We Find a Home of Darth Vader?

Professor Kaspar von Braun and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley and the State University at San Francisco (USA) discovered a double star system 55 in the constellation Cancer the next interesting exoplanet, which are most likely to be living. Now this discovery raises heated debate in the scientific world.

A double star 55 Cancri, also known under the symbol HD 75 732 and located at a distance of about 40 light years from Earth, has long attracted the attention of scientists. The fact that the system includes yellow dwarf 55 Cnc A, very reminiscent of the mass, luminosity and other parameters of our Sun (its radius is about 0.9 solar), and less massive red dwarf star 55 Cns B, orbiting at a distance about one thousand astronomical units.

The first four planets orbiting the star 55 Cns, were discovered in the late 90’s – early 2000’s. However, they were the hot gas giants. After the discovery in 2002 of the planets 55 Cnc C and 55 Cnc D turned out that between them there is a wide “gap”. However, the results of numerical simulation showed that this space can be stable planetary orbits. But only in 2007, one of the study participants, Professor Geoffrey Marcy, “stumbled” on the fifth planet – 55 Cnc F, whose mass is equal to 0.155 the mass of Jupiter (about 46 Earth masses) and is removed from its parent star about the same distance as Earth from the Sun.

The new planet was “unofficial” name of Tatooine – the so-called homeland heroes of “Star Wars” Anakin (the future Darth Vader) and Luke Skywalker, a planet with two suns. After von Braun’s team with an optical interferometer CHARA could clarify the astrophysical parameters of the star 55 Cnc A and its planets orbit, revealed that 55 Cnc F created the conditions under which they can present life. This means that the planet rotates in an orbit where the water remains liquid only partially evaporating and freezing.

According to the estimates of researchers, the planet spends inside the “zone of life” 74 percent of their annual cycle. The average temperature of its surface ranging from minus 52 degrees to plus 28 degrees Celsius.

Despite the fact that the mass of 55 Cnc F much greater than Earth’s, probably, it still has a solid surface or it may have moons, which consist of rocks on which water can exist. In addition, for water retention such satellites must have considerable mass, so the chances that these bodies will be inhabited, are quite large.

Large-scale search for planets around stars like the Sun, started in 1994. Since it was opened more than 250 extrasolar planets, whose existence is confirmed by observations using a variety of techniques. However, while there is no technology that can safely identify such a planet, and also prove the existence of life there. Unable to get sharp images and these heavenly bodies. Still possible to consider only a sufficiently large celestial bodies, similar in mass to Jupiter and Saturn are the largest objects in the planetary-type solar system. The smallest of the exoplanet mass five times greater than Earth’s.