Remember looking out the window at night as a kid, wondering if there was a green-hued alien child out there who looked just like you? Well, the fantasy of not being alone in the galaxy may not be entirely inaccurate. Scientists have recently found evidence of a solar system very similar to our own, including a planet looking a lot like Jupiter. Over the summer, a team of veteran “star hunters,” as they like to call themselves, found a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a star at roughly the same distance that our very own Jupiter revolves around the sun. Their findings of the new solar system didn’t include the pseudo-Jupiter alone. All in all, the hunt yielded fifteen new planets and ten new solar systems—increasing the likelihood of intergalactic neighbors that much more. Paul Butler, one of the leaders of the star hunting team from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, says that we are getting closer to finding the Milky Way’s twin sister. The center of it all revolves around the sun-like star, 55 Cancri, unveiled on June 13th and discovered by Geoffrey Marcy and his fellow team from the University of Berkeley. Only forty light years away, the star is visible with binoculars. Simply gaze toward the general vicinity of Cancer. The Jupiter-like planet was found as early as 1997—a gas “giant” only slightly smaller than our own Jupiter. Its orbit around 55 Cancri only takes 14.6 days, at a distance equal to 1/10 of Earth’s revolving distance around the sun. To put it in identifiable terms, imagine living a day equivalent to 14 Earth days—and having a killer sun tan. Jupiter’s orbit takes 11.86 years. The new planet takes slightly more: at only 3.5 to 5 times the mass of Jupiter, its full orbit clocks in at 13 years. Dr.Greg Laughlin of the University of California has also made a notable discovery. His calculations, made after the star hunting team shared its data, have found that an Earth-sized planet could actually survive in an orbit somewhere between Jupiter and its Jupiter-like relative. Scientists, too, aren’t all that far off from finding such a planet. So it seems that chances of another Earth may not be all that remote. We just may find ourselves living out a Jetson-esque fantasy. The discovery took place at Lick Observatory, located at the University of California. The discovery of 55 Cancri poses as a landmark event, the biggest in fifteen years of observation with Lick’s three-meter telescope. The project itself was led by Dr.Butler and Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley. Much like other space discoveries made as of late, the discovery of the Cancri’s planet came by accident. Because of its size, the planet pulled the star back and forth slightly. This wobbling in the star’s motion was detected by researchers through shifting in wavelengths of light. The star itself is forty-one light years away from Earth and approximately five-billion years old, according to estimates made by scientists. Computer simulations, moreover, have found that a similar system would not only be capable of holding an Earth-sized planet in orbit, but within a narrow range could actually hold water on its surface. There is a catch in the presumption, however: some scientists believe that planets closely orbiting their mother star began farther out, then gradually moved inward to settle at their current orbit. Cancri hosts two giant planets in its orbit, both orbiting so closely that they would have passed through the very same region where an Earth-sized planet may be found. Due to the size of these two planets, they would have either swallowed an Earth-sized planet into their own system or pushed it completely out of the way. The Jupiter-like planet is one of thirteen new planets announced by the NASA-funded team; ten of which represent completely new solar systems, bringing the total finding of planets outside the Milky Way to ninety. Currently with 1,200 stars under surveillance, the number is expected to grow with more telescopes. One of the ninety planets may also have the lowest mass, other than Earth, in extra-solar history. This planet orbits the star HD49674 and can be found in the constellation Auriga. Its mass is forty times that of Earth and fifteen percent of Jupiter’s, orbiting at a distance of .05 astronomical units, the universal system for measurement. This is approximately one-twentieth of the distance Earth orbits away from the Sun, being ninety-three million miles away from the mother star, the equivalent to 5.2 astronomical units. Cancri’s Jupiter-like planet orbits around its exterior at 5.5 astronomical units. Butlers and Marcy’s findings have led them to believe that they may be on the brink of finding planets more than four astronomical units away from their host stars; anything closer would not be able to support cellular life. With star hunters and scientists diligently at work, more and more of the extra-solar system is being discovered. Although mapping even a portion of the infinite solar system may be daunting at best, such findings pave the way for breakthroughs in the sphere of extra-solar exploration. Are we alone in the solar system? It’s speculative. However, with the discovery of sister solar systems that very well could support a sister Earth, the idea of having extra-planetary neighbors may not be so far off the par.
Plymouth State University
Thursday, June 26, 2025