Read the source as “assnova.com”
Unfortunately we’ll never get to visit them in person if Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz has anything to say about it:
We are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard’s Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two-hour refit, and no one’s to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet leave is canceled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good time.
Just 6 light-years away, Barnard’s Star is a well-studied 10-billion-year-old M dwarf with a mass of 0.16 solar mass. Finding exoplanets around Barnard’s Star has been something of a white whale for astronomers for more than half a century; starting in the 1960s, researchers have claimed to have spotted various planets around Barnard’s Star, from distant Jupiter-mass companions to close-in super-Earths. Each of these claims has been refuted.
Now, the white whale appears to have been caught at last. Just last November, researchers reported the discovery of a planet orbiting Barnard’s Star with a period of 3.154 days. The data hinted at the presence of three other planets, but these candidates could not be confirmed. In a new research article published today, Ritvik Basant (University of Chicago) and collaborators leveraged years of data to confirm that Barnard’s Star hosts not just one, but four planets.
These planets are in remarkably close quarters, with periods of just 2.34, 3.15, 4.12, and 6.74 days.
Speedy little guys
The furthest of the four is estimated to have an orbital radius of about 0.03 AU. That’s 1/10th the size of Mercury’s orbit around the sun!
Wonderful confirmation.
To think how hard it is to confirm these planets, for such a relatively close star. When we have already confirmed so much about objects at far greater distances.
Hard to comprehend these achievements from our individual perspectives. 👏
I wonder if Kepler or others would have found these planets had Barnard’s Star been in the areas searched? I.e., very small planets in close orbits around a dim star is a very difficult target, period. This also means that the thousands of systems we now know about certainly have far more than the few bodies we’ve detected because we can only see the biggest ones well.
And we’ve made our first step towards the Time Tombs.
