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Posted: 24-10-2002 11:03 Post subject: New Planet

According to the BBC a new planet has been discovered orbiting another star:

'The new planet was discovered orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani which is about 10 light years from Earth. It is one of the lowest mass planets yet found around another star and has by far the longest, largest orbit of any yet seen.

Epsilon Eridani is a star that already has one discovered planet, the size of Jupiter, orbiting the star every five years or so.

By contrast, the new planet, tentatively named Epsilon Eridani C, is roughly a tenth of Jupiter's mass and completes an orbit once every 280 years.'

And the Martian rock is back in the news, with evidence that it really does contain signs of life:

'The strange shapes seen in a rock from Mars that some researchers say are fossilised bacteria really are tiny micro organisms, say American researchers.

But while they are confident the Mars rock contains fossilised life they cannot quite bring themselves to say it comes from the Red Planet, it might be Earthly contamination...

..."We conclude that the nanobodies that are so abundant in ALH84001 are indeed nanobacteria. However whether these bodies originated on Mars, or are Antarctic contamination remains a valid question," say the researchers.'