Orbiting its host star around every 38 hours, the new planet was initially spotted by a group of eight ground-based telescopes on Mount Hopkins in Arizona, all of which are around the same size as those often used by astronomy enthusiasts.

More details regarding the so-called “super-Earth” can be found in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ full study report, which has been published in the latest edition of the journal Nature.

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