An "Invisible" Planet Discovered by Harvard Scientists
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 15 September 2011, 01:38 IST
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Bangalore: The Scientists have come across a discovery, which they labeled as "Invisible Planet", reports the Harvard Crimson. Though the planet is not exactly invisible, the lead researcher, Sara A. Ballad says, "The influence it's exerting on another planet," bypassing more traditional methods of detecting planets that rely on visible evidence. Sara is a graduate in astronomy, found the planet during a routine examination of data collected from a NASA mission, found the planet, named Kepler-19c and located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. She observed that the orbit of Kepler-19b, was irregular as the planet finished rotating its star five minutes earlier or five minutes later than expected. The reason concluded for this was that the gravity of another planet must be pulling on Kepler-19b and causing the inconsistencies in the length of the orbit. The discovery of Kepler-19c is likely to guide the new age of discovery where scientists have the ability to find a massive number of previously unidentified planets. She says, "I predict there will be thousands of additional planets discovered using this method. It's an entirely new way to find new worlds." Over 150 years ago the same method was put into action by astronomer Alexis Bouvard to identify the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune. Alexis analyzed Neptune's presence from unusual patterns in Uranus's orbit. Later, Neptune's existence and location was visually verified through observations from telescopes. The method used to discover Kepler-19c is only a few years old, it is a modern variation on the process used to identify Neptune. Launched in 2009, the discovery of Kepler-19b and Kepler 190c are a part of NASA'S Kepler mission, the scientists gave the mission the task of discovering alien planets throughout the galaxy. A professor of astronomy and co-author of the Ballard's findings, David Charbonneau feels the Kepler mission was initially designed to use more traditional methods of finding planets. More traditional methods were employed to discover Kepler-19b, led to the discovery of Kepler-19c. David says "The idea was not unexpected. People had for years described this idea as a theoretical construct, a way of finding planets."

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