Revenge of Hump Day 2012-04-04 - LibertyCon

The April 4 th , 2012 Edition of THE REVENGE OF HUMP DAY!Page 44 of 53About 40 percent of red dwarf stars may have Earth-sized planets orbiting them that havethe right conditions for life.The search found nine planets with between one and 10 Earth masses, including two in thehabitable zone, possibly giving them the right temperature to have liquid water. Becausered dwarfs don’t produce as much heat as our sun, their habitable zones occur muchcloser to the star.Larger planets, about the size of Jupiter, were found around less than 12 percent of reddwarfs, suggesting they are rarer than small rocky worlds.Until recently, astronomers could only guess at the number of stars with planets aroundthem. Now, with the more than 700 confirmed exoplanets, researchers finally have enoughdata to begin homing in on the true number.A previous team suggested that one quarter of sun-like stars have an Earth-sized planetaround them, while another group estimated that one planet exists for each of the hundredbillion stars in our galaxy.Astronomers hope to someday build a telescope capable of directly imaging the light froman extrasolar planet and see if they contain the telltale chemicals of life, such as oxygen ormethane.Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech~