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[Henry]

step by step...year by year...we learn more.

while...the world is still flat. really. f-l-a-t.

and the sun revolves around the earth. truly.






http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,479374,00.html





THE SEARCH FOR A HABITABLE PLANET
Researchers May Have Found Earth's Twin

By Markus Becker
Astronomers may have found their holy grail. A team working out of Geneva say they have discovered a planet which may be capable of supporting life.

It has been 15 years since the discovery of the first planet outside our solar system. Now it seems astronomers may have accomplished what was, from the beginning, at the heart of their hunt for planets outside our solar system. They have discovered an Earth-like world that looks to be capable of supporting life.

Researchers working with Stéphane Udry and Michel Mayor from the Geneva Observatory discovered the planet in the orbit of the star Gliese 581. There are even indications that Gliese 581 -- one of the 100 stars closest to Earth, at a distance of only 20.5 light years -- has a system of at least three planets.


Photo Gallery: The Search For A Second Earth



Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (5 Photos)

The team is not new to planet hunting. Mayor discovered the very first exoplanet -- as planets outside our solar system are called -- orbiting around a star similar to our sun in 1995. And two years ago, the same team discovered a planet the size of Neptune in the orbit of the red dwarf.
That astronomers have now demonstrated the existence of an Earth-like planet is quite astonishing: Boulders whose weight and size roughly resemble those of Earth are tiny in comparison to the more than 200 exoplanets already known -- and therefore hard to detect. "I have been telling people that the first Earth-like planet would probably not be found for another 3-5 years," Sean Raymond a planet expert at the University of Colorado, told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an e-mail. He wrote of an "exciting discovery."

A temperate climate?

The newly discovered planet, says the research team, is about 50 percent larger than the Earth and about five times as heavy. "We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius (32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit), and water would thus be liquid," says Udry. "Models predict that the planet should be either rocky -- like our Earth -- or covered with oceans," he adds.

Such basic data electrify scientists: The existence of liquid water at moderate temperatures is considered the most important precondition for the development of life. "Of course you would also need other elements such as carbon and nitrogen, but they are probably present," Thierry Forveille, a member of the research team working from Grenoble, France, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Then you also need a trigger mechanism for the development of life -- which no one knows anything about."


etcetera etcetera and for good measure an additional etcetera yes...etc.