Thread: Interesting extrasolar planet discoveries
View Single Post
  #464 (permalink)  
Old 22-January-2009, 08:34 PM
Drunk Vegan's Avatar
Drunk Vegan Drunk Vegan is offline
Established Member
  
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: If it's a software mod there shouldn't be any risk of fire.
Posts: 937
Default
Actually the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia shows five planets that are lower than 5 Earth masses.

Of course, three of these are pulsar planets, but the other two I'd consider genuine terrestrials, mass-wise:

http://exoplanet.eu/planet.php?p1=MO...BLG-192-L&p2=b
http://exoplanet.eu/planet.php?p1=HD+40307&p2=b

But anyway your basic point is correct, we have not discovered any Earth-like planets.

A lot of people I've noticed have a tendency to confuse "Earth-like" and "Earth-sized" - makes a big difference.

Even when we discover the first planet with a mass equal to Earth's, it will still not be an "Earth-like" planet, any more than Venus, which is approximately equal to Earth mass, can remotely be considered "Earthlike."
__________________
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams in his speech The Four Ages of Sand
[Help End Homelessness With Coffee (Facebook)][Coffee Shop Shelters (Myspace)]
Last edited by Drunk Vegan; 24-January-2009 at 04:16 PM..
Reply With Quote