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| Joseph de Ca'th Lon in the Observatori Fabra |
Today, Joseph de Ca'th Lon is visiting the Observatori Fabra in Barcelona. He wants to talk to us about a study of the University of California Santa Cruz about Tau Ceti and the last discovering: four planets orbiting around it.
Sun-like stars are thought to be the best targets in the search for habitable Earth-like planets due to their similarity to the sun. Unlike more common smaller stars, such as the red dwarf stars Proxima Centauri and Trappist-1, they are not so faint that planets would be tidally locked, showing the same side to the star at all times. Tau Ceti is very similar to the sun in its size and brightness, and both stars host multi-planet systems.
More information: University of California Santa Cruz
A new study by an international team of astronomers reveals that four Earth-like planets orbit the nearest sun-like star, Tau Ceti, which is about 12 light years away and visible to the naked eye.
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| Source: UPR Arecibo |
These planets have masses as low as 1.7 Earth mass, making them among the smallest planets ever detected around nearby sun-like stars. Two of them are super-Earths located in the habitable zone of the star, meaning they could support liquid surface water.
The planets were detected by observing the wobbles in the movement of Tau Ceti. This required techniques sensitive enough to detect variations in the movement of the star as small as 30 centimeters per second.
More information: NASA
The outer two planets around Tau Ceti are likely to be candidate habitable worlds, although a massive debris disc around the star probably reduces their habitability due to intensive bombardment by asteroids and comets.
The researchers painstakingly improved the sensitivity of their techniques and were able to rule out two of the signals the team had identified in 2013 as planets.
Everything has a natural explanation.
The moon is not a god,
but a great rock,
and the sun a hot rock.
Anaxagoras
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