Firm place to stand outside solar system

Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand, if only it weren't so boiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, Director of the Thuringer Observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its Sun." So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our Sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days."It's hot, they're calling it the lava planet," Hatzes said.This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the Universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented on Wednesday, September 16 morning.

The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It's in our general neighbourhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about six trillion miles.

Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

AP Science

Schoolboy discovers rare insect

Daniel Tate, an English schoolboy, was looking for grasshoppers at a wildlife event, he attended with his great-grandfather recently. But, the 11-year-old boy and his companions at Seaton Marshes Local Nature Reserve had no idea what a huge surprise they were in for.

Tate saw something pink that he thought was a flower. But when it jumped he knew it was a grasshopper. It turns out that it was an adult female common green grasshopper that just happened to be born pink. Experts aren't sure what caused this mutation. Grasshoppers of different colours, including pink, are unusual, but not unheard of according to experts.

What makes this particular grasshopper so rare is the intensity of the pink, according to Fraser Rush, a nature reserves officer in Britain.

Grasshoppers aren't the only insects that can be pink.- AP Science

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