Extra-solar planets imaged for the first time.
Lawrence Livermore Labs has released pictures showing, for the first time, the presence of actual planets outside of our solar system.
Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away _ three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star.
None of the four giant gaseous planets are remotely habitable or remotely like Earth. But they raise the possibility of others more hospitable.
It’s only a matter of time before “we get a dot that’s blue and Earthlike,” said astronomer Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He led one of the two teams of photographers.
This is a tremendous scientific achievement and the folks at Lawrence Livermore are to be commended. The presence of planets orbiting other stars has long been theorized and their presence had been detected in the movement of distant stars. But to actually image these planets is proof of another caliber entirely. It’s not so long a stretch, now, to think that planets of the same class as Earth might exist now that we’ve actually seen planets of the same class as planets in this solar system. And if earthlike planets do exist, then life as we know it might also exist. Like the man said: fascinating.
