World Report: January 19, 2001 Vol.6 No.14
- This Issue:
- Table of Contents
- Cover Story
- Cover Story - Spanish Version
- Mini-Lesson
- Comprehension Quiz
- Teacher's Guide and Worksheets
Discovered: Some Monster Planets!
Just six years ago, the only planets that we Earthlings knew about were the nine that orbit our Sun. Things sure have changed! Using powerful telescopes, astronomers have detected about 50 more planets in recent years. Most are very distant, very big and very strange!
None are stranger than those described for the first time last week. At an astronomers' meeting in San Diego, California, planet hunter Geoffrey Marcy revealed two new discoveries made by his team.
The first is a pair of Jupiter-size planets whose movements seem to be connected, like the gears of a bicycle. They circle the same star. One takes 30 days to complete its orbit. The other takes exactly twice as long. Such synchronized orbits have never been seen before.
The second discovery is even more peculiar. Orbiting a very distant star in the constellation Serpens is a planet 17 times as massive as Jupiter. It's so big that Marcy calls it "frightening." Nobody can tell if it's truly a planet or a "brown dwarf" star-a star that's too small to shine.
These and other odd discoveries have made scientists wonder if our own solar system is the real oddball. Says astronomer Scott Tremaine of Princeton University: "Not a single prediction for what we'd find in other systems has turned out to be correct."
