ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180096
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN ANTONIO
SOURCE: DAVID L. CHANDLER THE BOSTON GLOBE
``THE SECOND COMING of Marco Polo,'' one astronomer called the discovery.
Astronomers Wednesday announced to stunned colleagues the first discovery of a planet outside the solar system that may be capable of supporting life.
The find brings humankind to ``a gateway to a new era in science,'' said astronomer Geoffrey W. Marcy of San Francisco State University, one of the planet's two discoverers. We now know, he said, that the Earth ``has cousins in other solar systems. ... Planets aren't rare after all.''
The planet, in the constellation Virgo, culminates centuries of speculation and years of searching that produced a few intriguing results, but never any sign of a planet resembling those in our own solar system.
The planet, more than six times the size of Jupiter, orbits a star called 70 Virginis, which is almost a twin of our sun. And the planet's distance from that star - less than half the Earth's distance from the sun - suggests it is likely to have a surface temperature of about 185 degrees Fahrenheit. That means liquid water, the basis of all life as we know it, could exist there.
The find was one of two, and possibly three, planets outside the solar system whose discoveries were reported Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The first confirmed sighting of a planet outside the solar system was announced by a Swiss team three months ago.
One of the other planets whose discovery was announced Wednesday is orbiting a star called 47 Ursa Majoris in the Big Dipper. It, too, was discovered by Marcy and his colleague, Paul Butler, the team that last October confirmed the discovery of a planet about half Jupiter's size orbiting the star 51 Pegasi.
The planet orbiting 47 Ursa Majoris is more than twice Jupiter's size and is twice as far from the star as Earth is from the sun - so far out that it may be too cold to sustain liquid water, Marcy said.
The third possible new planet was reported by Christopher Burrows of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. It orbits a star called Beta Pictoris and is thought to be about the same size and distance from its star as Jupiter.
The three planets, as well as an earlier and possibly larger planet discovered a few years ago by David Latham of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, were all found by using spectrographs to make precise measurements of a star's motions, revealing the tiny wobbles caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.
``Clearly, we're at a turning point,'' said William Borucki, an astronomer at NASA's Ames Research Center. ``It's like a second coming of Marco Polo or Christopher Columbus. We're finding new worlds.''
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB