Question:

Which of the following has not been detected around other stars in the Galaxy?

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A. a collapsing nebula of gas

B. terrestrial planets

C. jovian planets

D. flattened, spinning disks

E. strong stellar winds

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5 ANSWERS


  1. B.

    Terrestrial planets orbiting other stars are too small (right now anyway) to be detectable from earth.


  2. All of them have, but if your teacher is using an old question, the latest-discovered was B, a terrestrial planet about 5 times the size of the Earth.

  3. flattened, spinning disks

    i don't know I'm just guessing


  4. Although I believe this may no longer be true, until very recently there was no evidence for terrestrial (earth-like, rocky) planets on any star besides ours.  This is because tey were formerly too small to be detected.

    Edit: This is what wikipedia says about terrestrial planets.

    The majority of planets found outside our solar system to date have been gas giants, presumably because gas giants are larger and therefore easier to see or infer from observation. However, a number of extrasolar planets are known or suspected to be terrestrial.

    Aleksander Wolszczan detected the first extrasolar terrestrial planets. The three planets orbit the pulsar PSR B1257+12 with masses of 0.02, 4.3, and 3.9 times that of Earth's. They were discovered by accident: their transit caused interruptions in the pulsar's radio emissions (had they not been orbiting around a pulsar, they would not have been found).

    When 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet found around a fusing star, was discovered, many astronomers assumed it must be a gigantic terrestrial, as it was assumed no gas giant could exist as close to its star (0.052 AU) as 51 Pegasi b did. However, subsequent diameter measurements of a similar extrasolar planet (HD 209458 b), which transited its star showed that these objects were indeed gas giants.

    In June 2005, the first planet around a fusing star that is almost certainly terrestrial was found orbiting around the red dwarf star Gliese 876, 15 light years away. That planet has a mass of 5 to 7 times that of earth and an orbital period of just two Earth days.

    On 10 August 2005, Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork/Robotic Telescope Network (PLANET/RoboNet) and Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) observed the signature of a cold planet designated OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, about 5.5 times the mass of Earth, orbiting a star about 21,000 light years away in the constellation Scorpius. The newly discovered planet orbits its parent star at a distance similar to that of our solar system's asteroid belt. The planet revealed its existence through a technique known as gravitational microlensing, currently unique in its capability to detect cool planets with masses down to that of Earth.



    Re-creation of carbon planetIn April 2007, a team of 11 European scientists announced the discovery of a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures. The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds. What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. The discovery of the new planet, named Gliese 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs. The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth, classifying it as a super-earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky, like Earth, or if it is a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, it would be even bigger.

    A number of telescopes capable of directly imaging extrasolar terrestrial planets are on the drawing board. These include the Terrestrial Planet Finder, Space Interferometry Mission, Darwin, New Worlds Mission, the kepler mission, and Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.

  5. a collapsing nebula of gas

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