On Thursday, scientists released a journal detailing the discovery of planet 51 Eridani B, the first planet discovered by the Gemini Planet Imager.
This planet is sexy.
It’s a teenage version of our Jupiter. Although young in development, It’s actually colder than Jupiter and has about twice the mass, but that’s not a deal-breaker….. for science.
The reason why this news is so groundbreaking is its similarities to Jupiter and more.
The formation of the planet is near-exactly what conditions scientist speculate created the Jupiter we know and love.
Even more intriguing is the dust hovering around the sexy Jupiter. It’s from one of two dust belts that sandwich the planet, a hot and cold belt of dust and space rocks. The dust in these belts are remnants of the gas nebula which started to form planetesimals of its respective galaxy.
It’s a much younger solar system than ours with a Sun that is just 20 million years old. Compared to our 4.6 Billion year old Sun, it still has a long way to go, as does the formation of planets around it. The temperature of the sexy Jupiter is even more intriguing because it leads scientists to relate it to a “cold start“. The colder temperature of the planet means that the density of the planets in the solar system are also greater; forming rocky surfaced planets like Mars and Earth.
By observing this solar system, scientists are confident that we can learn much more about the creation of our own.
Which means, that if our human race survives, or the next one that replaces us survives(and will probably die anyway considering our sun only has about 5 Billion years left before going out); we can see the birth of another alien race identical to ourselves.
Here is a video about 51 Eridani B by GeoBeats News:
