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Editorial: Put away tinfoil hat
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More from OpinionSensing that he might be edging into tinfoil-hat territory, Sen. Barack Obama dodged a question in the recent Democratic presidential debate about whether he believed there was life on other planets. He opted for a foolproof-safe nonanswer: "I believe there is life on Earth."
If the debate had been held this week, Sen. Obama might have been able to give a more meaningful answer because, in the meantime, a group of astronomers announced the discovery of a fifth planet in a planetary system remarkably similar to our own.
The planets orbit a sun-sized star, 55 Cancri, 41 light-years away in the constellation Cancer. The newly discovered planet is a gas giant, 45 times the mass of Earth, orbiting its star every 260 days.
The significance is that this planet orbits in the "habitable zone," far enough from its sun to have moderate enough temperatures, between freezing and boiling, to allow for liquid water and thus the possibility of life.
The technology doesn't exist yet to discover rocky Earth-like planets, only the gas giants, but clearly such planets exist and so may moons orbiting the gas giants capable of sustaining life.
And this particular system seems especially promising. "It's a system that appears to be packed with planets," said Debra Fischer, an astronomer from San Francisco State and the team leader.
With 200 billion stars and billions of solar systems in our galaxy alone, Sen. Obama could have safely answered the question about life on other planets by saying it's increasingly likely that there is.
Posted by sslocal on November 9, 2007 at 9:02 a.m. (Suggest removal)
It would be a terrible waste of space if there wasn't.
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