New Planet

Yahoo! News reported A planet that may be Earth-like — but too hot for life as we know it — has been discovered orbiting a nearby star. The discovery of the planet, with an estimated radius about twice that of Earth, was announced Monday at the National Science Foundation. "This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington said in a statement. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin." Though the researchers have no direct proof that the new planet is rocky, its mass means it is not a giant gas planet like Jupiter, they said. They estimated the planet's mass as 5.9 to 7.5 times that of Earth. It is orbiting a star called Gliese 876, 15 light years from Earth, with an orbit time of just 1.94 Earth days. They estimated the surface temperature on the new planet at between 400 degrees and 750 degrees Fahrenheit. Gliese 876 is a small, red star with about one-third the mass of the sun. The researchers said this is the smallest star around which planets have been discovered. In addition to the newly found planet the star has two large gas planets around it. Butler said the researchers think that the most probable composition of the planet is similar to inner planets of this solar system — a nickel/iron rock.

For comparison, the temperature on the part of Mercury facing the sun is 800 degrees Farenheit. Venus is hotter (875 degrees Farenheit) because the cloud cover traps the heat of the sun (the greenhouse effect).