Rediscovering Venus to find faraway Earths: Measuring gravitational pull of a planet should speed search
Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - 12:02
in Astronomy & Space
As the search for Earth-like planets wages on, a team of researchers may have found a way to speed up the process. The team is developing a new laser-based technology known as the green astro-comb to obtain information about the mass of a distant planet. Using this information, astronomers will be able to determine whether distant exoplanets are rocky worlds like Earth or less dense gas giants like Jupiter.