Cosmologists have identified the smallest terrestrial planet ever detected outside the Solar System, a discovery likely to enhance the understanding of the formation and evolution of our planet.
Cosmologists have identified the smallest terrestrial planet ever detected outside the Solar System, a discovery likely to enhance the understanding of the formation and evolution of our planet.
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"This discovery is a very important step on the road to understanding the formation and evolution of our planet," said Malcolm Fridlund, European Space Agency's (ESA) COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits (COROT) Project Scientist.
"For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth. We now have to understand this object further to put it into context, and continue our search for smaller, more Earth-like objects with COROT," he underlined.
The amazing planet is less than twice the size of Earth and orbits a Sun-like star. Its temperature is so high that it is possibly covered in lava or water vapour, a report in the Science Daily said.
Launched in December 2006, the COROT space mission is led by the French Space Agency (CNES) in conjunction with ESA and other international partners.
It has the twin objectives of: search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly those of large terrestrial size, and to perform asteroseismology by measuring solar-like oscillations in stars.
About 330 exoplanets have been discovered so far, most of which are gas giants with characteristics similar to Jupiter and Neptune.
The new discovery, COROT-Exo-7b, is unique in many ways: its diameter is less than twice that of Earth and it orbits its star once every 20 hours.
Located very close to its parent star, it has a temperature between 1000 and 1500C, the report said. Puzzled scientists are unsure whether it is an 'ocean planet', a kind of planet whose existence has never been proved so far
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