Is anybody home?
On today’s issue of Nature you can read the news of the discovery of an extrasolar planetary system found by a team of European astronomers.In this team you can find two Portuguese scientists: Nuno Santos (Observatório Astronómico de Lisboa) and Alexandre Correia (Universidade de Aveiro).
The planetary system has three planets roughly the size of Neptune and one of those planets is in an area that seems suitable to sustain life as we know it.
The planetary system was “baptized” as Neptune’s Trident.
The problem of going there to check whether there is any life form is still way beyond human reach, the system being a wee bit far from us (41 light-years far if you care about that kind of detail).
Against all odds, with everybody in Portugal anticipating the Football World Cup (soccer to those of you in the US) and the media being mostly focused on that and on the Middle East troubles, this news made it to Portuguese newspapers and TV’s.
That is almost as much reason to celebrate as the news itself, for in most cases work done by Portuguese researchers either alone or in international teams goes unnoticed by the national media.
posted by DCveR at 7:14 PM
6 Comments:
Very very interesting, I suppose SETI's already pointed some radio's at it. Are the planet's gas-giants? Were they able to see moons? I LOVE this kind of stuff.
chill daddy: The first planet is some ten times the mass of Earth, they believe it is mainly composed by rocks. The second one is a rocky one too, about twelve times Earth’s mass and with an extended atmosphere. The third one, the one that could have life, is 18 times the mass of Earth, mostly rock and ice and a very thick atmosphere.
Given its gravity and its thick atmosphere the third one probably doesn’t have liquid water though.
it is rather impressive considering Portugal does not necessarily have a reputation to be part of such discoveries. I had to go read the article because that piece of news went completely unoticed here (well, i would not expect it to be anyways!)
Thanks for linking to the article. Really enjoyed it. The great thing about scientifice discovery is that it makes science-fiction writing more plausible.
wonderful stuff, I'd missed this news, thanks for linking to it!
coffee addict: Although without much publicity in our own country, plenty of Portuguese scientists are highly considered in their fields of expertise. Then every once in a while of them gets noticed, like António Damásio for instance.
chill daddy: Knowledge of science makes for the best written sci-fi novels, look at Asimov.
hayden: No need to thank. :)
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