NEIGHBOURS IN SPACE ARE CLOSER THAN WE THINK

13 June 1996 / July 6, 1996
Source: Electronic Times
By Nigel Hawkes, Science Editor

THE solar system may have planetary neighbours far closer than anybody suspected. A star just eight light years away - virtually on the same block, in astronomical terms - appears to have two planets in orbit around it.

If confirmed, these will be our closest planetary neighbours, four times nearer than any other planet detected in orbit around stars other than the Sun. However, neither planet is likely to contain life.

The existence of the two planets has been inferred by George Gatewood of the University of Pittsburgh. Observations by astronomers of a star called Lalande 21185 over the past 66 years show that it is moving towards the Earth at 50 miles a second. That in itself is not surprising, but the motion periodically speeds up and then slows, a "wobble" that could be caused by the rotation of planets around the star, Dr Gatewood told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin.

He estimates that two planets, one circling at about the same distance as saturn is from the Sun, and a second much closer, could account for the anomalies. The more distant planet would take about 30 years to orbit, and the other one six years.

Dr Gatewood does not think it likely that either planet could support life. Lalande 21185 is a red dwarf, too dim to be visible from Earth, and the planets are too far away from it. The evidence is that the planets lie on the same plane, as do the Sun's planets, and that their orbits are almost precisely circular.

Steve Maran, an astronomer at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, said: "These are the first ones that are really like our solar system."

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