24 Dec
2012
24 Dec
'12
2:05 p.m.
1. Tau Ceti, one of the closest stars to us (12 lightyears away) allegedly harbors five planets that weigh between two and six Earth masses and take between 14 and 640 days to orbit the star. One is reported to lie in the "habitable zone": five-Earth-mass planet with a period of 168 days. 2. Although you've probably heard about the flood of extrasolar planets found using ultra-high-res optical doppler and ultra-precise light-intensity measurement to detect planet-transits... the first extrasolar planets were found without needing optical telescopes at all before those techniques were mastered. For brownie points: What were they and how found?