• metaStatic
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      1112 months ago

      6.9 times larger than earth

      Fucking exo-planet

      is it even special though

      What a time to be alive

      • @[email protected]
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        632 months ago

        I get what you mean but there’s almost 6,000 exoplanets in NASA’s catalog so one imagines it isn’t as huge of a deal to find a new one as it would have been when say, Hubble was new. To that end it presumably happens often enough that you wouldn’t get the meme’s scenario of a 50 year career vet getting all spiteful because a kid beat him to the punch.

        • @[email protected]
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          132 months ago

          They even have had surveys on citizen science sites like zooniverse where any of us could evaluate data from stars looking for the dips that could signify a potential planet. It’s all very cool, but I kind agree with all the data and technology we have now it’s way easier to find new ones.

          Zooniverse is a very cool website for citizen science! For anyone interested: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/mschwamb/planet-hunters-ngts

      • @drislands
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        412 months ago

        Well…the headline only says the planet is 6.9 times as big as Earth. Jupiter is at least that large, last time I checked, so without more context I also don’t know what is special about it.

        • @Starbuck
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          222 months ago

          I think that it’s more impressive to identify something that’s only 6.9x the size of earth, given that the smaller it is the harder it would be to detect.

      • @[email protected]
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        342 months ago

        For real. Confirming the existence of any exo planet is a huge technological feat and yet now it’s happening non stop. The first ever confirmed exo planet was 1995 and now we’ve got a catalog of almost 6,000 confirmed. Wild times!

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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      82 months ago

      I mean spotting it in only 3 days feels like a pretty big feat in of itself, unless this kid had access to a database on one particular star’s brightening and dimming or it’s potential weeble wobbling about, he did in 3 days what usually takes weeks at a minimum if it’s a planet the size of jupiter or bigger.