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- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European
astronomers on Monday reported detecting signs that eight planets, some
of them possibly larger than Jupiter, may be orbiting stars outside our
own solar system.
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- These discoveries bring the number of potential extrasolar
planets to more than 40. The hunt for these planet candidates has intensified
in the last year, as space scientists from around the world scan the heavens
for Sun-like stars and planets that might orbit them.
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- The newest candidates were detected by astronomers working
with the European Southern Observatory's La Silla observatory in Chile.
The scientists are based in Geneva, Switzerland.
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- None of the planet candidates have ever been seen by
humans, but scientists believe they are there because of the gravitational
pull they exert on the stars they orbit.
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- Two of the eight new candidates may not be planets at
all, the European scientists said in a statement, but could instead be
brown dwarfs, which have a bit less mass than stars and completely lack
a star's interior nuclear power source.
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- Three of the new planet possibilities are about the size
of Saturn or smaller, three are one to three times the size of Jupiter
and two are 10 times the size of Jupiter or larger.
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- All of these are far larger than Earth.
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