• metaStatic@kbin.earth
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    3 months ago

    6.9 times larger than earth

    Fucking exo-planet

    is it even special though

    What a time to be alive

    • 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.com
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      3 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.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        3 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@lemmy.world
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      3 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@lemmy.world
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        3 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.

    • DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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      3 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!