Astronomers announced this week they found a water-rich and relatively nearby planet that’s similar in size to Earth.
While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity’s search for life on other planets.

“The huge excitement is that we have found a watery world orbiting a very nearby and very small star,” said David Charbonneau, a Harvard professor of astronomy and lead author of an article on the discovery, which appeared this week in the journal Nature.

The planet, named GJ 1214b, is 2.7 times as large as Earth and orbits a star much smaller and less luminous than our sun. That’s significant, Charbonneau said, because for many years, astronomers assumed that planets only would be found orbiting stars that are similar in size to the sun.”

Because of that assumption, researchers didn’t spend much time looking for planets circling small stars, he said. The discovery of this “watery world” helps debunk the notion that Earth-like planets could form only in conditions similar to those in our solar system.

“Nature is just far more inventive in making planets than we were imagining,” he said.

In a way, the newly learned planet was sitting right in front of astronomers’ faces, just waiting for them to look. Instead of using high-powered telescopes attached to satellites, they spotted the planet using an amateur-sized, 16-inch telescope on the ground.

There were no technological reasons the discovery couldn’t have happened long ago, Charbonneau said.

The planet is also rather near to our solar system — only about 40 light-years away.

Planet GJ 1214b is classified as a “super-Earth” because it is between one and 10 times as large as Earth. Scientists have known about the existence of super-Earths for only a couple of years. Most planets learned by astronomers have been gassy giants that are much more similar to Jupiter than to Earth.

Charbonneau said it’s unlikely that any life on the newly learned planet would be similar to life on Earth, but he didn’t discount the thought entirely.

“This planet probably does have liquid water,” he said.

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The attached image was captured on 2:35:03 PM of 27 Nov 2008, from one of two continuous pictures. It appeared in the sky right above my front garden. When you look at this picture, it is just like an ordinary UFO. You can’t see much detail and there is not much excitement – only a purple colored light ball and a few yellow bubbles on the back. But the next picture, one second later, shows this object diving down at an angle of 30 degrees; then positioning itself above the huge tree that is opposite my house. It’s appearance turns out to be completely different from before. A large dome shaped head with two huge dark blue eyes. The large tail of propulsion energy comes from its rear like a fan, right at 70 degrees up from the horizontal. The whole body was glowing white, yellow, purple in color. it looked like a gorgeous golden fish swimming in space. But it is not related to fish. This is one of many types of simple life form.
This episode is documentation for such phenomena : a ufo hovering in the sky. Then something inside of it may pop out from the light ball or plasma field, ( people usually call them: UFO) to exposed itself for some reason, which I can identify. I had a few similar incidents these past years, but only recently was I awoken by this experience to know why many people can capture photos of UFO but not aliens. Do you know why?

The attached picture is also in this slide show video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j6RjPtCoV4&feature=channel
related article: http://www.indianamufon.com/Critter1.html http://ufo-spacelife.blogspot.com/2007/09/shape-of-ufo.html

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Posters comment on Above top secret.

I walked outside to see if my dog was barking at a brown snake (deadly snake here in Australia) as it was about 40 degrees Celsius that day and it really brings the snakes out in the open.

As soon as I stepped outside my dog became really silent and huddled up in the corner of his couch on the veranda. I immediately noticed the shiny metallic saucer in the sky, hovering above the grape vines, which expand beyond the green fence seen in the videos…

I honestly at first thought it was some kind of balloon, much like the balloon in the “Balloon hoax” that happened in America lately with the boy. I just stood there transfixed on this thing hovering, the sight of it had completely shocked my mind and my heart was beating a million miles an hour once I had realized it wasn’t acting at all like a balloon.

It had a slight waver to it, so it wasn’t really still while hovering, ever so slightly wobbling but you can’t really see this in the video’s due to the typical quality of a mobile phone. (The craft was also a lot shinier in real life, the hot sun was really beating off the top of the craft while the underbelly was in shadow, also wasn’t really picked up by the camera quality)

It started to go off to the left as I was filming, and it’s weird for me to reckon back it all seems like such a blur now… I could have sworn I was breathing heavy and swearing out loud at the excitement and total SHOCK at what I was seeing and filming. But when I look back at the video strangely enough I wasn’t making any sound whatsoever.

I was home alone that day, except for my dog. I do remember the whole time my mind was screaming at me to race inside and look for my dad’s video camera to get some better footage, but just did not have the courage to leave in case I got back outside and it was gone. (This is precisely what happened when I DID make myself go to get the camera, which I never did find because my dad had it in his ute after a trip up north of Australia)

In the video “Multiple Objects” you will see the saucer go to the left, a small object was rising up from the grape vines below and heading up towards the saucer.

It was at this point I raced inside to find dad’s camera)…. Came back outside and there was absolutely no trace of anything. Just gone.

It is my theory that whoever was inside this thing was paying a general interest in the watering of the grape vines below, and had sent out it’s smaller orb or whatever the heck it was to check it out, collect water, study the grapes, I don’t really know..

Looking back I really wish I had stepped out off the veranda and shown some reference points as to where I was and where the craft was in the sky, I can see now why in so many UFO videos the camera operator is just glued to where they are, nearly in an altered state from what is before them in the sky.

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Here are a ton of news items that I taped about the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, probably the most keenly awaited movie release of all time! The hoopla and excitement surrounding this event was incredible, as witnessed by the……

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Here are a ton of news items that I taped about the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, probably the most keenly awaited movie release of all time! The hoopla and excitement surrounding this event was incredible, as witnessed by the……

Popularity: 1%

Here are a ton of news items that I taped about the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, probably the most keenly awaited movie release of all time! The hoopla and excitement surrounding this event was incredible, as witnessed by the……

Popularity: 1%

Here are a ton of news items that I taped about the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, probably the most keenly awaited movie release of all time! The hoopla and excitement surrounding this event was incredible, as witnessed by the……

Popularity: 1%

Here are a ton of news items that I taped about the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, probably the most keenly awaited movie release of all time! The hoopla and excitement surrounding this event was incredible, as witnessed by the……

Popularity: 1%