No one knows what the planet Gliese 667Cc looks like. We know that it is about 22 light-years from Earth, a journey of lifetimes upon lifetimes. But no one can say whether it is a world like ours, with oceans and life, cities and single-malt Scotch. Only a hint of a to-and-fro oscillation in the star it orbits, detectable by Earth's most sensitive telescopes and spectrographs, lets astronomers say the planet exists at all. The planet is bigger than our world, perhaps made of rocks instead of gas, and within its star's “habitable zone”—at a Goldilocks distance that ensures enough starlight to make liquid water possible but not so much as to nuke the planet clean.
The post The Ugly Battle Over Who Really Discovered the First Earth-Like Planet appeared first on WIRED.
from WIRED » Science http://feeds.wired.com/c/35185/f/661470/s/40aac6b8/sc/10/l/0L0Swired0N0C20A140C110Cexoplanets0C/story01.htm
via Science News
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