CVN Science
Telescope Finds Five Mysterious Exoplanets
Hawkeye320, CVN

This represents Hawkeye's fourth story for us. We are enjoying having our section on scientific endeavors.-editor

Nasa's new planet hunting telescope has found two mystery objects that are too hot to be planets and too small to be stars. The Kepler Telescope, launched back in March of 2009, has discovered these two new heavenly bodies, each circling its own star. Telescope Chief Scientist Of NASA, Bill Borucki, said the objects are thousands degrees hotter then the stars they circle. That means they probable aren't planets as we understand the concept. They are bigger and hotter then the planets in our solar system, including dwarf planets.

The Universe keeps making strange things stranger then we can think of in our imagination. These new discoveries don't quite fit into any definition of known astronomical objects, and so far don't they don't have a classification of their own. For now NASA's researcher Jason Rowe, who found the objects, calls them "hot companions". The objects are 26,000 degrees fahrenheit, and that's hot enough to melt lead and iron.

There are two leading theories for what these objects might be. One: there are newly born planets. New planets have extremely high temperatures. Two: they could be white dwarfs, stars that are dying, stripping off their outer shells and shrinking..

The primary focus of the Kepler Telescope's three year mission is to find out how common other planets, especially Earth like planets, are in our universe. The telesope in just six weeks found its first five confirmed planets, slightly more than astronomers expected from such a quick search. The five exoplanets are all much larger then Earth, much closer to their stars than Earth is to the Sun, and way too hot for life as we know it. A couple of these planets are close to 3,000 degrees F. One of the newly discovered planets is so airy that it has the density of styrofoam.

This reporter's thoughts: "There's going to be all kinds of weird stuff out there. This is an unparalleled data set. The universe really is a weird place. It's Fantastic." - Hawkeye320 reporting for Cybertown Virtual News.

Resources:

Keplar Home
http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/
Keplar News:
http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=16
Mission pages
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html
Hubble Telescope Screen Show:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34708811/ns/technology_and_science-space/?gt1=43001



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