The Planetary Society Blog. Universe Today. Starts With A Bang. Cocktail Party Physics. [Originally posted at our new home at Scientific American.] It's Chemistry Day at the Scientific American blog network, and while casting about for a relevant physics-related topic, I found my inspiration in the 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day. John Connor is in mortal danger again, this time from a new, improved Terminator machine known as the T-1000. The original killing machine (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is now the "good guy," having been reprogrammed to act as Connor's protector. [Note: Spoilers follow.
But if you haven't seen the movie yet, what's the matter with you? It's been 20 years!] Unfortunately, the reprogrammed Terminator is Old and Busted, built with outdated technology. It also heals almost instantaneously from wounds from bullets, rocket launchers, even being cleft in two. How the hell do you destroy such a thing? There's quite a bit of fascinating chemistry and physics behind the T-1000's unique abilities, but I'm going to focus on phase transitions. Bad Astronomy. Well now, this is an interesting discovery: astronomers have found what looks like a "super-Earth" – a planet more massive than Earth but still smaller than a gas giant – orbiting a nearby star at the right distance to have liquid water on it!
Given that, it might – might – be Earthlike. This is pretty cool news. We’ve found planets like this before, but not very many! And it gets niftier: the planet has at least five siblings, all of which orbit its star closer than it does. Now let me be clear: this is a planet candidate; it has not yet been confirmed. Reading the journal paper (PDF), though, the data look pretty good. It may yet turn out not to be real, but for the purpose of this blog post I’ll just put this caveat here, call it a planet from here on out, and fairly warned be ye, says I. The star is called HD 40307, and it’s a bit over 40 light years away (pretty close in galactic standards, but I wouldn’t want to walk there). We don’t know how big the planet is, unfortunately.