New Planets

There are two planets circling sun-like star Kepler-36, an older star than our own, which astronomers believe to be as different from one another as are our own Earth and the planet Neptune, though instead the hundreds of millions of miles of planetary separation within our solar system, these far distant planets come as close as 2 million miles apart, six times the distance of the moon from us, very close in astronomical terms.

At their closest, these planets each have truly spectacular views in their skies, that planet closet to the parent star – Kepler-36b – a solid body 1.5 times as big as Earth, though four time as heavy. Kepler-36c, on the other hand, is three times Earth size but only double the weight, and shrouded in gas, like Neptune, though the smaller one is not.

The way planetary bodies are dispersed within our own solar system, is believed to hail from temperature differences – in the original disk of gas and dust from which the sun and planets formed – though recent finds of gas planets orbiting very near parent stars has caused a re-think. Planets may indeed, over time migrate into different orbits..

With the two Keplar planets, no more than a 10% difference exists in distance from the parent star, densities differ by a factor of eight, raising many questions about how planets get atmospheres in the first place.