Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 22, 1994 TAG: 9404220206
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``This is it,'' said Alexander Wolszozan, a Penn State astronomy professor. ``We finally have solid, irrefutable evidence that there are planets outside of our solar system.''
A scientific paper describing the discovery appears in today's issue of Science.
The findings are the result of a careful three-year analysis of radio waves emitted from an extremely dense star known as a pulsar. It confirms the presence of at least three planets orbiting that star, Wolszozan says.
Other astronomers agree the announcement is likely to hold up.
``There is now, I think, completely irrefutable evidence for at least two planets and probably a whole planetary system,'' said Fred Rasio of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
And Stephen Maran, a senior staff scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said the new announcement ``has withstood the test of time. We now have strong confidence that planets have been discovered outside our solar system.''
The planets have been discovered orbiting a pulsar known as PSR B1257 + 12, which are the coordinates in the sky where the star is located. It appears in the constellation Virgo, but because it is 1,200 light-years away - a distance of 7 quadrillion 50 trillion miles - it is too far away to be detected by optical telescopes.
(If it could be seen, images from the pulsar would have begun traveling in the year 794.)
A pulsar is formed when a star collapses after it has burned up all its fuel. What remains is an extraordinarily dense object, known as a neutron star, or pulsar.
by CNB