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[FluffyMcDeath]

Mayhaps...

here.

[Karlos]

It amuses me to think that it's usually in systems quite distant that such discoveries are made. When I was younger, I had imagined that the first extrasolar planets would be observed in systems closer to home.

[blobrana]

Hum,
Nice picture,

i seem to remember that Barnards star ( our neighbour, at 6 LY away) was found to have a companion, very early on in the search for exo-solar planets...
recently AU Microscopii, which is also relatively nearby( at 33 light-years away) and a common sort of young star also has been found to have an accretion disk. (which implies planets are forming)

But the best bet is (imho) Tau Ceti (12 light years away) which is the nearest sun-like star. It is the first star to be found to have a disk of dust and comets around it similar in size and shape to the disk of comets and asteroids that orbits the Sun.(which also imply an accompanying family of planets)

All in all, there is probably at least 30 billion earth like planets in our galaxy.
And it'll only be a short period of time before we can directly see some of the closest ones...

[KennyR]

I wouldn't put too much hope in Tau Ceti. It's a G-type star like ours, but a type IV subgiant when ours is type V (main sequence). That makes it rather large and bright, for a start. If I remember correctly too, Tau Ceti is rather sparse in silicate, a material needed for planets. Despite the common anecdote, Tau Ceti is not a sun-like star.

[blobrana]

Hum,
yeah, perhaps tau Ceti is low in certain elements but,

“An excess of far-infrared emission is seen towards the nearby G8 V star tau Ceti, and this has been attributed to orbiting dust particles generated in planetesimal collisions.
new 850-mum images shows that there is indeed such a debris disc, extending out to =55 AU radius. This is the first disc around a Sun-like star of late main-sequence age to be confirmed by imaging. The dust mass is at least an order of magnitude greater than in the Kuiper Belt, although the dimensions of the systems are very similar and the age of tau Ceti exceeds that of the Sun(G2 type star).

Modelling shows that the mass in colliding bodies up to 10 km in size is around 1.2 Earth masses, compared with 0.1 Mo+ in the Kuiper Belt, and hence the evolution around the two stars has been different.
One possibility is that tau Ceti has lost fewer comets from the outskirts of the system, compared with the Sun. Alternatively, a greater number of comets could have been forced out by a migrating planet, compared with the case of Neptune in the Solar system. Notably, the disc of tau Ceti fits the expected decline with time compared to that of the younger nearby star epsilon Eridani. Among these three stars, the Sun would then be the case with the least dust and a 'minimal Kuiper Belt' - a situation which may be beneficial in terms of less bombardment and better stability for life.”
<extract from here>

The grains are assumed to be made of silicates...

[whabang]

This is nothing but cool!
Not unexpected with recent improvements in telescope technology.

[PMC]

blobrana wrote:

And it'll only be a short period of time before we can directly see some of the closest ones...

Unbelieveable... I never thought we'd ever actually be able to see Earth sized planets around other stars in my lifetime.

It can only be good news, and if future discoveries inspire the human race to embark on another golden age of exploration, rather than spending the money on killing each other then it's a good thing all round.