Mar 29 2000
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(New page: Planet sleuths Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley and Steven S. Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz announced the discovery of two very small plan...)
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Planet sleuths Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley and Steven S. Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz announced the discovery of two very small planets outside Earth's solar system. Smaller in mass than Saturn, the planets resided approximately 100 light-years from Earth. Although Marcy and Vogt had concluded that the planets were very hot, and that neither planet was capable of supporting life, their discovery reinforced the long-standing theory that planets form by "snowball effect," growing from smaller to larger, as well as suggesting that many other stars in the galaxy might harbor small planets. To make their discovery, the astronomers had used the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii in one phase of a multiyear project to observe stars within 300 light-years of Earth.
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