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Article: Brown dwarfs, hot Jupiters or something completely different?
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- July 29, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Although the Trekkies who follow the voyages of the USS
Enterprise have known for years that there are planets of all kinds
orbiting practically every star in the galaxy, astronomers haven't
been so sure. Until a year ago, every "detection" of a planet
orbiting another star turned out to be a false alarm.
Now the situation is reversed. Scarcely a month seems to pass
without a new discovery being reported - and confirmed by other
astronomers. At a recent international conference in Capri, Paul
Butler from the Lick Observatory in California showed details of
yet another planet, which showed up on his computer analysis only
four hours before he flew from the US to Italy.
This new discovery, ...