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Show World&Uation Page 18 Friday, April 24, 2009 Scientists discover earth-sized planet HATF1ELD, England (AP) - In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place. European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 c. but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life. The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky. Earthlike planet in the habitable zone, said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland. An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet iextraordinary. Gliese 581 e is only 1.9 times the size of Earth n while previous planets found outside our solar system are closer to the size of massive Jupiter, which NASA says could swallow more than 1,000 Earths. Gliese 581 e sits close to the nearest star, making it too hot to support life. Still. Mayor said its discovery in a solar system 200 light years away from Earth is a good example that we are progressing in the detection oi Earth-like planets. Scientists also discovered that the orbit of planet Gliese 581 d, which was found in 2007, was located within the habitable zone, a region around a sun-like star that would allow water to be liquid on the planet's surface. Mayor said. He spoke at a news conference Tuesday at the University of Hertfordshire during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science. Gliese 581 e is probably too large to be made only of rocky material, fellow astronomer and team member Stephane Udry said, adding it was possible the planet had a large and deep ocean. It is the first serious water-world candidate, Udry said. Mayor's main planet-hunting competitor, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, praised the find of Gliese 581 e as the most exciting discovery so far of exoplanels planets outside our solar system. This discovery is absolutely extraordinary, Marcy told The Associated Press by e-mail, calling the discoveries a significant step in the search for Earth-like planets. While Gliese 581 e is too hot for life it shows that nature makes such small planets, probably in large numbers, Marcy commented. Surely the galaxy contains tens of billions of planets like the small, Earth-mass one announced here. Nearly 350 planets have been found outside our solar system, but so far nearly every one of them was found to be extremely unlikely to harbor life. A N ARTIST'S IMPRESSION of" Planet e ' , foreground left, released by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere Tuesday April 21. AP photo Most were too close or too far from their sun, making them too hot or too cold for life. Others were too big and likely to be uninhabitable gas giants like Jupiter. Those that arc too small are highly difficult to detect in the first place. Both Gliese 581 d and Gliese 581 e are located in constellation Libra and orbit around Gliese 581. Like other planets circling that star scientists have discovered four so far Gliese 581 e was found using the European Southern Observatoryis telescope in La Silla, Chile. Australian newspaper 6 years in prison for receives fishy threat Pakistani immigrant SYDNEY (AP)-Journalists have a lot to be nervous about lately: layoffs, furloughs, newspaper closures. But reporters at an Australian paper may have received the scariest threat of the day when a live shark was left on their doorstep. Police said the two-foot creature was spotted earl)F Wednesday by a man who was leaving a McDonald's restaurant next door to the offices of The Standard in the small Victoria stale town of VVarrnambool. When police arrived, the animal - believed to be a relatively harmless Port Jackson shark - was still breathing, Warrnambool police Sgt. Tom Revell said Thursday. So officers borrowed a bucket of water from McDonald's, placed the shark inside it and drove to a nearby pier, where they released the creature back into the ocean. But why would someone dump a shark outside the newspaper? "We've got no idea why," Revel! said. Nor does the newspaper's chief of staff, Glen Bernoth, who learned of the bizarre incident in a middle-of-the-night phone call from a friend who'd heard about it on his police scanner. "Naturally, I assumed it was like some sort of prank or something, but I'd been asleep for a couple hours," Bernoth said with a laugh Thursday. There are a couple of theories on the motive: Some readers were angered by a photograph the newspaper recently ran on its front page featuring a man who caught a large reefshark. NEW YORK (AP) - A Pakistani immigrant described by prosecutors as "Hezbollah's man in New York City" was sentenced Thursday to nearly six years in prison for airing the militant group's television station. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman handed clown a sentence of five years and nine months to Javed Iqbal, who had pleaded guilty in December to providing aid to a terrorist organization. Iqbal. 45, admitted as part of a plea agreement that he used satellite dishes on his Staten Island home to distribute broadcasts of Al Manar, the TV station of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which has been fighting Israel since the early 1980s and has been branded by the U.S. government as a terrorist group. Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder said Iqbal recruited Al Manar, even traveling to "the belly of the beast, South Beirut," to meet with its general manager. "He was, in a very real sense, Hezbollah's man in New York City," Snyder said. Snyder said Iqbal bought special satellite equipment to allow Al Manar to provide 24-hour programming from November 2005 through May 2006 so Hezbollah could use it to recruit followers and suicide bombers. Prosecutors said Iqbal's business was paid $28,000 monthly for at least five months for airing the station to its North American customers. Iqbal's lawyer, Josh Dratel, said his client didn't intend to aid Hezbollah as he tried to build his Brooklyn-based satellite. TRANGO A \ VJ/t -Includes Free Oval Stopper Set "n'"DiSet 4-13 BlueWater RDPE5 Spirit Express The Original And Still The Most Popular The Original and Still Classic ATC Cinch Belay Pniee 99 |