Jesse Whang- October 18th 2012
Earth Science- C Even
Overbye, Dennis  "New Planet in Neighborhood, Astronomically Speaking" New York Times, October 16 2012
 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/science/space/new-planet-found-in-alpha-centauri.html?ref=science

         The Article " New Planet in Neighborhood, Astronomially speaking" was about a team of European Astronomers on  Wednesday October 17th 2012 announcing that they have found a planet like ours. For example with about the same mass as Earth's but orbits a different star, Alpha Centauri B.  This star is our sun's closest neighbor about 4.4 light years away. Alpha Centauri Bis half as luminous as our sun, but the new planet revolves so close which makes the surface temperature about 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. The habitable zone of the star to have moderate temperature, water, and life would have to be at about 65 million miles away, having about 200 days in a year and the same orbit as Venus in our system.
        This article is important to our society because it expands our knowledge of what we know of Alpha Centauri B and other stars and their orbits and many possibilities and theories are created. For example the possibility raised by astronomers that there must be other habitable planets next door, which answers would branch out to many other questions. It is also important because the discovery of this one planet can lead to many other orbiting planets. I chose this article because it was it was very interesting even though there wasn't too much information, it still taught me a lot about the other stars neighboring our star.
        
           Overall this article was enjoyable and  had many interesting facts and possibilities. Things i liked about this article was that there were many quotes which showed me the thoughts of many scientists about the planet and even though it is very far away it was still interesting to find out whether the planet was able to sustain life or not .